The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029469214 Cornell University Library BX8713.P27 E72 1868 Essays. Third series / by Thepphiius Par oiin 3 1924 029 469 214 ESSAYS. BT THEOPHILUS PARSONS. TBIBD SERIES. BOSTON: T. H. CARTER AND SONS, 2S Bbomfield Street. 1868. (Si Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1862, By Theofhilcs F.UB0H3, In the Clerk's OSce of the District Court of UaBsachnsettr. NOTE. The third Essay, and parts of the first and second, hare been read at social meetings of the Boston Society of the New Jeru- salem. In none of them nave I attempted to give a full and logical exposition or deyelopment of the doctrines of the church ; or to do more than offer some suggestions, in the best way permitted by my imperfect knowledge, and the fragmentary and uncertain leisure of a busy life. T. P. SUBJECTS OF THE ESSAYS. He Cometh in Clouds. Paradise. The Sea. The End of the Chdkch. HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. ScaiNCE and Philosophy have, recently, taken an important step in a right direction, by the acknowledg- ment, — now, at least frequent, if not general, — of Reason in Nature. No one supposes that stones or plants have a conscious reason. Animals only have this, and men have it otherwise than other animals, or in a different form and for a different purpose. But it is now seen, that the same reason which is active, and conscious of its activity, in man, exists in all things of the universe, all things of every kind, the farthest and the nearest, the largest and the smallest, and is in all of them an absolute and un- resisted power. This truth has come to men from reflecting upon the fact, now proved by innumerable instances, that what the human reason discovers and demonstrates as a law of reason, that it finds to be a universal law of nature. For example, let us see how Newton discovered and proved the fact of universal gravitation. First, assuming it is a fact, he proved logically and geometrically, that if two bodies in space attract each other, that attraction must be governed through all varying distances, by a certain, precise, and mathe- 6 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. matical ratio. Then he proved, that if a body approaches another by a constant force, as when a " stone falls from a height, its rate of approach must increase in a certain, precise and mathematical ratio. Then he proved, that if a body revolves round another body, as, for example, the moon round the earth, under the influence of a force compounded of two forces, cine of which draws it towards the central body, and the other moves it in another direction, it must necessarily revolve in a certain mathematical curve ; which, while always changing, would change always in perfect conformity with a certain, precise, and mathematical law. He then applied these laws of reason to the mo- tion of the moon, and using the best observations of the moon then existing, he found these laws were inconsistent with that motion, and cast them aside. But a few years afterwards, more accurate observa- tions were made, which corrected some errors ; and he again applied these laws to this corrected motion; and found that the moon perfectly obeyed these laws. This was the foundation of all astronomy, as it now exists. From that day to this, astronomers have done nothing else, than assume that these laws are absolute, necessary, and universal. And as the hu- man mind, has advanced in the discovery of the laws of its own reason, and has worked on the supposition that these laws, which are demonstrably certain and inevitable laws of human reason, are also and equally certain and inevitable laws of the, material universe, HE COMETH IN GLOTTDS. 7 it has carried the science of astronomy so far, that it can predict accurately the place" of any planet, at any hour to-morrow, or next year, or a thousand yeaxs hence, and tell accurately just where it stood at any hour a thousand years ago. Or, if a comet makesi its appearance for the first time, if three good observa- tions of its place among the stars are taken, a skilful astronomer will soon describe its whole path, will tell us how near it will ever approach the sun, and on what day it will be farthestj and how far it will then be, and when it will reach the farthest point in its orbit, and how far it will then be, and how near it will in its course approach this or that planet in its course, and how it wiU be drawn in this or that direction by that planet, and when its wUd career wiU bring it back to us. And the very school-books of astron- omy teU us the weight of the earth, and the moon, and every planet, as accurately as if they had been weighed in a balance. And if astronomy be stiU imperfect, it is only because it has not discovered all the laws of Reason as it exists in the human roind, or as it exists in the universe. Of the innumerable examples of the same fact which science now exhibits, I cite no more, because if I have succeeded in presenting intelligibly the ex- amples I have given they wUl be seen to lead to the conclusion, that the Reason which is in and is active in the human intellect, is identical with a Reason which is in, and is active in, the material uni- verse. 8 HE COMETH IN CLOTnDS. So much as this is now commonly admitted ; and various inferences are dra^vn therefrom. What in- ference does the New Church draw from it ? All religion teaches that there is one God, who created man, and the universe in which he dwells. And the New Church is taught, that God is perfect Love and perfect Wisdom ; because these two Di- vine elements, in their infinite perfection, constitute God. And in the next place it is taught, that this wisdom comes into the understanding of man, which is so constructed that it is capable of receiving it, of appropriating it, an^ of using it as the man's own reason. In the next place, this church is taught, that this Divine reason comes also into the material universe, which is so constructed, as to be capable of receiving it, and of conforming to it in every part and in every thing. In the next place, this church is taught, that be- sides this God there is no other; and besides this Beason, which is his reason, there is no other. The truths above stated are not only truths in general, but they are also truths in every particular. The Divine reason does not come into the material universe and direct or animate some general laws or some classes of things, and let some other reason take care of the rest ; because there is no other reason. But it comes equally to, and is the same thing in, the whole and every part ; for even natural science now knows, that the same laws which govern the HE COMETH IN CLOtlDS. 9 earth as a planet, pervade the earth, and govern every atom from its surface to its centre. The time must come, and may be near, when the New Church, and all who are willing and able to see the truth, will learn, that these laws, con- sidered together with the fact that the one Divine Reason comes into the human mind and there forms and fills and constitutes everything of human reason, and comes into the material universe and there forms and fllls_ and constitutes every law, every force, every activity and every form, lead to a rigorous and logical demonstration, that the material universe in the whole and in every conceivable portion or element, is an ex- pression, a clothing, and a mirror of the universe of Mind. Then will the Science of Correspondence be demon- strated ; and then will it take its rightful place, as the centre and foundation and light of all Science. The especial subject of this Essay, is the clouds ; the clouds of the sky, and the clouds of the mind. But it is impossible to write upon any subject, in any connection with the doctrines or principles of the New Church, without reference to this correspondence of the things of -the spirit with those of the body. In some or other of its forms and effects it forces itself upon all but the most superficial or careless observation. A large part of the best literature of aU ages recognizes it to a greater or less extent, and with more or less of clearness. From time to time, since those distant periods in 10 BE COMETH US CLOUDS. ■which the record of human thought began, there have been efforts to discover and apply this correspondence in a religious sense ; and some occasional endeavors to use it for the illustration of science. But while Swedenborg asserts the absolute reality and univer- sality of the fact of correspondence, he also reveals its cause and ground, and systematizes its laws. He declares that everything in earth, be it substance, phenomenon, law, force, cause or effect, exists as the correspondent of that which exists in the world of thought and in the spiritual ' world. And not only exists as such correspondent^ but because it is in this correspondence ; and beside the ground of this corre- spondence, which has already been indicated, there is yet another ; or rather there is yet another way of saying the same thing. It is, that this whole external universe is caused by an internal universe ; and the internal causes the external by coming forth into an external form ; or, in other words, by be- coming that external. There is so little in existing science, so very little in the common notions of mankind, or ia prevailing habits of thought, to welcome or appreciate any truth which implies the positive and definite existence of a spiritual world, real and substantial, and actually composed of spiritual things, that it must be very difficult to comprehend a system of correspondence between these spiritual things and the things of the natural world. It is, however, possible that thia difficulty may become lesa, if we are able to see HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 11 with some clearness, some principles -wrhich may be regarded as introductory to the science of corre- spondence. One of them is, that this correspondence is not so much between some thing in the one world and some other thing in the other world, as it is between the appearance, the form, the action and operation of the same thing as it exists in the one way, and in the other way ; or in one world and in the other world. But to comprehend this, we must again go back, or rather upwards, to a point above both of these worlds ; that is, to their Creator. For, as creation by God, is of necessity a creation from Grod, so it is a coming forth of something in God, which He forms into an element of being^ out- side of Himself. Because in Grod there are inexhaustible infinities of Divine life,, there may be in all worlds a variety in the forms of life or modes of being, which eternity will not exhaust. All of these, as they exist in Him, are as perfectly incomprehensible by human thought as they are inaccessible to human touch. They be- come comprehensible by descending within reach of human tiiought ; that is, by putting on forms or modes of being that are within the reach, first of the senses, and then of the mind. Because each one of the elements of Divine life is capable of an infinite variety of manifestations, there are not only two worlds, one of which is spiritual and the other natural; but a vast variety in the planes of being, or modes of being, in each world. 12 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. Thus, in the natural world, we have the mineral, vegetahle, and animal kingdoms, and a great variety of beings in each of them ; and there is a similar, although far greater, variety in the spiritual world. To express these modes of being, the phrase "planes of life " is used ; because the word plane, which means only level, leads the mind, by suggestion, to the idea that these different classes of being stand on different levels, higher or lower, or are so arranged as to be at different distances from Him who is the source of all and above all. We then add, that as all creation is caused by effluence from the universal Father, and as each thing is caused or created by the effluence of its inmost and incomprehensible essence from the Father, which essence, as it flows forth, clothes itself with what it needs to play its part on the material plane of being or on the spiritual planes, while it remains itself unchanged, so the forms or manifestations which it puts on upon either of these planes, correspond to those which it puts on in the other. And, as has been said, this correspondence is not so much between one thing in one state and another thing in another state, as between the one thing in one state and the same thing in the other state ; or between the forms and appearances of the same things, in these two different states. After this it is important to keep in mind, that while the most general division of creation is into two worlds, the spiritual and the natural, the next HE COMETH IN CLODDS. 13 most general division of each world, is into the in- ternal and the external ; or into that which being within causes and forms what is without, and that which being without is the effect and the form of that which is within ; or, again, as it may help us to say, into the soul and the body. It is easy to ■ speak of a man's soul and his body, and no one is disturbed by such words. But should we say that every animal has a soul ? No ; because it seems better to reserve the word soul for the interior prin- ciple or form of life of a human being. Still less therefore would we say that the interior and causative principle of life of a tree or plant was its soul ; and when we pass down to the mineral kingdom, no life whatever seems to be there. And yet the generic distinction of soul and body is real and universal. But by soul, in this wide sense, we must mean what everything has, whether stone, tree, beast, or man ; and that is an interior principle of being as well as an exterior manifestation of that being ; an essence as well as an existence ; and an essence which coming forth into existence creates the form, creates it for the clothing, for the instru- ment, and -for the body of the essence. The relation between the interior and exterior, or the soul and the body, and also the nature and quality of each, are very different in different things ; as, for example, in the case of the man, the beast, the tree, and the stone; but it is perfectly true iu ftU caseSj that whatever exists, has this interior which 14 HE COMETH IN CLOI7DS. thus creates, shapes, fills and uses this exterior. We say interior, not inmost; for the inmost of everything, or the first cause of everything, is the Divine within it. But this inmost, or first cause of everything, creates first the interior, which in man only can we with strict accuracy call the soul, and by and through this creates the exterior, which we have called the body ; and this is meant when we say that the in- terior or internal forms the exterior or external. As this is a universal law, it applies to the spiritual world and all things there, as much as to the natural world and all things there. Hence it is just as certain that a man has a body there, as it is that he has a soul here. That is, he needs a body there, to be there a man, just as absolutely as he needs a soul while here, that while here he may be a man. Or, in yet other words, to be a man, anywhere, he must have a soul in a body. If, then, he has a soul in a body in the spiritual world, he must have there a world to live in which is suited to his soul and body ; which is formed of the same substance as his spiritual body ; and this substance is spiritual substance, which is quite as real and quite as much a substance out of which bodies, forms, and shapes may be made as material substance. Now let it be said, that the soul of the man is the same soul, in this natural world and in that spiritual world. And then, that the soul creates and shapes its body there and its body here to be the HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 15 instrumental medium tetween it and the world about it. And therefore the same soul requires and has similar surroundings, and a similar body by means of which it may use those surroundings, in the spirit- ual world as in the natural. This end is effected in this way. Not only the soul (or interior essence or principle of Ufe) of man, is the same in the spiritual world as in the natural world, but the soul (or interior essence or principle of being) of everything else. Take, for example, a stone, or a tree, or a stream, or a mountain with all its rocks and trees and streams. This exists in this world, for man in this world or while he is here, clothed with matter, and therefore as a material thing. Its first creator is God ; but the immediate instrument by which this creation is effected, is what we may call, with the definition above given, the soul of that mountain. And this soul, whether of the mountain, or of any or all of its rocks, trees, or streams, or other constituent parts, or of the earth on which it rests, or of any part of this earth, is equally ready and able to be the immediate instru- ment of the creation of rocks, trees, streams, moun- tains or earth, for man, or for the soul of man, when that exists only in its spiritual body ; ' that is, when the man is what we call dead. But here another truth must be interposed. It is not the case, that when man dies, his soul loses aU the body it has, and another body which is spiritual is created or found for it. For the fact is, that every man's 16 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. soul exists always in a spiritual body, and always it is this spiritual body which fills and animates the material body while that clothes it ; and somewhat so it is with the earth on which he dwells, and with aU things of it or upon it. A stone, for example, consists, as has been said, of an interior essence, and an exterior body; and the interior essence forms and fills the exterior body. What we now say is, that the in- terior essence is itself the instrument by which life forms and fills its material body. Therefore, when a man dies, he rises as we say. That is, his spirit- ual body is not now for the first time created, but it is no longer clothed upon by his material body, and he rises fram his material body in the spiritual body which he always had. But, so far as he is concerned, this natural world rises with him. To-day, let us suppose, a man holds a certain stone in his hand. What he holds is a certain essence clothed with a material body, To-morrow he dies ; and when he rises with his spiritual body freed from, the material, he may find this essence clothed with, a spiritual body ; and may grasp with his spiritual hand the spiritual form or body of that stone. He can no longer touch it as a material body, because for that purpose he needs the material body which he once had and has not now. When his spiritual hand was clothed with that material hand he could touch nothing but the material body of the stone. But now, with his spiritual hand, he can touch,, grasp, and use it in the same way in which he could HE COMETH IK CLOUDS. 17 formerly touch, grasp and use the same essence when both his soul and that essence were clothed upon with matter. It follows, therefore, that when one leaves this world, he leaves only the outer shell, and may not know at first that he has left even that ; for the inner world and his inner body are both there, fnd are both related to and adapted to each other. Let it not be supposed, however, that these two worlds are entirely the same or alike in all respects. Let it be remembered that the spiritual body and the spiritual world are formed — both while clothed upon and when liberated by death — of spiritual substance only ; while the material bfJdy and world, which are cut off at death, are formed of material substance. How these substances differ in their nature and in their laws, I cannot here attempt to show ; because it would lead me quite too far from my immediate object. But I may say this : that these worlds and bodies seem at first very similar, though not, even at the beginning, absolutely the same. In fact, however, they are very different ; and the differ- ence in their nature and in their laws gradually produces its effects, and so becomes apparent after death. Let me now remind the reader, that the creative agencies which proceed from the Creator, form, first, things of mind and thought and feeling, and through these things go forth and form cowespondent external things, and then I may be undprstood when I say that 2 18 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. the correspondence between every natural or external thing and the same spiritual thing is twofold. In one sense, or under one aspect, this correspondence is between this outer thing, a tree for example, and something in the mind, or in the thought or affections of men. In the other sense, or under another aspect, this correspondence is between this outer thing and some outer thing which exists in the outer spiritual world. Thus, in the one sense, we may say of anything that it corresponds to a certain thought or affection of some man or spirit ; and in the other, that it corres- ponds to some object which may exist in the external world of some spirit, or *n the spiritual world. The reason of this twofold nature of correspond- ence is, that thoughts and affections constitute the soul, and are its vital elements ; and that the soul creates (or is the instrument by which Divine Power creates) first, an external spiritual body and world in corres- pondence with itself; and then an external material world which corresponds with the internal spiritual world, and iherefore, with the soul to which that internal spiritual world corresponds. If it would help us to reduce all this to a formula, we can have nothing better than that which may be found among the fragments of the oldest philosophy that has left any remains on the earth. It runs thus : "Nothing exists in the spiritual world that does not exist on the earth, in an earthly way; and nothing exists upon earth that does not exist in the spiritual HE COMETH IN CLOtTDa. 19 world, in a spiritual way.'' Or if it would help us to have some general illustration, we may refer to the Divine Love. This is the central element of Divine Life. Of it, as it exists in God, it is perfectly impossible for us to approach a comprehension. But because that love, entering into our minds, forms and animates our own affections, we are able to become conscious of it there, and to form some dim notion of what it may be in angels far above us. And we may also see this love in the affections, desires, and tendencies of the whole living world beneath and around us. Nor need we stop there ; but may follow this Divine Love into its farther descent into the material world, and recognize it there as heat ; and science is already beginning to trace it out into its infinitely multifarious forms, forces, and influences, and to recognize this heat as the motive power, as well as the life-imparting and preserving power of the universe, just as in the higher sense and on a higher plane the Divine Love is this creating and sustaining power. The precise purpose before us is to show to what in the thought and affections or spirit of man, the CLOUDS of the external world correspond. Before going farther in the attempt to do this, I must define the meaning which I attach to certain words which 20 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. must be fipeqiiently repeated. They are Truth, "Water, and Ultimates. One might suppose that if there were any words in our language which .did not need definition, they were these.- But all words are the signs of ideas; and as new ideas are presented, new words must be used, or old words in new senses. And many of the ideas which belong specifically to the doctrines of the New Church, and most of all those which relate to the law of correspondence, require, from their novelty, a new definition of the phraseology by which we endeavor to express them. Let us begin with the word Truth. This is com- monly understood in two ways. Sometimes it means only the conformity between something which is said or thought and the actual fact thus spoken or thought of. As, when a man says, the sky is blue, the con- formity between the fact and the words makes them true ; and if this was said when the sky was only grey, the want of conformity would make them false. But the word is also used as meaning some proposi- tion, or doctrine, which presents some just idea that may lead to theoretic or practical inferences and con- sequences. Thus, if it be said that God is One, these words will express well the abstract truth of the Unity of God ; and this is a truth to one who believes in the Divine Unity. To these uses of the word Truth there is not the slightest objection. But we must now use it in a far wider and deeper sense : because we- use it to express HE COMETH IN CJLOUDS. 