Spirits In Prison? The Idolater?

IV—The Idolater

The next class includes those whose lives outwardly correct have yet been wanting in the true spirit of love, so that they have been really dead while they seemed to live. 

With a strong sense of their own righteousness, and with low thoughts of others, these Pharisees, these idolaters, of whatever sect or religion they may have been, have their nature completely engrossed with the one idea of their own goodness or sufficiency. 

When they look back upon their past life, this constant habit of the mind prevents them from acknowledging any failure, any fault, and in a self-justifying spirit they see nothing, but their own reflection in the pool of memory, and so, for a long time, they remain in the valley where the Sun of Life cannot warm them with its rays. 

Such are helped to true repentance of their former state by seeing the noble self-sacrificing lives of those who are most truly wise, and it is by such examples and willing self-devotion that these troubled ones are comforted.