Another interesting result from these laws of existence is that which explains the spirit-world. The life which, flowing through angels into men, and through men into nature, constitutes our world, flows also out from angels all around them, and constitutes their world. For they have their world, real, varied, , beautiful, and formed to contribute to their happiness as ours; or rather far more so, because they are far more capable of happiness. As it exists in the same way in which our world exists, springing from the same causes and governed by similar laws, it is like our own. Milton was more than a poet, or rather he was truly a poet, when he says, Though what if earth And Wordsworth, true to the same poetic instinct, has the same idea in bis Laodamia. He speaks of the spirit-world as composed Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there But though these worlds are like, they also differ; and there are two or three points of difference which should be noticed. One is, that here, the living energies that give form to nature, are ultimated or vested in material substance, which is comparatively hard and gross. But there, life flows forth into spiritual substance, which is yielding and plastic, and more perfectly obeys the life which creates it. Moreover, there, angels are together ; for the societies of heaven are discriminated and arranged with the greatest precision and order. Hence the world about them is not mingled, discordant, and conflicting, like this. Life is there without decay ; beauty, and no worm to gnaw its bud ; light and warmth, and all lovely and innocent creatures, breathing the bright, soft air ; and a vegetable kingdom but faintly imaged upon earth by those plants which have at once and in full perfection leaf and fruit and flower. If the thought occurs that we should miss the sublimity of the frozen mountain-top, the storm-cloud and fierce lightning, and winter's wide expanse of unstained snow, let us consider whether lessons of equal sublimity and emotions of yet greater depth may not be given, when all the elements of natural beauty are evolved in infinite variety and a perfection unimagined now. Moreover, because this spiritual substance is plastic, and nearer in its own nature to the soul, it reflects the soul and all that is within it more constantly and more perfectly. Here, this correspondence is general; the earth presenting in its various forms an image of human nature. There, this correspondence is particular; adapted to the societies of angels; and every angel has about him a home, and all natural forms, which perfectly represent himself. He sees there his own affections, his own thoughts, in form and in activity ; they grow as he grows ; they change as he changes; they are always himself in outward representation. Into this spirit-world man enters at death. While he remained in this lower world his spiritual body was within his natural body, giving it life and power and sense. It was always his spiritual eye which saw, his spiritual ear which heard, his spiritual senses which took cognizance of all things about him. But while he lived in the material body, it was only through the material organs of that body, that the eye of his spiritual body could see and its ear could hear; and for that purpose these material organs were exquisitely fitted to the spiritual organs which they served as instruments. But when these material organs or coverings fell off, the spiritual eye, the true and living eye, does not lose the power of seeing. It loses the power of seeing the material things for which it once possessed a material organ, but it acquires the power of seeing the spiritual substances and forms which this material organ had veiled. So it is with all the senses, and with all the organs of the body. The man rises from that portion of earth which his soul once vivified; rises with the l spiritual body he always had, and rises in full possession of all his senses and faculties, into a world of spiritual substances, of which his spiritual senses and organs now take cognizance in the same man ner as the material organs here perceive material things. In a word, Death is Birth, and then man rises a man as before, but in a new world : yet, with all his organs, limbs, senses, faculties; and into a world like in its appearances, and analogous in its uses, to the world he has left. Besides the mediate influx from God, which I have attempted to consider, every being receives constantly an immediate influx. And it is rather to this influx that creation should be ascribed; for it is this which calls every thing and being into existence, and renders it capable of receiving the mediate influx, of which I have spoken. Perhaps it is enough to say upon this topic now, that whatever exists, receives its life in a twofold way. One, and the first, directly from God, the source of Life, and this gives to it being and existence. The other comes from God through all the intermediate planes or degrees of being ; and is thus adapted to the state of every one, so as to supply him with life, while it is also in the constant endeavor to improve and elevate that state. I have spoken of this, rather because so essential a truth should not be omitted in a view of the laws of Life, than in the hope that the brief statement I have space for, in this Essay, can render it intelligible. Thus far I have spoken of the life-influences of the Divine, in their descent, in their progress from , within, outward. But they return to their infinite Source. Always life, they stop nowhere. Thus, . on. when they have reached and created this lower, material world, they manifest themselves in this by a constant effort to reassume an upward fight; and they begin to accomplish this by providing sustenance and support for the vegetable kingdom. Earths, stones, and waters, always acted upon by the air and the imponderable fluids, are always endeavoring to become more and more adapted to sustain vegetable life, and to enter into vegetable life, and so ascend in the scale of being. This endeavor may seem to be arrested where desolation reigns, and an inhospitable climate is at war with life, but still the work on the whole earth is always going Thus the vegetable world, which lives by the descent of the principles of life, is nourished and preserved by the same principles in their returning ascent; and in the vegetable kingdom they are again active in making its whole organization subserve the purpose of giving sustenance to the animal world which lies next above the vegetable creation, Then this whole lower world, all the existences below man, are filled and animated by the constant effort to provide for him a fitting dwelling-place, and food and raiment and shelter. In the mind of man, the principles of life have a form less removed from their divine Original; they become again, what they were in their descent to him, Love and Wisdom; - they are in him, the wisdom which looks up to God, to find in Him the only source of life and blessing, and the love which leads that wis |