21 an idea brought into distinctness and prominence by a fundamental doctrine of Swedenborg's philosophy. His doctrine is, that all things in the universe refer themselves to man, and that aU things in man refer themselves either to his wUl or to his understanding ; because it is they which compose the soul. And therefore all things in the universe refer themselves to the wilL or to the understanding. Now, it is all those things which refer themselves to the understand- ing which we mean by and include under this word Truth. As has been already said, the common mean- ing of truth rests -upon a mere conformity between words or thoughts and facts. It has hardly entered into the mind of man to suppose that truth was, in itself, a real and actual entity ; a thing as real, and as actual, as light or as water. We believe this to be so ; and for this absolutely new idea we need a new word. We cannot coin one, however, and we shall continue to use the word Truth, although its narrow and inadequate meaning wUl constantly interfere between, us and our readers, and oblige us to remind them that w^e use this word to express all things intellectual or all things whatsoever which relate to or belong to, or arise from or dwell in the understanding. So of Water. It meets us everywhere, and we cannot live without it. And yet it is only of late that science has begun to comprehend the universality and indispensableness of water, and none are aware of this who do not know some of the recently discovered facts of which we shall presently speak. By water then we 22 HE 'COMETH IN CLOUDS. mean that element of moisture which in some form oi degree seems to pervade the universe. Then we would explain the sense in which we use another word, which, though not a very common one, certainly belongs to our language — the word ultimate. It is the English form of a Latin word which means last, or lowest, or outermost. To " ultimate itself," is a New Church phrase, made necessary by our belief of the method of creation ; for this requires a phrase which shall express that a thing comes forth or down to its outermost or lowest form or manner of ex- istence. "We are now prepared to state one of those corres- pondences which is most frequently met with in all New Church writings ; that between Truth and "Water. "When the Divine wisdom comes forth into the under standings of angels and of men, it becomes Truth ; and when it comes forth still farther, even down to the external world, and there ultimates itself, we have many forms of this essence. The highest of these, and the most universal, is Light. A lower, but almost as universal, is "Water. And thsrefore we say that Water corresponds to Truth. This corres- pondence may be regarded as it is general and as it is specific. -It is general, because it exists between all the various forms or appearances or operations of truth on the one side, and all the forms or appearances HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 23 or operations of water on the other. . But it may be regarded as a specific correspondence in each of these. Thus, Clouds are one form of water. But here also we must define our word ; and we mean by it aU water or moisture whatsoever, which is drawn up or exhaled &om the earth or anything on it, and rising up exists in the air, in any form whatever, whether visible or not, and whether known or not. And we have still another definition to premise ; not now a new one, for we refer to a distinction used by all writers upon mental philosophy ; it is that between concrete ideas and abstract ideas. Con- crete is from a Latin word which" means to grow together ; abstract, from one which means to draw apart. Thus, the idea of red is concrete when we see or think of a red rose or cherry ; because the idea of red is then attached to the idea of the cherry, and forms one with it. This idea of red becomes abstract, when having first received or formed the idea of red in the concrete, by means of the senses, we take this idea away from the special thing which gave rise to it, or we lift up the idea from the rose or cherry which suggested it, and form the idea of red or redness in general, with no especial reference to any particular thing. These abstract ideas are called by some writers general ideas ; and what others would call concrete ideas, they call particular ideas, or particu- lars. Locke uses this phraseology, and Swedenborg sometimes employs it. It has been a question which at one time divided the philosophers into angry par- 24 HE COMETH IN CLOXTDS. ties, whether the power or faculty of abstraction acted in this way, and indeed whether abstract ideas could be said to have any actual and independent existence ; those who held that they did reaUy exist by themselves, were called Bealists; while those who maintained that we could form no idea of a quality except in some particular subject, and that we had not abstract ideas, but rather abstract words or naities, were called Nom- inalists. Without pausing on this question, or that which is but another form of it, whether abstract entities have any existence when they do do not inhere in some subject, — it is enough for us now to say, that Clouds, meaning all moisture which has arisen from the earth and exists in the air, correspond to abstract, or, in the other phrase, general ideas, which have arisen from the particular things of sense by which they were suggested, and exist in the understanding, disconnected from these particulars. To explain this correspondence, we shall proceed to consider the following topics : — First, how and for what purpose we possess the power of forming and using abstract ideas. Second, how and for what purpose moisture arises from the earth, and what use is made of it. Third, the correspondence between these two. Fourth, the inferences to be drawn from this cor- respondence as to the world without us and the world within us. Fifth, the inferences which may be drawn as to the Word of God. HE COMETH IN CLODDS. 25 If man is the child of an infinite and eternal Father ; if he is immortal, and is to live forever tinder the Government of this Father ; and if this Father be fuU of love for His child, and full of wis- dom, it might seem to be a reasonable expectation that He should teach his child something of Himself; and should prepare him by some elementary knowledge, and some training of the thought and the understand- ing, "while in this prehminary stage of being, to enter into the succeeding stage, in some readiness to acknowl- edge, and with some capacity to perceive his Father, and his Eternal Sovereign ; or, at least, some ability to know that he had one. For during all the incon- ceivable duration of eternity, he is to be amenable to the authority and subject to the power of this one Omnipotent Master. And it is by this Master's sovereign will that he lives here before he lives there. It is not, indeed, possible that he should begin life here, and then lead an eternal life hereafter, and his life hereafter should be wholly independent of his life here. Such an idea has never, so far as we know, entered into the mind of man. And it would seem to be equally inevitable, that the life here should be intended as in some way preparatory for, and introductory to, the life hereafter. And it would seem to be equally impossible that this life should be in any way or in any degree thus prep^ra,tory or introductory, unless, in this life, some 26 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. knowledge could be given of that life, and of its laws, and of Him from whom these laws emanate. All knowledge of this kind is religious knowledge. Wherever there is anything of this knowledge, there is something of religion ; and the converse proposition is also true ; for where there is any religion, there is something of this knowledge. But religion, of some kind, and in some degree, is, and as far as we know, always has been', universal. And we regard this fact as illustrating and tending to confirm the opinion, first, that without religion there can be no knowledge of God ; and next, that without this knowl- edge, this life would be in no degree preparatory for the other life ; and, lastly, that this world was in fact intended to be preparatory for another. We may venture to say, then, that when God created man, and placed him in this material world, created him with all his senses and capacities, and created fo'r him a world of such infinite and inexhaustible variety, one necessary and inevitable problem came into beinc as soon as man came into being ; namely, how to impart to a finite and created being, any knowledge of an infinite and uncreated being ; or, to express the same thing in a more abstract form, how to eaable the finite to begin to recognize and apprehend the infinite. The complete solution of this problem cannot be comprehended by us, nor given by us; for it must embrace the universe of God, and the complete totality of His laws and His providence. If the end of all HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 27 these is the preparation of man for eternity, which it must be if eternity is more than time, in all of these that problem miust enter, because the knowledge of God must be the most universal and the most powerful instrument for working out this end. Bnt while we cannot solve, or see, the problem as a whole, we may see it and present it partially. Let us remember first, that man lives here, in a material body, and in a material world. Next, that he has senses and faculties, bodily and mental, which enable him to be cognizant of this world, and to make use of it for an ever-developing variety of purposes ; and then that this outside world must, from his nature and its adaptation to his nature, be the foundation and beginning, in time, of all his thoughts and emotions, or of everything which belongs to his internal man. And finally, that these thoughts and emotions which thus begin -within earth and upon the earth, would remain forever attached to earth and earthly, unless, although thus originating in sense, and requiring the action of the senses for their existence, they may arise into higher regions of thought. In simpler words, the necessary foundation and beginning of thought and reflection is earthly ; and .therefore thought and reflec- tion remain earthly, unless they are in some way lifted or raised up. Keeping this in mind, we might expect that God, in order to give to man some knowledge of Himself and of spiritual things, would begin 9,t this foundation ; or would begin with these earthly thoughts and emotions ; 28 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. ■with snch of them as were best adapted to His pur- pose ; and causing them to be gradually lifted above their origin, and shining upon them with light from a higher region, would thus give to them a spiritual aspect, and by means of them gradually disclose some- thing of Himself, and something also of the spiritual world, which is to be our dwelling-place forever; Can we not see that He does so ? For example : one of the ideas which the course of events, or the rolling onward of what we call nature, and every day's experience and observation of what we feel or see, necessarily inspires in every human mind, is that of love ; for every man begins in utter dependence as an infant, and lives in more or less dependence upon his fellows. Another idea, caused by what the man observes abroad, and is conscious of within, is that of thought, of design, of a something mental that selects, and guides and uses all instruments. Still another is that of power ; of power causative, producing, and controlling. Here, then, are these ideas of love, and of vrisdom, and of power, which are born of the earth, and which may, so far as their own nature is concerned, remain during life earthly, and nothing more. But, in. point of fact, they do not always so remain. In all ages, with all races, and with nearly all individuals, God is able, withoiit impairing the freedom of man, and by man's own agency, to lift these ideas and sentiments from the earth, to turn their faces and their flight upward ; to shine upon them from a sun HE COMETH m CLOUDS. 29 men do not see ; and througli them to inspire in man tie thought — some thought — that these three, love, ■wisdom, power, may exist away from the particulars in which they have heen seen, may cohere, and do probahly co-exist, in what would then and thereby be presented to the mind, with greater or less force and distinction, as a loving, wise, and powerful cause and governor of all things. A man could not form an abstract idea of love from the instances of love which he had seen or felt, unless he had the power of abstracting the thought from the thing which gave rise to it ; and this is equally true of the ideas of wisdom or of power. If he could not abstract these ideas, and then bring them into coherence as in one person, and enlarge the •whole, he could form no idea of God or of re- ligion ; nor in character, motive or hope, look beyond the present or rise above the beast. It is therefore this power of abstracting thoughts from their par- ticular origins, and generalizing them, which forms the indispensable condition and the distinguishing char- acteristic of human nature. In this way spirituality may begin, and in this way all spirituality must begin. And having begun, it may go on. And we may see, perhaps, how God works for this end, or to continue this progress also ; we may see that He causes these thoughts, thus, in some degree, spiritualized, to become the objects of contemplation and reflection, and then return to the earth, and to every day's earthly life, and in some 30 HE COMETH IN CXOUDS. degree spiritualize all these things. For we may see how one who has begun to see in the things of earth some evidence of a God, and of love and wisdom and power in God, may discern love, wisdom, and power oftener and more clearly in the world that lies about him. His mind will be more open to these things. He will see them more distinctly whenever he sees thein, and may grow into the habit of referring them all more frequently to God, as their cause and their origin. Thus a kind of flux and reflux, of ascent and Ascent, will be established. These ideas will rise from the earth into an illumination which does not belong to earth ; and will then bring instruction down to earth, and by its help men wiU discern more and more the love and wisdom and power observable here ; and again, with every accession of strength and clear- ness to these ideas, his mind will rise with them again into that region of contemplation where earth is far below and the light and air of heaven are around. And being thus enlightened and nourished, these thoughts again descend to the common works and uses of the earth, and while making these richer and brighter and better, these ideas will be preparing to re-ascend for yet further illustration and fuller develop- ment. We would dwell a little on this flux and reflux, this iascent and descent, this circulation of truth. For while it is true, that, if the thoughts do not rise at all above their eaarthly origin, there is not and cannot be HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. . 31 the slightest heginning of a religious condition of mind, it is just as true that there is only the incomplete and unfruitful beginning, unless these thoughts, after they have arisen, and been spiritualized, descend again down to actual daily work and employment, and there fertilize whatever seeds of life may be implanted. in the fields of life. If they do not this, they do not that for which they were lifted up, and may as well not be lifted up. If they do it, then the improvement of the character, and of the whole man, will make it ob- viously easier for other and yet other thoughts to rise again and again from their earthly origin or sugges.. tion, and again becoming spiritualized, again descend to bring the life more into conformity with the new truths thus seen. If this power of alternation never begins, the man never begins to become heavenly. If it begins, it may go on forever ; and to the extent and in the degree in which it goes on, to that extent and in that degree a man becomes heavenly. This is not always the fact, for not always are men good, and not always do they permit Him to make them better, although He always would do so ; and the freedom of man is invariably and perfectly preserved.. But this is always the fact and the way where, on the whole, the progress is upward ; always the way where men use the events of hfe, the disclosures of this world, and the senses and faculties which awake on earth, and here begin their work, in the way in which infinite mercy would have them used, and infinite 32 HE COMETH -IN CLOUBS. wisdom fits them to be used ; which is, as steps in the ladder that resting on earth ascends to heaven. I have- said what is obvious on slight consideration, that the foundation and origiiT in time of spiritual ideas are to' be looked for in earthly ideas, which are capable of being lifted up and spiritualized. This utility of this world affords one argument, that there is some analogy between the worlds of spirit and of matter ; some evidence that the one, in some sense and in some degree, responds to the other ; for if there were antagonism between these two worlds, the ideas derived from the one must be got rid of, and expunged from the mind, before ideas concerning the other could be received. And if there were no antagonism between these worlds, but simply a total want of inter- dependence or mutual reference or connection, then the ideas derived from this world, while they might not hinder, so neither could they in any degree help to form the ideas of another. Then this world would be useless and worthless, as a preparation for, or an in- troduction to, or a teacher of, the other world. This is impossible ; and we must therefore • admit some resemblance, some adaptation, and some correspond- ence between the two worlds. Indeed, as we have' already said, this has always been admitted in some degree. Without it religion could do nothing, nor indeed exist, because the mate- rials upon which and with which it works, are ideas derived from this world. And Poetry has always discovered this correspondence, and made great use of HE COMETH. IN CLOtTDS. 33 it, and has thus filled men's minds unconsciously with ideas and images drawn from this relation between the two worlds. On the other hand, an impression has been produced, and generally prevails, that this whole relation is of the imagination only ; that when it is bom of the fancy, poetry uses it for her purposes, and religion adopts it so far as it is necessary for her illus- trations ; but that it is, in point of fact, unreal and untrue. The minds upon which this impression is produced, and which love and confirm this impression, are those which, from natural or acquired quality, are reluctant to rise above the earth. Minds which have no desire to believe or know more than the sensuous understand- ing can tell them, and which permit the earthly thoughts and knowledges which it uses, still to rest upon the earth. In this respect, as in all others, human free- dom is preserved. Hence there is no such direct and unavoidable evidence as would compel an intellectual belief of this correspondence, because they who re- ceived it only because thus compelled, would not love this truth nor make good use of it. But there is evidence enough, and there are reasons enough for the belief that there is another world to which this world leads, and for which it may prepare, to introduce this thought into those minds which are prepared to re- ceive it. Hence, because the far greater part of mankind have, in all ages, been prepared and disposed to believe this, in some degree, it has always been, in that de- 3 34: HE COMBTH'IN CLOUDS. gree, received ; and in different degrees, and in various forms, and vrith various results, by different minds. We hold, however, that in this case, as in many others, what is generally seen is not the whole of a truth or law which is imperfect in itself ; but a very small part of a truth or law which is in itself absolute, complete^ perfect, and universal. If we resume, for a moment, the reasoning of some pages before, we shall see, first, that God made this world, made our bodies, and put us as living, creatures here, that we might here learn how to ■ live forever in another world ; that a part of our preparation for that world consists in learning somewhat about it while in this ; that this can happen only by beginning with earthly thoughts and know- ledges, and spiritualizing them ; and that this is only possible because this world, with all its entities and laws, was made for this very purpose, and therefore was made in a certain definite relation t% or corres- pondence with, the other world. In all this we say little more than is now seen and, thought, although dimly, by all thinking persons, and nothing more than they would admit, if they were not withheld by the fear that this admission might draw with it important consequences which they are not prepared to acknowl- edge. Nor is this fear without ground; for this admission would lead to yet other admissions, in a series without end. For again we repeat, because it is better to be tedious than not to be understood, that earthly and sensual ideas, thoughts, impressions, and knowledges HE COMETH IN CLODDS. 35 are borne upward into a higher region of the under- standing, and because they there come under whatever spiritualizing influence can act upon them without impairing man's freedom, they become spiritual. And then these earthly elements, thus more or less changed and vivified, are brought back to earth. They mingle with whatever the man does, or sees, or knows. Un- der their influence, more and other thoughts and im- pressions which begin with earth, rise from it; and these are again made spiritual and vital ; and again descend to earth and earthly life and experience, again to find new elements of spiritual knowledge, and with these again to re-ascend ; and by this circuit, this series of alternations, day unto day uttereth knowledge, and enlargeth knowledge, and so the spiritual education of men is, step by step, carried on. To this education, or to this progress, there is and there can be no end, in time or eternity. It goes on in this life,'as far with each individual as he permits. And then it goes on forever in the other world, in such directions, and in such measure, as is permitted by the preparation which in this world we make for that world. In itself, it may go on with no farther limit than that which must always divide between the in- finite and the finite ; between absolute perfection and eternal progress towards perfection. And because, in itself donsidered, it is capable of this eternal progi-ess, and because it is founded in the beginning, and rests at every step on that indispensable requirement, — ^the correspondence between the things of this world and 36 HE COMETH IN CJLOTIDS. the things of the other, — ^therefore it is, that we say that this correspondence is also entire and complete ; that it exists between all earth and all heaven.; be- tween whatever is material and visible and tangible, and whatever is spiritual and only the subject of thought and feeling ; between all the laws and entities of the material world, and all the laws and entities of the spiritual world. It is but another way of saying the same thing, to repeat that the spiritual world comes down into a lower form, and investing itself with material substances and laws, becomes the mater- ial world ; and the material world, which is thus the foundation of the spiritual world, has no existence excepting as it is this foundation of that world, and is itself only that world clothed upon in a certain way, that it may be this foundation, and this beginning of an unending ascent. If we apply all these remarks to the subject which introduced them, the first thing we must say is, that as there are clouds of earth, so there are clouds of heaven ; as there are clouds which belong to the body only, and are seen, felt, and known by the bodily senses, so there are clouds which belong only to the soul, and are seen, felt, known, and apprehended by the soul only. The first answer which wUl be made to this statement will be, " of course it is so ; " who lives, and does not know what it is to have his mind clouded ; to have darkness and gloom spread over all his thoughts, and all his feelings, and chill these as HE COMETH IN CLOTIDS. 37 clouds darken and chill the earth? But my reply would be, that I mean more, and vastly more than this ; that what I mean is not merely a figurative, a poetic, and a partial truth, but a most real, exact, and universal truth. Let us try, then, to ascertain what is the exact cor- respondence of clouds ; or, in other words, let us examine into the nature, origin, appearance and effects of material clouds, and then inquire what things there are in the spiritual world, or in the world of mind, which respond to these. First, then, what are the clouds of this world? They are very certainly water, — water drawn up by the sun from earth, in an invisible form for the most part, and gathered into masses in the upper air, and there condensed, and th^re moving about as the wind bears them onward, and thence at last returning as water to the earth ; and by their return fertilizing the earth, 'and rendering it habitable, or fitted to support life. Clouds vary exceedingly in their appearance. Some are heavy and black, and look like the mountain tops they mingle with ; others are so light and fleecy that the eye scarcely detects them ; some fill the sky and veil the sun and turn day into night ; and some catch the sunshine, and reflect it with inexpres- sible beauty. Some come down in gentle rain, in showers of blessings ; while from others a destructive deluge streams forth, and in their dark bosom the tempest is bom, with its desolating wind, its voice of 38 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. thunder, and its lightning flash and stroke. What ig there in the world of mind which responds to all this ? Clouds are water. There is ho correspondence which comes earlier or oftenir to the student of New Church doctrine than that which we have already- spoken of, between water and truth. It meets him at once and it meets him everywhere. This correspond- ence stands in the philosophy of the church, where water itself stands in the system of nature ; it is a universal need, and a universal presence. Everything illustrates it. The waters of baptism are cleansing truths, for as water cleanses the body, truth cleanses the mind. So food nourishes the body, but only on condition that some water be in it and mingled with it, because otherwise it could not be digested and appropriated ; for not only must we drink as well as eat, but the driest food we eat is composed, in good part, of water. So good affections or loves nourish the soul, but there must be something of knowledge, something of intellectual apprehension and consciousness mingled with them, or the soul cannot lay hold of these affec- tions, and derive nourishment from them. But even in saying this, we already feel the necessity of remind- ing our readers of our early remark, that we use this word. Truth, to express everything appurtenant to the understanding. The general correspondence between mind and matter has not been known ; and therefore not that between the body and the soul, which correspond- ence requires and recognizes a distinct form and or- ganization of the spiritual substance of the soul. HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 39 Hence it has not been necessary to make a clear dis- tinction between all that is of the will, or is voluntary or affectional, or matter of feeling and impulse or motive power on the one hand, and on the other, all that is of the understanding, or is intellectual and scientific, or matter of knowledge, of thought, of guidance or direction, of presentation to the mind by imagination, or of opinion formed on evidence, or conclusion derived from logical reasoning. Now, all this last described half, is what we here must use the word Truth to express ; and it is in this sense, that we say water corresponds to truth. To illustrate this, we may begin on either side of this correspondence ; on the earthly side or the spir- itual side. If we begin on the earthly side, we find at 9nce the indispensableness and the universality of water. It has always been known that it was abso- lutely necessary to life, whether animal or vegetable. It- is now known, however, that it is almost equally ne- cessary to the orderly existence of everything upon earth. In the hardest rocks what is now called " the water of crystallization " generally exists ; and if they are ground up into sand, it is still in those fragments or particles. It is indeed a difficult chemical pro- cess to liberate any substance whatever from all the water which belongs to it by its proper nature. And if two things are made perfectly dry, or as nearly so as possible, they lose all power over each other. Pour a drop of water on a bit of copper, and it is harmless ; pour a drop of nitric acid (aqua fortis) on the copper 40 HE COMETH TS CLOUDS. and water, and you have at once violent effervescence virhile the acid eats into the metal. But let the metal be dry, and take all the vrater from the nitric acid, and there is no more action than there would be if the copper were moistened with water alone, nor indeed so much. So too, as has been said, food cannot be di- gested unless there be water in it, or drunk with it, or supplied to it from the reservoirs in the body. We say, then, that water is universal ; that it is an indis- pensable requisite for all life, all organization, all ex- istence in any of the forms of nature, and all action of one substance upon the other. And now let us look at the world of mind, and ask if truth — ^using the word in the wide sense above indicated — be not as universal, as indispensable, as active there ? That it is so in all the higher manifestations and efforts and effects of Ufe, in wisdom, in logic, in reflection, in all culture of the understanding, in all improvement of the affections, is just as obvious as that water is universal and indis- pensable in all organic life and growth and formation or use of flower, or fruit, or food, and in all the appliances of art. In the world belonging to the soul, we may indeed see precisely the same thing of what we have called truth, as that which we have seen in the material world, of water. For in the world of mind it is at once as obvious that we must know how to do a thing, if we would do it, as that we must drink if we would live. We do not, at every meal, or when- ever thirsty, pause and reflect that we are now drink-- HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 41 ing what ■;nll sustain life ; neither at every moment of the day, in great things as well as small ones, do we pause and reflect that it is truth which shows us the way, and that if' we knew nothing, and thought nothing, it would be about as difficult to do anything, as to live without drink. If we take another step, it will still be obvious that for all wisdom, experience, improvement and cultivation, there must be growth in knowledge, and use and application of knowledge. Beyond this we may go and still find what is certain, but not obvious. Just as science reveals to us the " water of crystal- lization," and teaclies us that wherever organization or orderly form exists, there is water, so reflection and careful observation of life, will convince us that something of intellectual action and influence mingles with somewhat of the will and purpose, in everjrthing which a human being can do. It may be hidden ; possibly so hidden that our analysis cannot detect it ; as eifectually hidden to-day from the grasp of mental science, as the water of crystallization was a few years ago from the grasp of chemical science. Let a practised musician play on a piano and his fingers fly as of themselves. A new theory of what is called "reflex action," which is undoubtedly true and valuable to a certain extent, has been used to account in a merely materialistic way for these motions, and for some of those of the body, for which neither will nor thought can be detected. But it is not more certain., that every motion is caused by a distinct exertion of 42 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. the appropriate muscles, than it is that this muscular eflfbrt is caused by a distinct eflfort of will, and a distinct thought. We may not detect the will or the thought, nor see them except in their effects ; but they exist in some form, even in those apparently mechani- cal acts which may be done almost wholly without our immediate consciousness or reflection. The unques- tionable tendency of all true mental science even now is to clear up all doubts of this kind, and show that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, within the world of the soul, in which the understanding and the wiU do not mingle and co-operate. Another thing is equally true of water and of truth. The water of the material world, is all of it water, and nothing else. In the grape it is so mingled and modified as to be a different juice from that of the sloe ; the .sap of one tree differs from that of another, for although we know but little about this matter yet, we have already learnt, that one will make food, and another will make poison. And one' kind of blood differs from another, and we are beginning to see the difference between the blood of different animals, and if we knew enough we should probably recognize always what we now see only in some cases, that the blood of every individual is, in some respects, unhke that of any other. But with all this infinite diversity, there is an element of unity. In aU these things the water mingles and makes them liquid, and en- ables them to be and do what they are and do. HE COMETH IN CLOTJDS. 43 And in all of them the water is identically the same. Let a drop of pure water come from where it wiH, it might, so far as we can see, replace a drop from any other source or any other connection, and perform perfectly all its functions. We have here another illustration of the law spoken of in another Essay, which, being universal, offers itself for recognition everywhere ; the law that what anything which is received, becomes, depends on the quality and form of the receiver. Thus, the wisdom ^of God is divine, perfect, and one ; but it is a One formed of the perfect harmony of infinites. But as this wisdom flows forth from Him, and enters into each thing to become in each either intelligence or something which- corresponds to and represents intelligence, it becomes in each thing, or it is, by the quality and form of each thing, de- termined to become precisely what that form and quality require. Thus, it becomes whatever intelli- gence there may be, not only in the highest and %visest angel, but in the most foolish and insane among men or devils. So when it passes into the outer world, it becomes light, which, although One, clothes the visible objects of the universe with their infinitely varied vesture of beauty. Then this wis- dom, going farther, becomes water, which is again a universal want, and exists in infinite variety, bring- ing itself to every need, and in everything, assuming the character, and performing the functions which 44 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. that tiling needs. If flint have one-tenth; of its ■whole weight of water mingled with it in intimate communion, it hecomes opal and shines with ever- changing splendor. If blood has its due proportion of water, it pursues its glad way through the system, a living substance giving life. And this blood gives to every part of the human body precisely what that part needs ; — nourishing its life, with an equal and a perfect adaptation to the exact nature and requirer inents of every organ which it visits, whether that organ be an eye, a heart, or a hand, and whether it be formed of bone, or flesh, or nervous tissue, or any other of the varied forms witliin the body ; for the blood, which is in itself a One composed of many elements, becomes, in its effect and fruit, pre- cisely what it is made to be by each organ which, appropriates it. I cannot resist the wish to allude in this connection to a doctrine perpetually suggested by almost every topic that is considered in the light of New Church truth. It tells us that all men together may be regarded as one man, and then that all men stand .to each other in the relation in which different parts of the body stand to each other ; every man having a function and character of his own, which correspond to and may be represented by the func- tions and character of some part of the. human body»j HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 45 And it is the quality and especial nature of each man which enables him, and in some sort compels him to draw from the universal providence which sur- rounds him, and from that ever present and every- where penetrating current of life which brings life to all, precisely that and only that which nourishes some principle or element of the life already in the man, and therefore capable of appropriation by him. God alone is man; He alone is Man in Himself; He is perfect and Divine man. The perpetual effect of His Providence is to create a universe which may be as a man, receptive of Himself; and to make this man to all eternity, more and more His image and likeness, that He may more and more perfectly for- ever become its soul ; become the " anima mundi." And each individual man is again the representative of the universe, and is, by every increase of wisdom and goodness, builded more into the image and like- ness of God, and so conformed with Him, that the life of God may be his life. But, while we hold this truth, and reverence God the more for it, let us avoid the fatal error, or, as Swedenborg calls it, " the execrable heresy of Pan- theism," as we would avoid disease and death. This error consists, not in the belief of a Universal man, but in the belief that this man is God ; and that there is no other God. And this error will be driven away by the truth, that this Universal man is froni God, and created by God, and is as much subject to the laws and phenomena of space and time, or 46 HE COMETH m CLOUDS. is, in every respect whatever, as truly finite, as any individual man. To what has been said of the clouds of earth, ft should be added, that there' is a constant moisture in the sky, beside that which we see as clouds. It is one of the late discoveries of science, that it is to the water mingled with the air that miich of the beneficent and beautiful efifect of heat and light is due ; and that this moisture difiers much at different times, in dif ferent places, and under different circumstances, and often departs from the normal proportion, in either the direction of excess or of deficiency. And if it goes very far in either of these directions, injury, and perhaps disorder and distress ensue. Nor does this water fall to earth, the same that it went up. While in the air it is filled with treasures the air has accumulated and sends down to earth by those swift messengers of good, the falling rain-drops. Every flower that opens, and every leaf that spreads, itself to the sunbeams, sends forth its aroma, and fills the air with fragrant, and medicinal, and life-sustain- ing qualities. Earth sends up from all her children, from, the stateliest tree, the sweetest flower, the humblest plant, all their gifts into the air which bathes her, and this in its turn offers them to the sunshine, and then earth waits to receive them back again, purified, and vitalized. Mingled with these HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 47 treasures iare those imparted to it by the sun's rays, which penetrate the inmost structure of the air. To the heat, and the light, and the electrical agencies, already known, science adds now the new force which it calls by the new name. Actinism, and to which it is already ascertained that the hfe-engender- ing breath of spring owes much of its power to open the ground that wLater has sealed, and bid a dead world live. Even in our present ignorance, we may be sure that all these things mingle with the rain, and help it to be a blessing. Yet one other remark should be made before we go farther. . It is, that the clouds of earth are not, as we are apt to think them, bad things. We usually con- trast them with fair weather and with a bright and smiling sky ; and it is this we love and welcome while we wish the clouds away, and regard them as inter- rupting and deforming what, if they were but away, would be more enjoyable and lovely. But it is not so. I may again revert to this topic, and will only say now that there are spots upon the earth which tell us what the whole earth would be without clouds, and what this beneficial and vital air would be without its due moisture. They tell us that the earth would be what the desert of Sahara is ; and they tell us that the air would be. what the Sirocco is, — the withering and blasting wind of death, wliich blows from that desert. Let us now resume what we have already said, so far as to say, in general, what the clouds of earth are ; 48 HE COMEIH IN CLOUDS. and then to say, and also in general, what these clouda correspond to and represent. By the clouds of earth, we mean, as we said before, all the water drawn upwards from the earth into the air, by the sun's power, always, directly or indirectly, day or night, in the way we see, and in the many ways we do not see and do not know. Every organic thing and almost every inorganic thing ; the whole face of the earth and nearly all things in it, are perpetually exhaling moisture into the air or sky. There it is exalted and vivified by the same power which raised it and had made the air ready to receive it, and ready to enrich it. And thence it descends to earth, bearing with it the power of fertilizing the ground from which It arose, and of awaking to exulting life all the in- numerable seeds of life which lie ready to feel its influence. And now what is it that clouds — using the word in this most general sense — what is it in the spirit world, in the world of thought and affection, that these earthly clouds correspond to and represent ? The question almost answers itself. To what else can they correspond, than all that truth (and we must again use this word also in its widest sense) , aU ideas, thoughts, sentiments or knowledges, which are born of the earth and the body, or are suggested by the objects of sense and through the senses, and then are formed and fash- ioned by the mind acting on the low and sensuous plane of thought, and then are lifted up, perhaps visibly to us and with our consciousness, more often HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 49 in a way we know not of, but by the working of Divine Love, raised to the plane of rational and spiritual thpuglit, and by that Love filled with life and , life-giving quality. There they become, perhaps, visi- ble to us as^houghts and knowledges of God, of^Spirit, or of Mind ; of something more than the bodily senses can recognize or measure. Then from this plane they descend to the lower levels of actual life, and there come into contact with things and thoughts of earthli- ness, finding them dead and bidding them live. Find- ing them dead ; for dead they are, if death means the absence of all true Efe, although they may be intensely active in the world's way. These dead things may impart a burning zeal for the rewards of earth, and stimulate the industry which surrounds us with the constant whirl and clamor of business. They may be things of science, crawling by the primeval curse, feeding on the dust of the earth, and utterly uncognizant of an3rthing above the earth. Let these waters from on high reach them, and they live. The man of business begins to think, feebly and dimly it may be, but yet begins to ask if a better principle than he has yet known may not mingle with his work, and not mar his success ; to ask if something of duty to God and duty to man, and something of hope of an eternal world, may not go with him through the toil of the day, and sweeten his rest at night. And the scientific man looks up with wonder and- delight, and sees a new universe spread qver him. Dimly he, too, sees what he now sees for 4 50 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. the first time. But he sees something, and he will not forget it, and influences from on high come down and abide with him, and mingle with all the future work- ings of his mind. And in those two souls the winter has gone, and the time of the singing o£ birds has come, for both these souls have felt the rains of spring, and drank in the blessing. And yet these things which the rain thus blesses, must not be wholly dead, although their life be feeble and latent. For rain, whether natural or spiritual, cannot vivify the sand, nor the rock, nor the dead and fallen leaf, nor the empty earth ; it can give more life only where there is already life ; it can awaken into growth and fruitfulness only those seeds which lie within its reach and are prepared for its influence. From the above general statement of the things of the world of mind to which clouds correspond, it will be seen that they include all knowledges, all beliefs, aU creeds, all. doctrines which tell of something that is not earth, of spirit, and of God, or of the things of God and of spiritual existence. Hence they include all revelations, however made, and all those books which at any time or with any nation have been- used as sacred books, teaching religion and worship. Sweden- borg says this in the most general form, when he states that clouds, in their most exalted sense, corres- pond to and represent the literal sense of the Scrip- tures, the Word of God, our Bible. Again it is to be remembered, that the clouds, which HE COMETH rar cajouDS. 61 in the beginning are but water that was the water of earth, do, in themselves, remain only water, however they may be changed, and filled, and vivified with elements of life, and made the messengers and bearers of all life. They represent, therefore, exactly the literal sense of the Word ; or, to use different phrase- ology, they correspond to and represent most strictly and most exactly the very words in which the Word of God is written for us, and the literal meaning of those words. We may thus proceed to consider this correspond- ence under two heads, as it were. One of these, is the instruction derivable from the general correspondence of clouds. The other is that which may be drawn from an application of these principles to the literal sense of the Word. If we endeavor to imagine a man in whom no thoughts have risen from the sensual plane of the mind, and becoming spiritualized, thence descended to render the whole hfe, the belief, the motive, the act, and all other .things which are elements of life, in some degree spiritual, we see at once that we are imagining , a man in whom there is nothing of religion. It is quite certain that no races of men have been found among whom there was an absolute destitution of every idea or sentiment of a religious character. Nothing of this kind might be detected that was not a miserable and degrading superstition ; but some idea or sentiment which the animals he hunted could not have, the man had. And if we consider civilized 52 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. society, we shall find it difiicult to believe that any man not fatuous, or imbecile, or insane, ever went through life and never, from his cradle to his grave, had a religious emotion existing within him, or a reli- gious belief of some kind impressed upon him for the moment. The diiference between the man and the beast is, that the beast is wholly incapable of this, iu any form or any degree. There has been much argumentation and theorizing upon the diiference or the identity between man and the animals which surround him. Various points of similitude have been discovered, or imagined and elaborately investigated, and insisted upon if not magnified beyond all fact. But no person has ventured to imagine that he had discovered in any animal the slightest scintilla of a thought of a future, or of a spiritual existence, or anything which the wildest theorist could call a religious sentiment, belief or opinion. Here then we have one absolute difference between a man and a beast. A *nan can have his thoughts lifted above the sensuous plane. A beast cannot. The principal reason why an animal (using this word somewhat inaccurately in exclusion of man) has no faculty or possibility of this kind, is, that he has not and cannot have any abstract ideas. I do not propose to enter at all into the difficult inquiry, which has resulted in such an infinite diversity of opinion as to the origin or formation of abstract ideas. I may have my own theory on that subject, but it is enough for me to HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 53 Bay, in this connection, what all will admit, namely, that a man has abstract ideas. Even if I refer again to Locke, the most able and successful builder of a sensuous philosophy, even he declares that men have " general"' ideas, and beasts have not ; and he founds upon this his distinction between men and beasts. I then add, what I hold to be, if not as obvious quite as certain, that an animal has no abstract ideas. I mean literally none ; that is, he can never abstract an idea from the thing, concomi- tant or surrounding, which at first belonged to it ; and if it comes to him again wilh new and different surroundings or accompaniments, it wiU be to him another thing. He sees it always in the concrete (to use the technical language of logic), and never iu the»abstract ; that is always with all those things that belong to it, and co-exist with it, and never without them. Hence, while he often does many things by force of instinct or memory or mere association of ideas, he can do nothing which requires or pre-supposes abstraction. He can have no idea except in con- nection with the very thing which suggested it. Hence, also, while his signs and gestures and tones and looks constitute a kind of natural language, and he has also the faculty of understanding the similar language of other animals, or of man, and of remembering and associating particular facts with particular sounds or appearances, the animal has no verbal- language ; for the reason that is now begin- 54 HE COMETH IN CLOtTDS. ning to be admitted in philosophy, that as a beast can have only particular ideas, and not general ideas, so he could only have a word for any and every particular thing, and no general words; or no -word which represents a class of things ; and therefore no language. Even those animals which can utter verbal sounds, are just as far as all others are from uttering them as words, or forming a true verbal language. Words belong to man only ; for they are essentially and altogether human. We repeat that the power of abstraction is essentially human ; that it divides between man and other animals ; that without it there cannot be the slightest thought of a future life or another world ; that the wildest theorist has never imagined or suggested that any animal possesses or evinces the faintest idea of a life after death ; and that some idea or thought of this kind is universal with man, — because out of all this we would suggest an argument for the reality of another world ; namely, that if there be none, man would be, not the head of the organized universe, but the only animal who is utterly deceived; the only. one in whom that which comes as near to being a universal instinct as anything he possesses, is utterly groundless and delusive. And the suggestion also occurs, that he who permits himself to lose all belief in another life, and loves to do it, permits himself to destroy a characterizing difference between himself and a mere animal ; and, as far as he can, makes himself like unto a beast. Upon the earth, and from the things of earth which HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 55 OUT senses lay hold of, all thoughts originate. Man has thoughts, because by his senses he can perceive external things, and think about what he sees, and hears, and feels. So can a beast. But then man can lift up his thoughts from these particulars, and think about Ms thoughts. This no beast can do. The man has that lower plane of the mind which the animal has, and by which he can acquire such thoughts as the animal has. Then, he has a higher plane from 'which he can look down upon the thoughts of this lower plane. This higher plane the animal has not. If we could fill a volume, and were not limited to the brief space which may be given to an incidental topic in an Essay, we would gladly enlarge on this. We must however content ourselves with repeating, that a beast has no power whatever of abstract thought, and therefore is only a beast. For it is because he has not this faculty, that his mind cannot pass through the process, by which ideas derived from or first recognized by the senses, as ideas of strength, or design, or affection, are separated from the things which at first were with them, and are raised by themselves to a higher plane of thought, and re-composed or associated to form the ideas which are the foundation of all religion ; and thus again it is that the animal can have no religion. This too is the reason why animals are not im- mortal, and why man is immortal. All these abstract ideas may be separated from the several things in 56 HE COMETH IN CLOOT)S. ■whicl], or with which they originated, and there exist' in the mind of man ; and cannot be so separated, or when so separated exist in the mind of the ani- mal. In man they have not only an existence after they are thus separated, but they have then by far their most important sphere. They remain in the mind of man, after death, equally real and at least equally active as before. When man dies, his whole soul or mind is abstracted from the conditions of his material senses, and continues to live, as really, and more actively than before. The other life is nothing else than this life continued, but freed from the conditions and limitations which this woi-ld im- poses , upon it by the controlling power of the nat- ural senses or their material organs. And abstract thoughts are nothing else than thoughts similarly liberated. The human faculty of abstracting thoughts from the particulars and individualities of sense and matter, and the human faculty of living after the soul is similarly abstracted at death, is one and the same faculty. However it be used, there, in the inmost nature of man, it exists ineradicably. But this faculty, in neither of its forms ; that is, neither in reference to withdrawing ideas from material par- ticulars, nor in reference to continuing to live after the whole spiritual man is withdrawn from the ma- terial body, exists in an animal. And therefore he dies, and exists no longer. Every man possesses this faculty. If his body be Bo imperfectly formed that he is fatuous from birth, HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 57 it may never be exercised in this life ; thc^t is, wliile he' is fettered to that imperfect body ; because it is only by means of the bodily organization and what the bodily senses teach or suggest, that this faculty legins to work. But when such persons die, their possession of this faculty is the possession of immor- tality. For the soul is then clothed with a body which responds to all its needs, and permits the ixercise of aU its faculties. And tlie same thing is true of all who die infants ; with the additional fact, that their infantile spiritual body gradually grows into maturity. It is however scarcely possible that apy human beings, not wholly fatuous, should live without any exercise of the faculty of abstracting thoughts from the special circumstances with which they are first connected ; and the proof of this is, that few per- sons are so fatuous from birth as never to acquire any language. The lowest savages hitherto discovered, possess and exercise this faculty in some degree. Uncultivated men, and those who do not reflect upon their own mental states or acts, do it unconsciously. But all human beings, not wholly fatuous, possess and use the faculty of remembering their emotions, impressions, and thoughts, and thinking about them, without connection with the particular external things or causes which gave rise to them. This we repeat is universal in fact, although it is not known as a thing of consciousness and deliberate act to great numbers, or perhaps to the great majority of «n.ankind. And, moreover, the most thoughtful and 58 HE COMETH IS CLOUDS. introspective are never distinctly aware of a very large proportion of the instances in whicli tliey thus think of their thoughts and exercise this power of abstraction. This unconscious form or way in which human tlaoughts are abstracted and generalized and rise from the sensuous plane in which they originate, and the immeasurable although unobserved utility of this, are typified in that universal and perpetiial diffusion of mois- ture through the atmosphere, without which we know that a large proportion of the utility and wholesome in- fluence of the air would be lost. Every one knows that whatever is perfectly dissolved becomes invisible. If sugar or salt be thrown into water, a certain part will be dissolved — all, if there be not too much — and the water remain as transparent as before ; and that which is more than the water can dissolve will fall to the bottom of the vessel. So if as much alum is thrown into hot water as it can dissolve, the water remains clear. But cold water cannot dissolve so much alum , as hot water ; if, therefore, the water is permitted to grow cold, it will first become tujbid, because the alum which it no longer can dissolve becomes visible, and then, if it be undisturbed, the alum will fall to the bottom, leaving, however, diffused invisibly through the water, as much as it can dissolve. • It is precisely so with the atmosphere. Air has the power of dissolving a certain amount of water. A very pretty example of this which everybody must have noticed, occurs when, as we travel in the cars on HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 59 a bfight cold day, the clouds of white steam from the engine rusli forth and disappear almost at once. They disappear just as a few grains of sugar dropped into a tumbler of clear water disappear. They are dissolved. But the power of the air to hold water in solution differs very much at different times, and under differ- ent circumstances. Temperature has much to do with it ; and Often fogs and mists become visible as the air grows cold at the coming on of night, precisely as the alum became visible and clouded the water when that grew cold. But it is not cold and heat alone which determine this. The electric condition of the atmo- sphere, of which we know but little yet, and other causes of which we know still less, are all influential on this point. It is only as certain that the air always holds some moisture in solution, and that this amount is always varying, as it is that the human mind always exercises in some degree its power of thought and of thinking about its thoughts. In one of our bright and clear days, when the air is as transparent as crystal, we are apt to speak of it as the driest of days, and remark how rapidly any- thing moist, if exposed to the air, becomes dry. And yet the air may then be loaded with moisture, which it holds with a firm grasp by its strong power of solu- tion ; and it is a very drying air, not because there may not be much water in it, but because the extraor- dinary power to dissolve water demands water to be dissolved, and makes it j.bsrrb all the moisture it can reach. But when at the clcte of summer a warm dull 60 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. day comes in at the end of a long and pardMng drought, and while no cloud is visible the air itself seems to have lost its transparency and covers all dis- tant objects with a veil of mist, through which we may with impunity look upon the dark red face of the sun and see there the promise of a continued drought, — this apparent mist is due to the want of water ; it arises from the fact that the air has lost a large part of its power of solution ; and with the water has lost a part of its transparency ; and aU nature languishes, and looks and grows dim and indistinct. Apply all this to the human mind. At first these abstractions may arise in the mind, and be as it were dissolved in it, and they are unnoticed and unknown, and the air of the mind is clear. But if any cause induces the man to begin to reflect distinctly upon his own thoughts, they become visible. The first effect may be doubt, and perhaps darkness. The mind grows turbid. If, however, they are again forgotten, and in the heat of earnest life pass out of view, the mind again dissolves them, and grows again as clear as the air when the mist is re-dissolved. So if these thoughts take a practical turn, and lead to practical conclusions, and so fall down to the ground on which we walk and live, the mind grows as transparent as the air after the mists and clouds have fallen in rain. Moreover, it may be that a human mind has lost or will not exert its normal power of lifting its thoughts and ideas above the sensuous plane, and holding them within that faculty and province of the mind to which HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 61 abstract thoughts are given in charge, and then the mind must think (for it can never wholly cease from thinking) with no help from its truly human fjiculties. Then the mind becomes like the air when its power of taking up moisture is latent or suspended. All nature grows dim ; an obscurity, not of night, but of a day whose sun is veiled, settles over all things. And yet this very obscurity may not be noticed by the man whose mind is in this state, for there is little differ- ence between his manner of thinking and that of the brutes, who are now scarcely below him. "We may notice in this connection the seeming con- tradiction that we associate by correspondence, that power of abstract thought which is the foundation of all intellectual progress and cultivation, with clouds, of which it is the function to intercept the light and darken the sky. But the correspondence is rather between this abstract thought, and the moisture in the sky in any form. Let there be only a certain meas- ure of both, and the mind and the sky are the clearer ; and the abstractions are not consciously known as thoughts, and the moisture is not visible. Let there be "more moisture in the air or more of abstract thought in the mind, or let what there is become known to sight or consciousness, and there may be clouds ; and these clouds may be light and beautiful and reflect the splendor of the sun, or they may be dark and heavy. What then? The sky is clouded, and per- haps the mind is. But is this always an evil ? Has an animal any of the doubts, uncertainties, and ques- 62 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. tions unanswered by his own reason, which fill the human mind with what may be called its clouds? Certainly not, because it has no power to have the abstract thoughts without which these doubts are im possible. The moisture in the material sky is for his benefit as much as man's ; but thevfi is no moisture in the sky of his mind, for he has no power of abstract thought. A very little consideration will show us, that nearly all the darkness or obscurity in human thought implies and is connected with this human faculty. But even where the abstractions become visible to the mind, and take shape and hue, and are themselves the subjects of thought, they may, as we have said, float in the serene air, and gather the sunbeams and reflect them to the earth. And even when these clouds of the mind form one black and threatening mass, they may yet, thanks be to the Divine mercy, fall gently and not ruinously, and bringing refreshment and invigoration to the nas- cent or growing germs of spiritual Ufa. There is one difference between this world and that toward which we haste, which must not be forgotten. It is that there the correspondence and significance of a man's home, of his earth, his air, and all his sinr roundings are several, personal, and individual. In this world they are only general. The reason of this 13 easily seen and stated. There our destiny is already determined. There men are drawn together by affin- ity, and live in harmony ; by an affinity of which we HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 63 know little while here. But we can understand this effect of it ; we can see that the home of one and all its parts and elements are in harmony with the home and surroundings of his neighbors ; that the story they have to tell him is the same they tell to them. For, whUe each man there is himself, and has his own individualities, which constitute his self-hood, and therefore has some things, and those the nearest ■ to him, which are for his own use, and adapted to him alone and represent him alone, it is still true that the broad earth on which he walks, the overarching sky, the woods, the hills, the streams, the air, and the sun that fills all with life and irradiates all with beauty, as they change or abide without change-, to-day, for him, change or remain for his neighbors, and reflect in gen- eral the features, either in their permanence or in their change, at once of the society, and of each member ; leaving to each to see still something for himself, to- gether with the common aspect which they offer to all. Not so is it in this world. Here we aU live to- gether ; the good, to learn from the evil whatto shun, and what they themselves are when left to themselves ; the evil to learn from the good how to become better. Here we all mingle ; and over us all our Father maketh His sun to rise, and upon us all His air breathes, and His rain falls. The effect of this is, that while the law of correspondence is just as absolute a law here as there, and is, here as there, the only means by which, and in conformity with which all outer things have their form and being, this correspondence is here not 64 HE COMETH IN CLOtTDS. personal, but general ; not particular, but universal ; that is, the sun, the air, the rain, the earth, the moun- tain, the forest, the stream, here as there, all exist for no reason whatever, and by no possibility, but because they correspond to things within man. But here this correspondence is not to this man, or to that man, but to men ; to the common condition of human character ; to the common results of human life ; to the changes in humanity and the phases which it puts on, now here, now there, for this time, or for that. The external universe is here as well as there a mirror. But he who looks upon it here, tnay not discern therein his own face or action, but the face and the action of mankind. And to him its lessons must be as general as its correspondence. They wiU not speak to him to-day with that kind of warning that would come if he knew that the storm outside of him was but the picture of the storm within ; thiat he looked upon darkness and devastation, or deformity and desolation, because if he turned his eyes inward he would see the same things. But he may be certain that all he sees around him, images something which belongs to the nature of man, and has been or will be exhibited by that nature, somewhere and at some time ; and because that nature is his nature, he may be certain that the lesson it offers may well be told to him. He may look abroad, over all the diversities of earth's surface ; he may listen while history speaks of that part which this memory of mankind has se- cured for his benefit. Everywhere he will find some HE COMBXH DT CLOVDS. 65 things which will declare to him, if not what he has been or is now, at least what he may he or might have been. But as yet we know very little of the true nature of material substances or agencies, and of the laws which regulate their action. Heat, light, electricity, or even gravitation itself, what do we know with certainty and clearness of any one of these things? Science, it might seem, has begun, if not to promise, yet to hope ; but the best evidence of its progress in the present day, is its discovery that it has little right to assert anything. On the other hand, how much less do we know of mental entities and laws and agencies, than of those of matter. How little then can we, as yet, know of the correspondence between these worlds, both so little known, so very little understood'. But the truth has been announced ; and we may see some of its forms and some of its illustrations. Possibly in the coming ages, by a clear recognition and a wise use of so much of the law and fact of this correspondence as can be discerned, science will learn more of the two elements of this correspondence, and by this increase of knowl- edge be led again to a better understanding of this correspondence. Now, we' can perhaps begin ; but we can do little more. Let us, then, ask this question. First, admitting the fact of this correspondence in general ; or that a correspondence exists between clouds, or all moisture raised from the earth into the air, and all those ■thoughts, ideas, perceptions and reasonings, which, 66 HE COMETH US CLOTIDS. beginmng in the sensuous plane of thought, are lifted from the particulars with which they at first cohere, and are viewed abstractly or generally, and so lead to or form opinions concerning things of mind or of the spirit, — admitting this correspondence, and then look- ing around upon mankind, and observing the states, opinions, uncertainties, illusions, and conflicts among men on those very subjects, what ought we to expect to find the condition and character and action of these material clouds ? We should certainly expect to find a vast variety among them. We should have to look for a corres- pondence to the clearest and most luminous faith ; to hope which consoles and sustains ; to truths which lead to all excellence and to all peace ; to the darkness of utter illusion ; to the gloom and chill of despair ; to broad and wide-spread superstitions which shut out aU sight of God, who is the sun of the soul ; to conflicts sometimes lasting long, sometimes raging fearfully, sometimes coming down in storms of devastation. Should we not expect to find in the material clouds, correspondences of all these ; and should we not find them ? Let us suppose a world in order. Let us suppose, if we can, all men and all women living as they should ; all possessing perfect health of body and of mind; all having just and clear views of their duties and relations to each other, and to God ; all -obeying the truth they know ; all by that obedience perpetually enlarging their knowledge ; all leading lives of usefv'r ness and innocence and peace ; all growing, from day HE COMETH IN CL0TJD3. 67 to day, in the understanding of everything true and in the practice of everything good. And now let us suppose that over their heads was a sky and clouds ; what should they be to maintain the correspondence we have suggested ? Beautiful, with ever-changing but exceeding beauty. The sun should paint them with gold. The wind should mass them until they soared as the hills of heaven, or should scatter them abroad and wave them like banners of woven light. This one, as it roUed along and touched a mountain top, should seem a fitting car from which some heavenly messenger might descend. That one, waiting along the eastern sky, should grow pearly and iridescent, and then flushing with the daWn, proclaim to men below that a sun which it was able to discern, was drawing near in all its glory and strength. Over the fields where grain was so^vn, over the fruit-trees and the flowers, other clouds would peacefully gather, and pour down soft and sweet showers, and earth and sky would look as if earth were the altar of God, and the sky laid on it a drink offeMng. Even such things as all these we have on earth ; and even such human states we have. They are not common; they are never perfect; they. do not come every day ; they are not to be found or made at pleasure ; but they are possible, and sometimes they are actual ; and this is true, and true in the same way, whether we speak of the human states above described, or of the clouds described as their correspondences. Both sometimes are experienced. And the time wiU 68 fiE COMETH IN CLOTTOS. come, when the exceeding and ever varied beauty of the clouds will seem more beautiful, and the life bearing showers that fall from them be still more grateful and still more useful, because they will tell their story of the mental sky and clouds. If all clouds have a general correspondence with all abstract thoughts, it is obvious that this correspondence in its details must be infinite. And as a thought of the same general character may relate to any one of a vast variety of subjects, it is also obvious that a cloud or a condition of the mioisture of the atmosphere which answers to such a thought, may have a vast variety in its correspondence. For as a thought of a certain character may relate to the business of life, to science, to philosophy, to religion, or to some other topic, so the correspondence of the cloud wliich answers to it, must be Constant in some respects and in others vary. The subject is limitless. In this Essay nothing more will be attempted than to suggest a very few of the applications of this correspondence. And they will be confined to the correspondence of clouds of various kinds to thoughts bearing upon religion. In this point of view let us look at same particular aspects of the sky ; let us again rgcur to that sky without clouds to which we have already alluded. Such a sky bends over the great desert of Africa ; and such a sky makes every region over which it bends a desert. The traveller passes over tracts of sand and rock, lifeless but for obscene and crawling reptiles, succeeding each other with Such a monotony of death that he cannot measure HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. ' 69 space, and it is impossible to believe the weary foot dqps not rest at night just where the morning encamp- ment was broken np. No rain, no cloud, no moisture ; and therefore almost no life. Do not this sky, and this desert, represent a sky and a desert of the mind, that exist among the nations now as widely, perhaps, as the desert of Sahara spreads in the heart of its continent? A sky of the mind into which no thought uprises from the earthliness of sense. How many are there now, who pass through their years, busily, gaily or sadly, sharing even zealously in all the activities of outward life, but never using their human power to understand the things of the soul, and to think of them with persistent earnestness. They would teU you that their life is full and strong, that its fields are fertile, that they ask for nothing more, that they do not believe there is anything more. Would not the reptiles that crawl over the deserts of Africa say the same things of their homes ? Is not their life, death ; and its fruits, ashes ? It is, however, quite possible for men to err, not by the neglect of this faculty, but by the misuse of it. They may devote themselves to the work of exploring the mysteries of faith ; they may almost renounce all common life and common enjo3rment, and in the seclusion of the cell or the college or the private home, think of nothing and care for nothing but their in- quiries into the great topics of human destiny. They may sit, like the devils of Milton, apart, 70 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. And reason high Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute, And find no end, in wandering mazes lost.' There is here quite cloud enough ; but if, as has been too often the case with such inquirers, the fundamental principles of all true religion are not permitted to guide and govern their inquiries ; if there be more ambition than love of truth ; more self-seeking than earnest search for truth ; more enjoyment in the consciousness of subtlety, and the pleasure of self-admiration, and the hbpe of fame, than in the discovery of truth in its simplicity ; there is indeed cloud enough, and too much ; it fills the sky, and shuts out the sun ; it will yield no rain, or the waters which fall from it will be icy cold, and better able to kill than to make alive. We sometimes see a clouded sky for many days together, with little or no rain. So too, it is possible for truths, or thoughts, or speculations upon religious and spiritual subjects to occupy the mind largely and for a long time, but mostly as mere speculations, which seldom fall down into practical life, or come so near as to affect that in any way. Sometimes when the clouds seem scant, and thin, and broken, they yet pour forth their treasures abundantly and continuously. And, where there is but little con- templation of doctrine, and little of systematic the- ology known, what truths there are may be contin- ually operative upon the life and conduct, and may come into the memory just as they are wanted, and HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 71 when wanted no longer retreat from recollection ; and the fields of the mind will smile under frequent, gen- tle, and (Quickly passing showers. But there is, after all, a rule, a custom, a probability about both the clouds of the sky and those of the mind. This rule is, that from the clouds of the sky rain descends upon the earth, and in quantity proportioned to the clouds. So, as to the clouds of the mind, the rule is, that the truths of religion in the mind, and all thoughts and knowledges which relate to spiritual subjects, come down to actual Ufe, and color or qualify that, and rain down influence of which the time, the quantity and intensity bear some proportion to those of the thoughts and knowledges themselves. What an infinite diversity there is, however, in the manlier in which the rain falls upon the earth. Some- times it comes down softly and caressingly, as if every drop kissed the plant on which it fell ; and the gently dropping water seems to know the time, and the place, and the way, in which it can do most good. Happy are we if recollection will bring out from our own experience the correspondence to this, in the descent of truth from the speculative to the practical planes of life. But if it be necessary to look to the opposite ex- treme, we have all read, if we have not seen, of the devastating rains which sometimes come laden with destruction. Almost everywhere we may see in the deep gullies that time has not yet smoothed, in the excavations which show what masses of rock and 72 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. earth the strong rain lifted and scattered, and in the ■wide and deep sand-heaps that cover fruitful plains, and fill up valleys where men lived ; in all these things we may see how the rain may come and bring only ruin with it. And we have all read, if we have not seen, instances where the waters of the mental sky fell in darkness and tempest on the mind ; where thoughts, theories, and doctrines of a religious character brought with them not hope but fear, not peace but despair ; and the storm raged, and the rushing waters beSt vehemently, until reason was dethroned, and wide and deep desolation dwelt where there had been comfort and health. If we ask what is the mind which can resist such a tempest, and what that is which yields to it and falls, shall we not remember the house that was built upon the sand, and the house built upon a rock, — the Rock of Ages. Extremes of this kind, extremes of good or, evil of are rare ; as rare as those glorious days in which the soft rains alternate with bright sunshine, and not so much alternate as mingle, while the sunlight seems softened by the tender and all-pervading mist, and the rain drops are penetrated and made luminous with light ; as rare, on the other hand, as the devastating and destructive storm that remains as a date to which men refer for ages. Usually there is nothing like this; But days of mingled character succeed each other, and the clouds gather and the rain falls, and nothing is strongly marked, but the course of life goes on, and the means of life are provided. So it is, as the pre- HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 73 vailing rule, with our minds. For the most part men have alternations of worldly thought and care, and of better thoughts and cares ; and their times for each ; and the religious truths which have been taught them, or which they have gradually and perhaps uncon- sciously learned as they walked along the ways of life, come out visibly before their consciousness, and fall down with more or less of influence and more or less of blessing npon actual life. . But when we wish to find some comparison which shall best illustrate an ever changing and infinite variety, we choose the clouds, for they are never quite alike in any two days, or two hours ; why, then, attempt to take account of aU their forms and appearances ? I make no such attempt. I repeat, that I endeavor only, by a few suggestions, to illustrate the great law of correspondence of which I have spoken, and to enable those who will to obtain farther illustration for themselves. With the same view, let me speaJs of those, — few, I fear, will in these days be at a loss to find them, — who are certainly not devoid of religious thoughts and aspirations, but in whose minds these transcendental thoughts are vague and thin and unsub- stantial, floating on high, far beyond reach, beautiful, perhaps, and winning admiration by their beauty, but valueless and worthless in their bearing upon life. How this same story is told again, when we look upon the light and fleecy clouds of the upper air, sometimes so ^t^ we are not sure they are anything, often beau- 74 HE COMETH IN CLOUiJS. tiful and interesting from the hues they bear and the odd shapes they take, but never, so far as we can see, of any use or influence on life. Then let us look at those persons, not so common now as once they were, who live, as if they were vaulted in by a close built theory of the religion of faith alone, which makes it a sad, restrained, and melancholy thing; which paints the conflict of life, as one without intervals of peace or rest, and remembers the power of God rather than His love, and oftenest contemplates in the future the terrors of doom. Who can ever want a picture of this condition of mind and charac- ter, who walks abroad when the glories of summer have passed, and the air tells of approaching winter, and the sky is covered with a cold, grey pall, which seems to fill so closely and completely every corner and to rest so solidly upon the earth, that we almost fear it has taken the place of the sky and is to abide there in its stead. And as such a religion as that often contents itself with shading the mind with gloom, without coming down to influence the life, so that sunless dome will sometimes, day after day, cover the earth and exclude the sun, without falling in rain or passing away. But it cannot last always ; it only takes its turn with all the other changes which paint the changes in the mind and in the life of mankind. It may pass away, and then the bright beauty of the sky may fall upon the eye and upon the heart. The sun walks in glory through all his course, and morn- ■ ing, noon, and eve, and skyj an'i earth, are clotilied HE COMETH IN CJLOTJDS. 75 with a radiance which at every moment changes, and with every change increases. And they, too, tell their story. It is the story of the mind from which the pall, the shroud, of that dark and brooding religion are lifted and removed ; and the sun of righteousness is seen in the glory of his own truth, shining' in his strength upon aU the walks of life, and revealing in all of them a beauty and a charm never seen before, and unim- agined before. Well may the mind so relieved say, as a poet has said : " Praise Him, Ye mists and exhalations, dusky and grey, Till the sun paint your fleecy, sku-ts with gold." But into what farther details may we not carry this correspondence. There is literally no end to it. For the cloud changes of the sky are infinite ; and they are so because the diversify in the intellectual conditions and states which they represent is infinite. K we remem- ber that the clouds — ^now using the word as embracing in its meaning all the water in the air — correspond to and represent everjrthing of an intellectual character which is separated from the particulars in connection with which it began to exist, and lifted up into those regions of thought into which the mind of animals cannot soar, and into which the mind of man, even the lowest and most limited, if it be not wholly fatuous, must, by the necessity of its nature, be lifted up, in one degree or another, and for one purpose or another, we may see how vast must be the range of variety on both sides of this correspondence. And 76 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. then, too, if we remember how entu-ely the earth is dependent on the clouds ; dependent on the moisture which itself gives to the air ; so dependent, that it is fertile or barren, healthy and life-siipporting, or poison- ous and life-destroying ; drinking gentle rains which make of it a garden, or wasted by destroying storms that convert it into a desert ; so dependent, that it is for these clouds to say that it shall be as Paradise, or as a place where heat, burning or scalding, and miasma and utter want paint a picture of hell ; — remembering this, we may be better prepared to see that it is upon the presence or absence, the kind, and quantity, and character, and influence, of all these . super-sensuous thoughts, knowledges, beliefs, and doc- trines, that our happiness or our misery depend, in this world or in the other. And let us repeat, that here, in this world, the law of correspondence of all things external to man, which is infinite in instruction, is not definite and individual- ized either as to person, time, or character, because the things above and below this world meet and mingle in it, and produce what, except to the All-Seeing, must ever bear the impress of disorder. And because, also, the things outside of man have here an independence, a fixedness and power of resistance, necessary to effect their purpose, as ipstruments by means of which man may fight out the battles of life. But there, in that world to which we go when we cast off the body, and with it the world of which and for which the body was made, after a brief interval employed in bringing HE COMETH DT CLOUDS. 77 the whole man into conformity with himself by the elimination of aU elements which are in discord with his ruling principles, — there and then every individual finds an earth spread widely round him, a sky arching over him dimmed with distant worlds of light ; and his universe, so far as it is visible to him, will be a mirror, and he will be standing at its focus point. Nor wiU the external world be only in its forms and appearances a mirror of the world within ; for the laws of the outward world, and. their operation, wiU represent with equal accuracy the laws of the inward world, and their operation through that long chain of causation which, for our apprehension, has no begin- ning and no end. They wiU teach each other, and explain and interpret each other. Now, we learn, or try to learn physical sciences, if our taste lead in that direction. Or we may study the science of mind, and strive to learn its nature, condition, and laws ; but how little connection is perceived between these two depart- ments of knowledge. Some thousands of years ago, when men were only, as wise as Pythagoras and Plato, and when, such men as these and others of those cen- turies were engaged in the work of gathering and systematizing the fragmentary remains of an earlier mode of thought, and putting them into forms in which they might live through the ages of darkness which were impending, much was still known, although very imperfectly, of this law of correspondence. In those still remoter ages, of which we have no direct record, it was the familiar knowledge of aU. Upon it all which 78 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. was for them literature, philosophy, or theology, -was founded. It gave birth to the myths and legends which have come do^NTi even to our own day. Un- meaning as they are to us, and as they have been for many ages, and shattered and distorted as they ob- viously are, their vitality is marvellous. It cannot be explained by supposing them preserved in the beautiful poetry and philosophy which occasionally allude to them, for but a part is thus referred to, and these myths seem to have, in themselves, the attractions of poetry, of history, and of philosophy. « It has been said" that they have been preserved in the ancient 'literature which we possess, as dead flies are preserved in amber. This may be true ; . but in a sense the very reverse of that which was intended. The amber is doubtless a beautiful sub- stance, charming from its hues, and the polish which may be given to it and its gem-like lucidity; But the dead fly once lived. It was an organic form moulded with infinite and unimaginable wisdom. Cleanse it now from the investing amber, bring it under the microscope, ^dissect it, examine and study the construction, the relations and functions of its members, and you might in this study and in its fruits, have food for profounder thought than plummet has ever yet sounded, and a longer labor than any human life has yet sufficed for. In the ages in which Greek philosophy began, there was much stUl remaining of an earlier wisdom. Some of it was preserved in their Eleusinian and HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 79 other mysteries, some in the isoteric doctrines which the masters of thought taught only to their most trusted and most favored pupils ; and a part was preserved in a purely external form, by the mere inability of the common mind of that day to reach so high as to examine it, or do more than repeat it. Then, this science became traditional, obscure, frag- mentary and perishing, but there it was and there it may still be discerned in the published works of those days which we stUl possess. In after ages it faded out, or rather changed its character, until now the few instances which are seen are always regarded as among those graceful and fortunate accidents which poetry ought to lay hold of, because it is not her business to tell the truth ; but which science and reason should wholly ignore, or if compelled to observe them, give them only denial and contempt. Herein lies that great blessing of Poptry, to which we have already alluded. It is much that it gives a harmless amusement to one who might otherwise seek a dangerous pleasure : that it is an effective restorative to the wasted and weary laborer in the toils of thought: that it decorates with its own beauty and gracefulness and refinement the common-places of life : that it is so attractive, so refreshing, and brings so much enjoyment. All this is much of itself; but poetry does far more, when it secures a general welcome and a wide reception of great truths. For all these in- . timations of the innei* meaning of things are great truths. Poetry does not present these as truths : it 80 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. does not say to the reader, accept these things aa truths, or reject them altogether. For if it did they would be at once and inevitably rejected. It does not awaken in the mind any inquiry as to their logical foundations. For these foundations could not be dis- covered. It does not suggest the question — are these things true or false, — for the answer of ignorance must be — :they are false. Poetry offers them as her own, as belonging to herself, and her own nature. So they are accepted. So they sometimes wind their way into the depths of the mind : so they often prepare the mind to be opened hereafter to a world of truths which now lie in darkness, and can be seen only as by broken starlight, and glimpses of a half-eclipsed moon. And yet Poetry has as much truth, as much real, defined and positive truth, as science : or rather it has much more. The science of to-day is but a con- glomerate from the fragments of sciences which were, and are not. Each age discovers that aU before it went wrong. As the Chemistry of to-day derives its being from the blunders of Alchemy, so the Chemistry of to-morrow will make our ascertained mistakes its foundations. But to Poetry the birds have ever sung the same psalm : the rainbow has ever written upon the clouds her promise of mercy: the mountain and the wave, the forest and the garden, the sounds of Nature, .and her eloquent silence, have always been vocal, and always with the same utterance: the "l-ob sui and rain and dew have ferty*-:tl ner fields : and ^^ her the universe has HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 81 always been not so much the mirror as the image of its own soul. Even they who have seen, or may yet discover this law of correspondence, are liable to one great mistake. It can best^be illustrated by referring to a theory once invented, and by a very great man, to explain causation generally, and especially the action of the will upon the human body. I speak of what was called by Leibnitz — (only translating his Latin into" English) — the Law of pre-established Harmony. It was, briefly stated, this : every possible motion of the body was fore-ordained and foreknown ; so was every possible motion of the will ; and it was also ordained that these should be exactly coincident and in perfect harmony. That is, I now write these words, because it was foreknown that I should desire to write them, and ordained that in the very instant in which I should so desire the muscles of my arm and hand should so move as to grasp the pen, and write the words. Leibnitz was driven to this theory by the wish to explain everything, and by the utter impossi- bility of explaining causation, or the act of causing, in any other way. Any intelligent person, however unused to philo- sophic inquiry, may soon convince himself that he has not the slightest knowledge of cause and effect, except that the effect follows the oause : this he learns from his own observation and that of others ; and when this sequence is observed often enough, we get the notion f a law, and then we think that one thing ■must be 6 82 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. followed by that other thing which we have seen to follow it generally: but why, we know not. The fact of this pre-established harmony is certain ; the ground of it, and the effect of it, have not been hitherto known. It is not, in the slightest degree, an arbitrary harmony or coincidence determined upon by Omnipo- tence to answer some other purpose. It is the harmony between that which is within, and that which is without ; and this may better be described as the harmony between one entity as it exists 'or acts within, or internally, and the same entity as it exists or acts without, or externally. And this harmony is corre- spondence. For example, a man becomes very angry : his face at once and spontaneously assumes an appearance which tells every beholder that he is angiy. This appearance is indeed called the natural language of anger. So far from the man causing it on purpose, it is most visible in children, who do not think of their countenance : and most grown men labor, however ineffectually, not to cause this look or expression, but to prevent or conceal it. It is caused by the corres- pondence between the face and the mind : or in other words, this state of the mind causes this state of the face by correspondence : or in yet other words, the emotion which we call anger in the mind when it operates there and shapes the mind and thought, comes forth into the face, and operates there also, and shapes the features and the expression, and is anger there. Men say commonly that the anger in the mind HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 83 Bhapes the countenance : it does so, but not from a distance ; it does go, by coming forth into the face and making the features its dress and form. We have here an instance or example of a universal law : nay, of the universal law of creation. It is thus the universe exists and is preserved in existence. Hence, all orders and classes of entities and activities, on one plane of being, are the effect of, the form of, the representation of, and the mirror of corresponding orders and classes of entities and activities on a higher plane : because the same entities and activities come down from their higher planes and forms, and exist in the lower. And this is true of all the planes of being throughout their series; and it is also true of all them as one, in the relation of the one created universe to its Maker: for it is His dress. His form, His mirror, and so His work. In this Essay I have endeavored to illustrate this correspondence in its relation to the aqueous vapor suspended in the atmosphere, which, in its most observable form, we call clottds. I have no space to give the scientific evidence of the fact to which I have alluded — the constant presence in the air of this water, in some form, and in some measure. The fact has taken its place among the recognized certainties of science ; and it may now be said to be acknowledged by all, that the fitness 84 • HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. of the air for respiration, and therefore for the support of life, and its ability to receive heat and light from the sun, and transmit them beneficially to the earth, are perfectly and always dependent upon (among other conditions) the presence of moisture in the air, and the degree and the way in which it exists there. The general correspondence of this moisture in the air (water being the general correspondent of all truth) is, we must repeat, to those thoughts which rise above particular sensuous objects, or the sensations they produce, and being liberated from them, or, if the word is liked, abstracted from them, rest in the mind as abstract or general thoughts, rendering lan- guage possible, and ipermitting reflection and medita- tion, and providing a basis and beginning from which may grow an infinite structure of wisdom. But from which also, may grow nothing; and with the stupid, the -savage, the mere worldling, there grows what is little more than nothing. And from which also there may grow what is as much worse than nothing as the ingenious confirmations of unbelief or falsehood are worse than mere ignorance. And thus the science of correspondence gives to the sky above us a meaning and a voice. With the ever- rolling hours which make up the year, it puts on suc- cessively all the aspects which mirror and repeal the sky of the mind. The year itself may be regarded as a great circle of hfe, embracing all its seasons, all its months, and all its days and nights. In the course of this year, nature puts on the representatiop of the* HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 85 seasons, months, days, and nights of the human being for whom nature exigts ; and paints this representation in the sky. Therefore, every cloud which floats above us has a lesson which it would be glad to impart. If, on some lovely day, we looked at a distant moun- tain and saw a cloud, shaped and gilded and glowing as if it were an angel's car, draw near the mountain top, and hovering there, be for a moment staid in its covirse, and then roll forward into the blue expanse, we should look with delight upon this beautiful scene. But what if we believed, in simple verity, as an old Greek might have believed, that the cloud was an angel's car, and that it touched the mountain top only that a heavenly messenger might descend, and that he was now coming down to meet us and deliver his message. How should we spring forward to meet him, regardless of hindrance, or obstruction, or diflfiiculty ; how should we press onward, intent only on listening to the glad tidings from a higher world. And yet it is most true that this is precisely what might be the case with us, if we would have it so. From every cloud that comes within our sight, and touches the far mountain srimmits, a heavenly visitant ' may descend, and will speak to us if we will hear. Every aspect that the sky puts on, whether dim and desolate and fearful, or lovely and hope-ii^ spiring, may mirror to us some possible corresponding aspect of thought ; may remind us that if we would have health, and life, and growth, and prosperity within, the condition of all this is, that thoughts and 86 BtE COMEIH IN GLOUDB. truths should rise in oiir minds far above the earthfy considerations in which they had their origin, and should, under the influence of spiritual light and warmth, give rise to just views of God and our duty, and that these should again fall down upon the fields of actual life, and permeate them as with a blessing. Perhaps we may place what we would say in some^ what clearer light, if, at the risk of more repetition, we look at the general correspondence between clouds in the air and those intellectual states, or products, in which the mind is liberated from things apprehensible by sense in another point of view. In the first place then, it is a universal a-iid inexora- ble law, that without water there can be no vegetables', and without vegetables no animals ; or to condense this foj'mula, no water, no life. But, in the next place, this water must continually come and go. Fields always under water produce nothing, and fields pro- perly irrigated produce fruit only on condition that the water is used by the plants, and is replaced by other water. How can this be effected ? First, by a vast reservoir of water, the sea. ~ Next, by the fact that everything that, contains water — not the sea, or lakes, or streams only, but almost and probably quite every earthly thing into whose composi- tion water enters — ^is perpetually giving it forth. AH animals, and all vegetables, perspire at all times ; and the most solid ice in the coldest arctic air is found to Waste gradually by slow evaporation. Here, then, is water enough. But how is it to be carried where it is HE COMETH IN CLOUDS, 87 wanted ? Water is muct heavier than air ; how then shall it be made lighter, or how shall it be made to rise to great heights in the air, and remain there until it is wanted ? Science cannot yet fully answer these questions. The fact is visible and certain ; the manner and the means are not. The sun Causes it to rise, but by what agency we do not certainly know. Heat has much to do with it, but not all. Electricity has much to do with it, but we know not precisely how much or in what way. I do not attempt to present in detail the various theories of scientists on the subject, for all they would prove is what I have already said : that but little is certainly known about it. Only this indeed is. certain: that in some way, vast quantities of water are perpetually rising into the atmosphere ; and much of this is always in the air, which is never perfectly diy, and would be destructive to life if it were so. For there is the same aptitude in air to receive and absorb water as there is in water to rise into it.- It is for this reason that the sirocco, or very dry wind of the desert, is distressing and sometimes fatal to those on whom it breathes ; because it slakes its burning thirst by taking from their lungs, their eyes, their skin everywhere, within and without, all moisture, until there is not enough left to sustain life. For it has been quaintly but accurately said, that a man consists of a few pounds of solids dissolved in some gallons of water. We have then, in this Apti- tude of water to rise, and this aptitude of air to take 88 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. up and retain water, and in the unknown laws which cause the water to remain suspended in the air until it is wanted, on earth, a large part of the means by which this essential of life is provided. But some- thing more remains. If the water fell where it rose it would do but little good, and only a small part of the earth's surface would be habitable. So, by still other laws and methods, of which little is as yet known with certainty, the air thus loaded with moisture is kept, in constant motion. It is perpetually going to and fro over all the earth, and falling where it is needed under the operation of laws or forces of which we know but little ; and so completing the provision by which all that live have their needful supply of water. Here, then, is an actual circulation established ; as actual, as incessant, as absolutely essential to life, and in many of its laws and phenomena as wholly unex- plained at present, as the circulation of the blood. And here, therefore, we have also a new reason for wonder, awe, and worship, before the love, and wis- dom, and power of God ; and new means for illustrat- ing their Divine attributes. How then will it be when ■ we go one step farther, — ^the great step from body to soul, — and when we find that aU these laws and phenomena of this outside world, and all these means, , and methods, and results, are but a clothing or em- bodiment put on by the causes of them in the spiritual world ; and that these causes are in the spirit world, and in the spirit and for the spirit, the same things HE COMETH ET CLOIrt)S. 89 tttat fliedr effects or embodiments are in l^e Itwer or outer world. Thus, the end for which all this universe is created, is life. That hfe which is fastened to the outer world, and is dependent upon it, and dies with it, is only instrumental life. All vegetable life is instrumental for all animal life ; all animal life is instrumental for human life. All outer, and earthly, and perishable human Hfe is instrumental for inner, eternal, and genuine human life. It is this last which we mean by life, when we say that life is the end for which all that exists is created and preserved. For this life, truth, in some of its forms, is precisely the same indispensable requisite that water is for exter- nal life ; and for this life it must be provided as effect- ually as water is provided for earthly Hfe ; and it is provided in the same way, and by the same laws, and means, and methods, with no other difference than that they operate above and on the higher plane of life for that higher life, and on the lower plane of Hfe for that lower Hfe. Thus the mind has its sea ; and in another Essay Vre have said that this corresponds to the natural memory, into which run all truths and knowledges, there to remain, known or unknown, until they are needed elsewhere ; and we will not repeat here the illustrations we there attempt of this coi-respondence. From this sea, and from all the waters of the mind, and from all things in nature which the mind recog- 90 HE COBCETE IN CLOUDS. nizes, there are forever rising up thoughts, reflections, knowledges, ideas of some kind or another. These rise up by being disconnected from the particidar things with which they were at first associated. While fastened to them, the mind was fettered. It was im- possible that it should know or think otherwise than of those particulars, or of similar individuals, and in a similar way. But when liberated from .them, the mind can think what are called abstract thoughts, or form general ideas. From many things which are beautiful it can form the idea of beauty. From things which are right it can form the idea of rectitude. From things which are wrong, it can form the idea of moral evil. From things which are strong, it can form the idea of power. From things which are good, the idea of goodness. And -from the kindness which it experiences, or observes, or feels, it forms the idea of love. So of innumerable myriads of others. These general or abstract ideas the mind can deal with ; can compose into new and complex forms, can analyze into their elements, can construct into logical series and draw its inferences ; can thus think and be- lieve something about God, and duty, and eternity, and religion, and the relations between man and his neigh- bor, and man and his God. How all these things are done, and what are the faculties or laws, or activities of mind which cause, or permit, or control them, we do not know. Philosophers, so called, difier aboat these things as much, and perhaps not more, than HE COMETH IN CLOUBS. 91 philosophers of another sort do about the laws, quali- ties, and forces by which water is given forth by everything on earth, and received by and mingled with air. "What we know on the one hand is, that water does so rise and mingle with the air ; and what we know on the other hand is, that men, by the mere fact of their hunjan nature, do form and preserve, and do make some use. of those general and abstract ideas which were born in their minds from things of the earth and of sensuous experience. It is as certain that no savages have as yet been discovered who have altogether wanted all ideas of this kind, as that no air hitherto known was perfectly free from the moisture which is derived from earth. And then we know of the water in the air, that, if it only abides in the air, the earth will become the abode of death ; it must fall from it, upon the fields which are prepared to receive it, and make ithem fertile. So, too, we know that if these thoughts remain only intellectual, if they are only systems, opinions, knowledges, and beliefs, and never 'descend upon the fields of practical life, and fertilize them, we have no life in our life. We have nothing of that higher life which is more than sen- suous, more thaa earthly, more and better than this world only will sufiice for ; nothing of that life which, after we have done with this world, will find a new home, new objects, new development, and new hap- piness. Therefore it is a first and absolute essential that 92 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. ttere be thfese fields of actual and practical life. As the waters must be gathered together so that the dry land may appear, and then fall down as showers upon the land, and as it is in that land only that the seeds can be planted, and those roots be flourished, upon which leaf, and stalk, and flower, and fruit depend, so we may be certain that the increase of the water of the mind will be of no value or utility if there be no fields of actual and practical life, upon which they may descend. And upon these they must come down, not in desolating storms, but as those showers which gently fall and sink into the prepared bosom of the earth, and then in silence do their work of blessing upon the seeds which have waited for them, and at their touch wake into life. If it be asked, why this machinery, why this com- plicated and mysterious method of accomplishing the simple purpose of instruction, my answer would be, why the analogous machinery, and complicated and mysterious method of accomplishing the simple pur- pose of irrigation? In the latter case the facts are certain, if the reasons and methods are obscur*. In the former case, the facts would be as certain, if we chose to study them patiently and intelligently ; and the reason and the methods would not be more ob- scure. When the sonl is studied and cared for as the body is, and its reality acknowledged, its life believed, all its interests watched and protected as those of the body HE COMETH IN CLOtTDS. 93 are now, the darkness will grow less, and the darkness itself will not be called, as it now is, light. By means of the law of correspondence God speaks to us in all His works ; and the science which teaches and explains this correspondence reads to us and' inter- prets the lessons which He gives. By means of the law of correspondence He speaks to us yet more clearly and jnore precisely in His written Word ; and again it is the science of correspondence which reveals those lessons of His Word. A word is the body of a thought. In it the thought lives, moves, and acts. His TVord must be tlie ex- pression of His truth, of His wisdom. This must be an infinite, and perfect, and eternal wisdom. The higher angels must read the instruction it gives as much as the humblest mortal. If it were human wisdom, and if he who uttered it were a man, we might suppose that he would say to those highest in capacity, and in their present knowledge, such things as would suit them ; and to those who knew less, and whose capacity of learning was less, other things which would suit them ; and these things would be entirely independent, having little or no connection with each other. Not so is it with the Divine wisdom. This is one, absolutely one, everywhere. But while it is one in essence, it is many in its meaning. By means of the law of correspondence it is so expressed, that while the highest angels recognize in it a meaning whosa 94 HE COMETH IN CX0UD3. ineffable wisdom is the light of their life, lower and yet lower angels find there a meaning as precisely suited to them, and men on, earth, even those in the earliest and most ignorant condition, if honest inquir- ers, find, in the literal sense, a meaning that is also perfectly adapted to their needs and their apprehen- sion. And as by obedience to these literal commands, and a reception of this literal and lowest form of Divine truth into the understanding and the affections and the life, men gradually become capable of receiv- ing understanding and loving more and higher truth, the inner meanings of the Word are then successively opened for their reception. Not that this internal meaning is wholly disclosed,, or apprehensible ; it is not, and never can be, nor ever will be, in earth or in heaven. But to men on earth, the science which teaches the foundations, the prin- ciples, and the laws of correspondence, has been revealed ; and this is the key to the infinite treasures of the spiritual sense. And this key has also been applied. In the works of Swedenborg very many passages of Scripture have been explained. We may say, then, that the door is opened. They who enter by that door, and go forward but a little way^ — and who of us can yet do more? — find that they are pass- ing from obscurity to light. We have endeavored to illustrate the correspondence between the inner and the outer universe, lay a refei'h KB COMETH IN CLOUDa. 95 cnce to the correspondence of clouds. Let us now try to see what lessons we may learn by means of this correspondence from th,e various texts in which clouds are mentioned. The earliest instance of this is Gen. ii. 5, 6, 7, — "The Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to tUl the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life : and man became a living soul." We are often told by Swedenborg, that the begin- ning of Genesis is not literally true. As a record of actual earthly events it begins in the eleventh chapter, with the history of Abraham. Long before the Pentateuch was written by Moses a Scripture had existed which was composed only of correspondienceS; and was not an historical record, and referred not to succession of time, but to succession of state. A cer- tain part of this, which imports, in the literal sense, to describe the creation of the world, Moses prefixed to his own history. Hence, in the New Church we are in no way disturbed by the antagonism between the literal history of these prefatory chapters and the ascertained facts of geology, astronomy and human history. All we see in these chapters is their spiritual sense. That describes the creation, and the history of the soul ; or rather of spiritual life in the soul. There that truth stands, transcendent, eternal, and unassailable.' 96 HE COMETH: IN CLOUDS. In the verses cited, two facts are in the first place stated; one, that the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth ; the other, that there was no man. I do not know that it has ever been even conjectured that these two facts have any connection ; and yet that connection is absolute. Until God has caused rain to fall, in the spiritual sense of that phrase, there never can be a man, for there never can be true and genuine humanity in the sold. In saying this we are only repeating what we have already said about the water in the air. A man has a complete and entire, animal nature. If he have not, he is not wholly a man. It has already been intimated that the psycho- logical difference between men and animals consisted principally in the capacity for abstract thought, and the affections which tBis thought makes possible, which man possesses and the animal does not. Abstract thought, or thought which frees itself from the speciali- ties and limitations and particular instances in connec- tion with which it began, is the necessary foundation for spiritual and religious thought and affection ; and these again ai'e what make man to be truly human. It is God only who can ■cause a rain to fall upon the earth, or upon the mind. As the sun is the primary source of all the influences which raise water from the earth, so it is God's influence only which can cause the ideas and thoughts, which originate from earth and earthly experience to rise from it, and become in the mind thoughts of religion and of duty, and then descend upon actual life, and make Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page SE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 109 cloud by day, whicli will lead us safely. When we walk through the wilderaess of this world, and it is day with us, because our worldliness and selfishness are gratified and successful, if the desire of doing right is not destroyed, and if the thought how shall we do it occurs to us, the Commandments of God, though they be in the mind, as dim and obscure as clouds, will still rest above the ark, and show us the paths we must pursue, if we would have that ark go before us to a better land. And when night comes, and the glow and heat of success have been mercifully taken away, when the darkness gathers round us and we see no light in any direction, when doubt and fear have taken posses- sion of our souls and our sun has set and we are as wanderers by night through a lifeless desert, then let us still look to the literal commands ; they at least will not fail us ; and even these clouds will glow like fire and irradiate the gloom above us and around us. Therefore also it was said by Isaiah (iv. 5), long after the Israelites had possessed Palestine, and the ark had come to its rest, — " The Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud by day and a flaming fire by night." For this is a universal law. Every mind touched with a sense of self, and with any true thought of God, becomes a dwelling place of Mount Zion, or is preparing to become one ; and over every one, rests this cloud and this fire. It is told in the Gospels, that when the earthly life of our Lord was drawing near its close, and He had 110 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. begun " to show unto His disciples that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer, and be killed, and be raised again," He at the same time declared that " there be some standing here which shall not taste of death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." This is related in the three first gospels, and in each of them follows immediately, as if in ful- filment of the promise, the Transfiguration. They who saw that, saw the Son of Man in His Divine royalty : " And a bright cloud overshadowed them ; and behold a voice out of the cloud which said. This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him." To all who in heart and life as well as with the under- standing, recognize the Son of Man, as also and most truly the Son of God, He has come in His kingdom. To them, the cloud in which He comes. His Word, is also transfigured, and shines with exceeding brightness. Its whole utterance, from its beginning to its' end, seems then to be condensed into the declaration, " This is my beloved son," and . into the command, " Hear ye Him." And they before whom He is thus transfigured, ever after, through time and through eternity, find in that command the light of their life. And the same lesson is taught, when they who see "His glory in the clouds," — as it is painted on the skirts of the retreating tempest, — remember and un- derstand his words about it. "I set my bow in the cloud ; and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth." The derivation of the word covenant, from two Latin words which mean HE COMETH IN CLOtTDS. Ill " to come together," may show us, that, a covenant is an instrument by -which the parties to it " come together." The parties to this covenant are God and the earth, or God and man ; His covenant consists of His Word, and of every word which in any way He litters to men, for the only purpose of every word is to guide naen to Himself to the end that they may come together ; and in this sense, that part of the Bible which was written before Christ, is called the old covenant, and that part which was written after Christ, is called the new covenant. But, in a universal sense, the Bible is this covenant, and its literal sense is the cloud in which He comes. If we would understand the rainbow, we must re- member that three things are necessary, and must meet, before we can see one ; there must be at once, clouds, and rain falling from them, and a sun shining upon that rain. If we put these natural facts into the language of correspondence, we only say, there must be in the mind the literal instruction of the Word, and truth raining down from it upon the fields of life, whUe He is acknowledged as the only source of light and hfe. Then the words of that word become as luminous with His light as the drops of the rainbow, and reflect Him back to man. And yet something more is to be remembered. He gives the rainbow as the token and symbol of " the covenant which I make between me and you, and etery living creature that is ivith you." Infinite is the mercy which could utter these words, and which per- 112 HE comeA in clouds. mits US to understand them as His promise that no living thing within us, no slight, and feeble, and imper- fect thing within us, which has in it one faint spark of true life, can perish ; and that no one can wholly perish in whom there is one living spark of love to God. The floods may compass about this feeble life, all their biUows and their waves may pass over it ; the depth may close round about it, and the weeds be wrapped about its head. But even from the depths prayer may go up, in them hope may dwell, and live in the remem- brance of the promise of One whose promise cannot fail, that the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy anything which has genuine life. We have already cited the text from Exodus (xxxii. 5), in which it is said, "The Lord descended in .the cloud." This is repeated in Numbers (xi. 25). " And the Lord came down in a cloud ;" so in Exodus (xix. 9), "And the Lord said, Lo I come unto thee in a thick cloud that the people may hear when I speak with thee ; " for it is in His word that He comes to all. And in the Revelation, John " Looked and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the son of man." And Daniel (vii. 13) " Saw in the night visions, and behold one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven." But all these texts are consummated and completed, where Matthew (xxiv. 30) says, "And they shall see the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, virith power and great glory ; " and similar declarations occur , in Matthew HE COMETH IN CLOTIDS. 113 (xxvi. 64), in Mark (xiii. 2G), and in Mark (xiv. G2). All of these prophecies refer to the second coming of the Lord; or, as we understand them, to the present day, in which He is now coming. There has been of course, and is now, some expectation throughout Christendom of a literal fulfilment of these prophecies. Eloquent preachers have painted in glowing colors the awful scene, when the Son of Man should become personally visible in the clouds, surrounded with the glory of the heavens from which He had descended, and manifesting in acts of terrible or beneficent justice, His Almighty Power. But no words have ever described, and no imagination has ever conceived, a fulfilment of those prophecies equal in power and in glory to that which has already begun. He has come in the clouds of heaven, by the revela- tion He has made of the spiritual sense of the letter of the Word. It is that sense which constitutes the clouds of heaven ; He has always come in them, in the truth they impart and the good affections they inspire, for these were His, given to men through His Word. He has come in them now, far more fully, far more manifestly ; for He has revealed those heavenly and spiritual senses which assure us that He Himself is the Word, and was the Word from the beginning ; and that He Himself speaks to us by His Holy Scripture. . He has come in these clouds of heaven with power ; yea, with Almighty power. The truths which will be' learned as the rolls are opened whose seals He has 8 114 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. broken, will regenerate mankind ; will cliange the face of sociiety, because they will change its heart: will enlarge and strengthen the foundation on which heaven rests, and multiply until time shall be no more the sons and daughters who shall call Him Father ; wiU create a new Heaven and a new Earth. " Behold," saith He, "I create all things new." He does this infinite work ■ by means of the power He will henceforward exert through His wisdom and His goodness, as they are now exhibited in His Holy Scriptures. How Our words fail and faint in the effort to speak of this Almighty Power. How much less would it be, if we could see Him grasp the whole earth in His hand, and shake it to and fro as a plaything. He comes in these clouds with " great glory." He comes with a glory which must still be tempered, because if it shone upon us with its own splendor we should die. But it is not so obscured, that we may not see Him there ; and see Him by its light every- where in all the truth which exisis on earth ; see Him in aU the life, and order, and power, and beauty, and happiness there is in His universe ; and see them there as we see His Sun in Heaven. And if that sun came and filled a dome of clouds, shining from every portion of the sky in full meridian splendor, of what mere nothingness would such a glory be to that with which He shines before the eyes and hearts of men, as with the deepest sense of their utter inability, they strive to. speak of Him as they have learned to think, and to ascriba to Him in worthy terms, " AU power, and. HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. 115 riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory and blessing forever^" He has come in the clouds of heaven with power and glory. And by so coming, teaches many new lessons, resolves many painful doubts, opens many new consolations. How have mens' minds been distracted and sometimes driven to insanity or utter unbeUef, because they knew and felt that they could not form the slightest thought of God as He is in Himself, and feared that it would be idolatry to worship as a (jod one who had walked the earth, a Man among men. How many have been bewildered by the instruction which commanded them to believe in three persons, each of whom was God, while aU were but one God. From this fear and this bewilder- ment, men have found but three ways of exit. One, utter indifference ; another, a belief that if they said these words and confessed their truth, and perhaps talked around and about them, it did them no harm to have no clear meaning in their minds ; the third way was H, belief that there were three Gods, constituting by union and combination one Godhead, as three judges constitute one court, thus obscuring in their minds the one central and eternal, truth, " The Lord our God is ONE God." To those on whom He now shines with His new glory, it is permitted to know and to confess, that of God the Father, the essential, inmost, infinite God, as He exists in Himself, and in His own infinitude they cannot, and no created intellect can form any distinct 116 HE COMETH IN CLOUDS. idea whatever. They may without pain or harm, see Him iu all His universe, in all its parts, in every atom that has been brought into existence, and see Him in His universe as its soul. For the Sun of righteousness has now arisen, and has revealed, that, because He can- not be imagined, nor loved, nor worshipped aright as He is in His own inaccessible and inconceivable infinity, therefore He bowed the heavens and came down ; there- fore He overshadowed a human virgin, and lived a man among men, in the body and the nature He took from her ; Emanuel, God with us. Thus He becomes our God. Not the God of our words merely ; not the God of our faith only ; but the God of our love, and of our trust and of our worship ; a God of whom His infinite mercy permits us to say, we may be as a son, a brother or a sister. And the power and the glory of this great revelation wiU go on, in every mind that receives it, and in the world. to which it is. given, forever increasing and brightening, and all that men can say of it or think of it now is but as the faintest promise of day when it is but dimly seen on the MOENIKG CLOUDS. PARADISE. The word Paradise is used in two senses. In one it is the name of the Garden of Eden. In the other, it is a synonym of Heaven. In the second chapter of Genesis, it is said : " And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden." When the Bible was translated into Greek by the Septuagint writers, they translated the Hebrew word which means garden by the Greek word Paradisos, which is used by classical authors in the same sense of " garden." This word " Paradise," therefore, means simply " Garden." And because it was used in this place and way, it became gradually adopted as the name of the first garden ; the Garden of Eden. In that garden, before the fall, there was no evil ; there was perfect innocence ; and "because there was innocence, there was happiness and peace. But this is the case with heaven ; similar words describe heaven ; and heaven is, in these respects, what the Garden of Eden was before the tempter brought into it Sin and Death. And therefore the name of this garden was transferred to heaven. St. Paul uses the word in this sense when he says (2 Cor. xii. 4), "I knew a man who was caught up into Paradise." And our Lord (117) 118 PAEADISE. said to the penitent thief on the cross, " This night shalt thou he with me in Paradise ; " and in the Reve- lation, " To him that overeometh I will give to eat of the tree of life, -which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." And thus, a word which originally meant only what we mean by th^word garden, came to be a name of heaven. • Is, then, heaven a garden ? or is a garden heaven ? There are those who love a garden so much, and find so much happiness in its many occupations, and in the care it requires and rewards, that they ask for little more ; and to them a garden may be as heaven. But aU persons have not these tastes, nor would it be weU that all should have them ; nor is it well that any per- son cultivate and indulge these tastes until they become excessive. But, without any reference to peculiar habits of mind or of enjoyment, there is quite enough in a garden to make of it a Paradise, if we look at it in the light of Correspondence. Some of its lessons are perfectly obvious ; and merely as comparisons, have always been* known and used. Our Lord expressly refers to one, when He compares the growth of goodness in the soul to the growth of a plant : " First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." So He tells us to " consider the lilies how they grow." But correspondence brings us from the garden other lessons, in number number- less, and of infinite value. The truths which may thus be gathered are more beautiful than the flowers of the garden, and more nutritious than its fruits ; but PARADISE. 119 ■who will venture to do more than pluck a very few of those which are nearest to the touch? Poor as these may be, for their sake we may love the garden better, and more wisely ; and when we seek recreation and health ia its varied and delightful occupations, we may enjoy them the morcj and love all the better the source of so much pleasure to the senses and to the mind. But the question may occur, and demand a careful consideration, whether it is wise to permit a love of the pursuits or enjoyments which a garden affords, to acquire a strong hold upon us, and become, to use a cSmmon but an accurate phrase, a part of our nature ? Certainly, it is not wise to cultivate strong proclivities of taste or affection, or confirm habits of thought or feeling, which will surely perish with this momentary life. But we are not required to believe that one who loves his garden must leave all of it behind, when his material body drops away. Swedenborg tells us that this world is a world of effects ; while the spiritual world is a world of causes ; because that world consists of the causes of which all things around us are the effects. But how do these causes produce these effects ? The answer is, by becoming these effects. A planet, a garden, a cloud, a straw, all exist as we see them now, because there is a spiritual something, which, being clothed upon with matter, becomes each of them. This is true of the universe, and of every part and atom of the universe. It is true of us. He who lives here is a spiritual man, in a spiritual body that is clothed upon with 120 PARADISE. matter ; and while he is so clothed upon, he is thereby enabled to see and use spiritual things that are also so clothed upon ; that is, he may see and use this material world. But when this clothing falls from him, he becomes thereby enabled to see and use those same spiritual things as they exist when they also are clothed upon with spiritual substance, but no more clothed upon with matter than he is then. For these things then constitute the spiritual world ; and there they live who have escaped from their material gar- ments. At first, these spiritual things, when the max? and they are equally clothed upon with spiritual sub- stance and unclothed with matter, are just the same to him which they were before, when they and he were similarly clothed with matter. The earth, the sky, the house, the street, the stream, the tree, the garden^ are to him just what they were when he knew them before. But they soon change, and ere long they change greatly. This enveloping matter is here hard, obdurate, and unyielding. The spiritual substance within is itself hampered, and fettered, and limited by the material envelope. When free from it, the spirit- ual substance obeys the power of mind, far more readily and far more perfectly than it can be made to obey this power while here ; and, as if spontaneously, responds in its forms and appearances to and repre- sents the state of thought and of affection. With those who go downwards, all bright and beautiful things soon grow dim, and are finally taken away, and . PAHADISE. 121 their opposites take their place. But with those who go upwards they hecome more transcendtotly heautiful, and their beauty acquires a life which never fails, and a voice that is never silent. Our gardens are there, for all who loved them innocently : but they, too, have risen ; and, in the language of a true poet, in a passage which I have quoted elsewhere, but indulge myself with quoting again, for its exquisite beauty, — a beauty founded upon and measured by its internal truth, as is all the beauty of all genuine poetry, — we there find a world around us, composed " Of all that is most l)eautoag, imaged there In happier beauty ; more pellucid streams ; An ampler ether; a diriner air; And fields invested with purpureal gleams. Climes Tv-hich the sun, that forms the brightest day Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey." And there, too, all these things are more distinctly and more specifically significant. The truth, the order, the law which pervade them, are seen to be truth, order, and law of the . soul and of spiritual life, before they come forth and are embodied in outward exist- ence ; and, being thus embodied, they form an external world. There they are seen to be so, as they cannot be seen to be here ; but they are so here also. For here as well as there, or rather, now as well as hereafter, the whole universe outside of man, exists only from its pprresppndence with the world inside of him. The 132 FASASISE. relations, and the laws, and the uses of the world of matter, correspond to and represent the things of the world of thought, feeling, and affection. This corres- pondence here, where all kinds of men are mingled together, being general, or that of the whole of the external with the whole of the internal. But there, where men are classified and arranged, and brought together by affinity or separated by diversity, this correspondence is special, and every man is surrounded by all that responds to what is within him. The light of this science of correspondence, which will hereafter shine upon the earth and make it the resplendent mirror of God's providence, has begun to dawn. In this light — only dawning as yet, and still thickly veiled in mercy to our weak sight — let us return to the garden, and ask of it some of its lessons. And at the word they throng upon us, pouring in with such profusion, that it is difficult to select, and very difficult to escape &om this oppressive boundlessness of truth. Let me begin with a thought suggested by the season in which I am now writing. Is the silence, the motionless silerite of all that was a few months since living and lovely, is it the silence of death? Not so ; it is but the soft stillness of repose, of needful rest. Soon will He who promised that the rollino- seasons should not fail, soon will He bring the singing birds, and the sweet air, and the genial sunshine of His spring, and call on these slumberers to awake and put on their beautiful garments ; and the grass FAKAniSE; 123 u and flowers ■will open the concealed treasures of their buJs, and the strong trees lift up their arms, leaf- laden ; and bending to and fro, they will hold forth to His sun and to His air their wave-offerings of praise. The 'repose of winter is absolutely necessary for the garden and for all things .in it. No human art can keep a single rose-bush vigorously active and healthy the year through. It must have its period of rest. In tropical climates, where winter never comes to bring this restorative repose, there are seasons of drought which answer a similar purpose, and our gardeners imitate them in their green-houses ; for by these or other means, every tree and plant must have its oppor- tunity to refrain from growth and arrest the flow of its juices. And who does not know that a torpor Uke that of winter will sometimes creep over us, when efibrt is impossible, and life seems almost suspended. Let us not be idle when it should be spring or summer with us ; but if sickness of the body or of the spirit or any other circumstance compel cessation from activity, then an hour of winter has come, and it has come to bring needfiil repose ; and let us rest, not in gloom and discontent, but peacefully and hopefully. And when spring approaches, among other blessings, it brings to us, in these latitudes, a lesson of patience ; a lesson which we may go out of doors to learn, and may return even within the doors of the mind, and hear the_ lesson there, and apply it to all things there- which have life and growth. Who has not looked at 124: PAEADISE. the opening buds, and wondered that they opened so slowly ? The time has come when we have hoped to delight our eyes with the tender green of the young leaf; and one says to his neighbor, " I believe my trees and shrubs were just as forward a fortnight ago as they are now ; it seems as if they never would open." And yet they surely will open^; — but they cannot be hastened. At first, the lovely days, — when, to use the words of Coleridge — " Winter, slumbering in the open air, "Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring," are far between ; and then more frequent, until at length they prevail, and we are sure that the chains of winter are broken. Then, — the bright, soft days inspire cheerfulness and hope in every heart. But to us they should tell what they cannot tell to others. We may learn a lesson in this matter, from the science of correspondence, and from what we are taught of another life. There too, as well as here, activity must alternate with rest. There also, will be frequently recurring periods of brief repose, answering to the nightly slumbers of this world ; and longer periods, less frequently occuring, which respond to our winters, in some, but not in all respects. All human states are represented upon earth ; and as human states spring fi'om human character, and that goes into another world, there, in some of its regions, all these things may be repeated. But, with the good, winter PARADISE. . 12^5 has passed away forever. They have no need of such long continued inactivity ; or of such congealing cold : or of such deathlike slumbers as in our winters enwrap the earth. They have not these in their minds, and therefore the world outside of them, which is the effect and the mirror of their minds, does not present them. The year of the good is one continued spring ; but a spring which combines with its own charm of ever newly opening life, the warmth and glow of sum- mer and the fruitfulness of autumn ; and yet it is not without periods of quiet rest,, which are filled with the memory of past usefulness, and with the hope of greater usefulness to come. With the spring we go forth to our gardens and begin our labors there. And one lesson which we must learn at once and through the year never forget, every -garden has taught to every man since Adam and Eve went forth from Paradise. For since the Garden of Eden, or since those days represented by that garden and described under that similitude, the whole work of' the garden has been divisible into two things ; one, to prepare for, and introduce, and implant, and cultivate the things we would have grow there ; and the other, to remove, suppress, and extirpate the natural growth. And this has always been true of the gardens we labor upon with our hands, because it is true of the gardens of the mind ; " cursed is the ground for our sake." • It is called a curse ; and in the same way God is sometimes said to be angry, and to take vengeance. The reason-of this is, that the-literal sense of the Word 126 PAEADISE. was accommodated to the Jews, who, more than any other nation that ever existed, were a natural people, with little or no disposition to spiritual thought. They were a chosen people because of this quality and . character ; not chosen because best loved, but chosen as the best instrument for a peculiar work ; for by reason of their character, a literal sense accommodated to them, remains forever accommodated to merely natural thought, in any mind. God, and the doings of God, are represented in this literal sense, as they must appear to be to the merely natural mind. But that which seemed to be, and was therefore called a curse, was in fact a blessing. Like all the punishment which comes from God, or is permitted by Him, it comes from love, and comes to do the work of love, so far as that may be done with the consent and co-operation of man. For his freedom is always preserved and re- spected. Thus, this curse was permitted by that in- finite love whose infinite wisdom was able to convert it into a blessing ; into the blessing of successful labor, for a good end. For a while, this labor may be only a labor of pre- ■ paration ; and of preparation by suppression and destruc- tion. But he who has known, in this world, the pleas- ure of gathering the perfect and abundant fruits and flowers with which his garden repays his earlier work, knows also that aU the hours he spent in suppressing , the natural and noxious produce of seeds which " an enemy" had sown, are amply repaid. He may, at Buch a moment, catch a glimpse, — a dim, uncer- PARADISE. 127 tain, momentary glimpse, — of what he too may know in heaven, if from' his dwelling place on high, he can cast back a thought upon the days, or years, cheerless enough perhaps as they passed, which he spent in persistent efforts to resist, overcome, and suppress the myriads of besotting lusts and thoughts, which were striving to choke the growth on which he knew that he must depend, if he would eat the bread of heaven. One, weary of the work, the endless work of keeping down the weeds, asked a sensible old gardener, why they grew so much more luxuriantly than his flowers. " Because," said he, " the earth is the mother of the weeds, but only the stepmother of the seeds you sow." Just so it is ; and therefore it is of no use to sow the best seeds, if we leave them to the mercy of the weeds, for they will show no mercy. Nor is it enough to pull these enemies up or cut them down, once or twice. We must be always on our guard, for they are always on theirs, ready to profit by our negligence. And yet, it is not so difficult to keep one's garden clear of weeds, if we will but begin early, and then take care that they do not get the upper hand. If when we see them to- day, we say, " I am very busy just now, and they may wait until to-morrow, or next week," be assured they ■wiU not wait a moment. They never wait. On they go, and soon the ground is covered ; and th,en they ripen their seeds and add them to the evil treasures of the soU ; and their extirpation, which would not have been very difficult, becomes almost impossible; they mingle with the good growth like the tares with the 128-" pakadise; wheat, until it is dangerous to destroy them ; and half the crop, or half the beauty and savor of our flowers and fruit, is lost irrecoverably. Just this tale we may tell of the garden of the mind, without the change of a word. The natural growth is, there also, all weeds. There is doubtless such a thing- as natural goodness, and sometimes much of it. But the spontaneous tendency of all merely natural goodness • iS:towards self-trust, and self- worship ; and that is the root of all evil. But there are, thanks to the mercy of our Father, seeds sown by the angels, even in our infancy, and still later, but while we knew it not ; and they may come up in the early or the later spring and be sup posed to be, what they certainly are not, the natural growth. To these good seeds we may add every day and every hour; but the main thing is, to ke^ down the ' Seeds ; what a mystery they are. Every spring we sow them, and so familiar are we with the process-, that we do not see its mystery. But in a world where everything is inexplicable, nothing so soon impresses the thinker with its mystery, as a seed. Seeds are universaL They have always been known to be the means of propagation of most plants. Now it is known that they are so of all, and all animal life is propagated by eggs. These sometimes leave the mother as eggsj which" are afterwards ^matured and opened^ and the- PARADISE. 129 young animal comes forth, as with birds, fishes, most insects, and some serpents. Sometimes the egg is hatched within the mother's body, and the young animal grows there until it is able to live when dis- united from her. This is the case with man, and all animals that give suck to their young, and to some others. Modern science has shown that eggs are seeds ; or that seeds are eggs, if we prefer saying so. For the fertile egg is, as is known, the product of a union of parents ; and it is now as well known that the seed of the plant is formed by the union of male and female flowers, or male and female parts of one flower. A seed,i3 then the child of a conjugal imion ; and it IS the instrument by which life and form are always propagated, and by which races of plants- or animals are perpetuated. That it may be thus, every seed is the product of one series of beings, and the beginning of another ; and in that little thing, the essential nature, character, quality and power of all that preceded and produced it, lie hidden. It connects the past, the present and the future. It belongs to all;* and is the bridge over which all that has been passes over to all that wUl be. The long line of parentage, which runs up through the immeasurable past, terminates in the seed, and deposits in it all the characteristics and all the tendencies which it has accumulated. For everything that is born owes its nature to its predecessors ; and owes some parts of its nature, which may in its future life 9 130 PAEADISE. be developed or lie latent, to every one of its prede- cessors. So, too, it possesses, in a way utterly incomprehen- sible by us, the beginning and possibility of everything that is to come in the long and perhaps unending line of its progeny. Plant an acorn, and from the plumule which you easily find in it, springs an oak; and in that plumule lies the possibility of all that gigantic tree, with all its limbs and foliage, and all the acorns it will bear through centuries, and all the trees and- acorns which may come from them, till earth be no more. There is nothing which the most determined unbeliever rejects, because he cannot understand it, so utterly incomprehensible, so entirely bejbnd the faintest hope of explanation, as this mystery of the seed. How could one be made to believe^ by anything less' than simple experience, that in the minute plumule of that little seed, there is a something derived from a long ancestry, which shall be developed with the growth of the resulting plant, and give to it, its shape, its vessels, its fibres, its leaves, its flowers, and its fruit, shapes, hues, and qualities which mark them out from aU other kinds; and these ' will again gather together and be as it were concentrated in aU the minute seeds which it may produce, and again and yet again in their successors. One may say, indeed, that is not much more of a mystery than belongs to everything of life, and to all the laws and modes of preserving life. Per- haps- not ; because the infinite is everwhere. But whoever supposes- that he believes- aw^A-kgij because he PARAJ)I8E. 131 comprehends it entirely, is undei; aa immeasurable delusion. Another thing most noticeable about seeds, is theit enormous quantity. Earth and air seem to be full of them. "We have much evidence of this in the way that all new surfaces of the ground are so soon covered with grovrth. It is now known also that all mouldiness is but vegetable growth from seeds floating in the air, or hidden in the substance of the thing, and so small as to be invisible. And it is now supposed that decay and disease are often, perhaps generally, produced and propagated by seeds and eggs so minute as to be wholly unappreciable by the senses, aided by the best instruments. Again, the vitality of seeds is marvellous. No one knows how long they lie, waiting for circumstances favorable to growth ; and ready when these occur to spring into life. Thus, we have wheat and other grains now growing and being widely diffused, from seeds taken from Egyptian mummy cases, where they had slept no one knows how many thousands of years. But what is all this spiritually, and first what do seeds correspond, to and represent ? Seeds — the seeds of the mind — are truths; but we must use this word in the widest sense ; not .as including all things which seem true, but as meaning all things of the understanding ; not only propositions to which the mind assents, and by which it is in- structed, or deceived, blit all thoughts, beliefs, opinions and sentiments. These are the seeds, to which pre- 132 FABAPISE. ceding -states of the mind have led, and in which they terminate,' and TPhich in their turn produce and give form and quality to succeeding states. There are no seeds of the mind, which are not the products of a conjugal union ; of a union of truth and affection ; of something in the understanding which was loved by something of the will. For we could not think at all, if some desire or feeling or affection did not enter into the understanding, and fertilize it, and so produce a thought. Nor is it aU truths that produce these effects ; for it is not all seeds which germinate and grow. If one in a million of the seeds of all our trees and plants became trees and plants in their turn, the earth would soon be crowded. But if none became trees, the earth wojild soon be desolate. Not every truth or falsity ripens and grows ; but those only which meet with circumstances favorable to their life and growth. The good seed of the mind grows if the soil of the mind be favorable ; and otherwise it withers and per- ishes ; and the same thing is true of the evil seed. Over this we have much power. Wheat and tares are mingled in every mind ; for in every mind the good sower is busy and the enemy also. There can be no tjiorough sifting out of the tares and absolute removal of them until the Judgment. But every day and every hour, we may, we do, and we must cultivate and help forward, the wheat or the tares. We are always thinking, thinking what we love to think ; for of this perpetual union of the wiU and PABADISE. 133 understanding, tlioughts are the perpetual offspring. The earth and air of the mind, or .all its planes, degrees and forms of life are full of seeds. Vast numbers of these, of which we may be wholly uncon- scious, are ready to plant themselves and produce mould, decay and ruin, if we are not on our guard against them. The infinite mercy of God is also watchful for us, to guard against this calamity. But the same mercy leaves some of this work for us to do ; some means and opportunities for our co-operation with Infinite Love. And these opportunities we must use, — :or neglect at our peril. Seeds reproduce their kind ; but always with some variety; although this law seldom permits of sudden and great changes, it does permit that gradual, suc- cessive, and continued improvement, to which we owe aU our valuable fruits and vegetables ; for all of them probably, and certainly aU which we are able to trace back to their origin, began with something as far from their improved product as the wild crab apple is from the dehcious and wholesome fruit now so varied, abundant, and important as an article of food. In this we have a lesson how, by assiduous and watchful care, we may enable our Father to change and im- prove the fruits and food which grow in the gardens and fields of thought. Probably no one who has received the instruction of Swedetborg, has ever read of those seeds, which after lying in undisturbed darkness for vast periods, have suddenly awoke into full life, and produced ripened 134 PARADISE. seeds which are now spread abroad widely to continue their kind, — no one has heard of this without remem- bering the beautiful doctrine of Remains. Without using this word" we have already alluded to this doctrine ; for it is this which teaches us that from the first moment of existence, even while as yet uncon- scious of it, angels are soliciting every opportunity to implant in the infant mind good thoughts and emotions. And as the child grows, all his relations with his father, his mother, his brethren, his sisters, and his companions, are provided by the Lord and made to be such, that they may afford opportunity for these angel sowers of good seed to suggest or awaken thoughts and emotions of reverence, of obedience, of kindness, of dependence, of humility, of gratitude and of love. These sink into the mind, and are forgotten ; and so they remain there undisturbed and uninjured. And later in life, when perhaps no possible effort of mere memory could bring them back into recollection, the angels who sowed them wait for and find a favor- able opportunity, and gladly help them into life and fertility, and gladly use them as the means of our regeneration and salvation. As all things reproduce themselves in their progeny, by seeds, so all things which pass through their cycle of being, produce seeds. But we have seen that the male and female influence must unite to make a fertile seed. This is one of the later wonders of science. It is now, however, perfectly well ascertained, and universally admitted ; and the manner of its operation PAKADISE. 135 ascertained in nearly all vegetables and^ animals. And it is a testimony of the most emphatic character, to Swedenborg's doctrine of Conjugial Love. For that doctrine teaches us that it is the marriage union of love and wisdom in the Lord which produces the universe ; that it is the image of this marriage that is the means and method of aU creation and reproduc- tion in the universe ; and that the marriage of husband and wife, when it is pure, chaste, and heavenly, is the image and likeness, the effect and the representation of the marriage union in the Divine mind ; and, there- fore, the one central som-ce of all blessedness on earth and in heaven, in time and throughout eternity. The most direct lesson we may draw from this as to the seeds of the mind, is the simple doctrine, already intimated, that no one of these seeds can be, in fact, a seed unless our love and wisdom, or our affection and thought, unite to produce it ; that is, not unless we in some measure know it in the understanding, and with equal and proportionate affection love what we know. Seeds, as we know, are of all sizes ; some being so' small that they escape all human recognition, except by their effects. The question, then, as to every seed, is not its size, but its origin and its quality. So it is with the seeds of the mind. And we may find in this fact, ground for warning and fear, and also ground for encouragement and hope. For warning and for fear, because, apparently casual thoughts and fantasies, which we regard but little more than motes in the sunbeam, may be the organized 136 PiEADiSE. germs of evil Ufe, which, if we refuse to them all welcome and nurture, will perish ; hut if we dwell on them with anything of affection, and cherish them as something dear to us, will fasten upon the mind, and grow there, and become poisonous and destructive. We may also remember this, for encouragement and hope, there where we need them so much. "When we look round upon the earth and see this new dispen- sation of truth so feebly and coldly welcomed, and so utterly imperfect where it is received and professed ; when we see this New Church which comes full of blessing and infinite in promise, so small, so weak, so almost hidden upon the earth, we may well remember that small as it has been, and even yet is, if it be but a living seed, it asks and wiU repay the most assiduous and tender culture we can give to it, and will grow into a tree that shall spread its branches over all the earth, and give its leaves as medicine and its fruit as food for all the nations. And in ourselves, who does not feel that the New Church within him is very small, and very feeble, and obstructed until it can scarcely Uve, and buried almost out of sight ; who does not feel this, as often as he compares the Church as it is developed in himself with any high, pure standard of the excellence which belongs to it ? But here, too, we may remember, not presumptuously, not without fear, but yet with trembling hope, that it may still be a living seed within us. And if it be, then, in Paradise, the garden of heaven, if not here, it will find better culture, less impediment, and more favor- PAKADISK. 137 able conditions, and there grow, where growth never ends, and no good life can be destroyed or sup- pressed. The spring will soon pass away, and summer take its place. Refulgent summer, with its glowing days, and the luxuriant and exuberant beauty upon which its warm rains fall. Has it never occurred to us to won- der at the apparent wastefulness of this redundant beauty ? Probably not the thousandth part of all that is spread broadcast over the earth was ever seen by human eye ; and we have no reason to believe that the lower animals have what we should call the sense of beauty. A few years since, an English botanist, ex- ploring the streams which run into the vast Amazon, through miles and miles of perfectly unknown terri- tories, discovered a plant to which he gave the name of his queen, Victoria. A few seeds have been brought to this country; and from them some plants have grown and blossomed. The flower is nearly the largest ever known ; it is a kind of lily, and seems to excel all others in magnificence and grandeur. As I looked upon it, the thought came to me, why did these flowers, in crowds and masses, for" countless ages waste all that splendor of form and tint upon the dark streams that drain the desolate wilds of the Amazon ? But an answer to the thought was soon suggested. Did not He see it, who made it, and 138 pAbadiS^. caused His rain and dew to feed its tender rootlets, and bade His sunshine paint it gloriously ? When it was brought to England and to this country, and its extreme beauty gave delight to those who beheld it, where did that delight come from ? Whence do all our emotions and affections, our thoughts and opin- ions- come from, if not from their only source, the love and wisdom of our Father ? In and with us, and on their way to us, they are qualified and accommo- dated to our nature, both generally and individually. But there, in Him, they all exist as in their origin ; infinitely and divinely, and most incomprehensibly by us ; but still there they all exist. There existed that delight in the beautiful, before it came from Him into angelic minds, and became their delight, and through their minds to our own, and became our delights Yes ; He sees all that is beautiful upon the earth ; sees it with gladness and deep joy ; and says of it, as in the earliest days of creation, it is good, and very good. And how much more then, must He enjoy the blos- soms of the mind ? How certain must it be that He sees and knows, and enjoys every good thing which we think, or feel, or do. They are His creations through us ; they are our creations from Him, and we may offer them to Him, humbly but gladly, as sure that they will be received lovingly and gladly, as we' are sure that a loving mother looks with delight upon the beauty of a rosebud that her little child brings her as an offering from its own little garden. PAISADISE. 139 My reference to a child reminds me of that often quoted similitude of the Word, in which our children are spoken of as our plants. Among the blessings promised to him that feareth the Lord, it is said, " Thy children shall be as olive plants round about thy table." They are indeed plants, committed to our care ; and no volume would be sufficient tg disclose the correspondence between the care and cultivation which we should take of the plants around our table, and of those in our gardens. Let us now remem- ber, one fact at least, or one law — it is, that here is but the beginning of their growth. All that it is pos- sible to do for them or to give them here, even through the longest life, can only prepare them to be trans- planted to the garden of our Father. There, only, can an unstained blossom be put forth ; there only can the perfect fruit be ripened. Sometimes the heavy burden rests upon us to ac- quiesce in this transplanting, and offer up our children to Him who gave them, at the very moment when the roots of their being are most closely entwined with those of our ov.li life. The heathen of old, in their avrful blindness and depravity, caused their children to pass i,hrough fire to their false gods ; but this woful and almost unimaginable wickedness was but the perfect perversion of good. For we, too, may be called upon to see our children pass away from us, through fire ; not the fires of sinful passion, which the flames that rose in honor of Moloch represented, but the fire of affliction, of sickness, and disappointment, and pain, 140 PAKADISB. But we know they go from us to their home in the garden of God. "We know that He asks us to give up to Him the plants we have raised, and watched, and loved, that He may take them in their tender beauty and in -their fairest and richest hope, and cultivate them, as we cannot. No one can care much about his garden, without thinking of the rain; of that gift, falling before his eyes, from a higher region, and bringing with it life and fertility. But of the rain, in connection with the clouds, I say something elsewhere. Here let me advert only to one point, in part because it is immediately connected with our gardens ; and in part because it is not generally known, or considered. What a blessing these rains are, and how absolutely necessary to all life and aU health, every one knows, and always has known ; and yet none know it sufficiently. For ex- ample : it is but of late that science has ascertained that one of the most important functions of rain, is to wash the air. Every breath we draw, and not we only, but every breath of every animal, from an elephant to a worm or a fly, cleanses from the body that breathes it some foul substance, which would soon destroy him if it were not removed ; and this is the reason that all animals, even fishes, soon die if deprived of air. All these impurities, which result from every motion of a living animal, go forth into the atmosphere, and are PABADISE. 141 • retained there, and thoroughly mixed and diffused by the Tvinds. If they gather into a crowded room and stay with us there, we suffer; and if this is carried v«ry far, as with those imprisoned in what was called the Black Hole in Calcutta, men must die. If these* impurities pass out into the open air, we are relieved. But why do they not, by their gradual accumulation during the long series of ages, poison the air itself? Because the rain washes the air clean. It used to be supposed that the driest season was the most healthy. I heard some persons mourn over the copious rains of a recent summer and predict much disease. But it was at once the wettest and healthiest summer on record. It is sometimes too wet for health ; but unless the rain is so continuous as to prevent the needful sun- shine, it is useful, because it washes awa,y from the air the impurities which gather there, and makes it pure, and bright, and healthful. Gather a cup of rain at the beginning of a shower after long sunshine, and when the water dries away, the cup will be stained ; but gather it after a long rain, and it wiU evaporate and leave nothing or very little behind. But when the rain thus washes the air, it carries the impurities which it gathers down to the ground, and bears them to the roots of the growing plants. To us these impurities are poison ; to the plants they are food, and the very food which the hungry vegetables ask. The snow flake, which we regard as the emblem of purity, is loaded with the impurities of the air ; and the ancient proverb which calls the snow " the poor 142 PARADISE. man's manure," is now verified and explained by science. So also is the fact, that rain water is far better than any other for our plants. The correspondence which connects all this with the Taws of spiritual life and growth, could not be exhibited with any fulness, without trenching upon ground else- where occupied. Yet it may be seen, at once, whither this correspondence leads us, by the mere suggestion of one of the most familiar principles of the science of rrespondence, — that water corresponds to truth; at water, in all its nature and aU its functions, and sir its utility, corresponds to truth ; and in many texts * Scripture this is so obvious, that it has always been "ijticed. Thus, cleansing waters signify and represent cleansing truth ; and when spiritual rain falls on us, this too may be truth, born of the earth and of our earthly experience, but lifted far above it by the influ- ence of our spiritual sun, and in his own time, and in his own way, but always as we need it most, made to fall down upon us. It may be the water of affliction, and it may hide from us for a season all sunshine. But if it teaches us to know our evils, and to repent of them, it will convert even these defilements of the soul into nutriment for whatever germs of goodness may be living within us. She loved much to whom much was forgiven. As with the rain, so with the winds. Every season has its tempests ; and sometimes we look on with dis- may, while the trees of our garden bow and tremble, as if under the lash of a strong and cruel enemy. A PARADISE. 14:3 very good gardener tried this experiment : — he selected two trees of the same kind,, of equal age, size, and health, and near together. One he secured, so that it moved freely when the north or south wind blew, and was stiff when an east or west wind blew ; the other yielded readUy to the eastern or western wind, but could not be moved in any other direction. After a few years he found the stem of each tree oval, and not roimd ; and the longer diameter of each was in that direction in which the tree had been moved freely by the wind ; that is, he found that each tree grew fastest on the two sides which were often being bowed because the tree could move readily to and fro in that direction, and slowest on the sides that were guarded against all motion and aU influence of the winds. The gardener of our souls knows this too, but He, unlike us, can con- trol the winds that blow upon His garden. On a,ll of us tempests sometimes beat ; winds of peril or of afflic- tion ; they shake our health, our position among men, our fortunes, or in some way bring distress or danger. But whatsoever be the direction in which they bend us, even to the ground, all, all are from the hollow of His hand ; over their fierce anger His love reigns ; their wildest fury is guided by His wisdom ; and the good for which they are let loose upon us is our spiritual growth. If winter be the season of repose for the vegetable world, and spring the season for depositing the seed in 144 PABADIS£. the ground, summer is especially that in which we tend and cultivate what we have planted. The whole labor of the cultivation of the garden without us, corresponds to that of the garden within us. This is the general, the universal correspondence between the garden of the earth and the garden of the mind ; the garden without and the garden within. Of the many lessons which may be derived from this correspondence, one is this : To some extent all plants require the same culture. Earth, water, g,ir, light, and warmth are universal conditions of growth. But no two plants agree precisely in the way in which these should be supplied and u'sed. The skilful gardener suc- ceeds, to" a degree which astonishes all who do not know that the secret of his success is the exact adapta- tion of treatment to each of his plants. If I might add one other to ^sop's Fables, and suppose plants as conscious and talkative as his animals were, we will hear that oleander talking to its neighbor, a tea rose : " You see how green and fresh my leaf is, and I am as strong as a tree, and my blossoms are as full as your own, and have their own spicy fragrance ; it is because I am as wet as possible all the time ; and if you would be just as wet, your beauty and your sweetness would be double." If the poor rose followed this counsel, a fungus would soon creep along its stem, its leaves would curl and droop, and its buds fall before they had unfolded. For the rose needs comparatively little moisture, but is as hungry for light and warmth as the oleander is for water. PAKADISE. 145 This is no fable ■when applied to the plants in God's garden of mankind. For His plants are permitted to speak to each other, and influence each other ; and by the abuse of this freedom, just such advice as we have aboye supposed, is frequently given and taken. We all . know that there are some things which are good, and right, and necessary for all ; and it is very hard for us to believe that whatever is good and right for us is not so for everybody. It is hard for us to acknowledge and respect the peculiar nature and the peculiar wants of our neighbor. We wish sincerely, perhaps fer- vently, to do good to him ; but instead of trying to do him good in the way which is best for him, we insist that it is only his fault if he does not prosper under the treatment which would be good for us. We insist that he shall be good in our way, and that no other way is good. Let the garden make us wiser. And there is yet another, but a similar" lesson which our garden m.ay teach us. If we saw him to whose charge we had committed it, mingling sand with the soil in which this plant grew, withholding moisture from that, covering up another from sunshine and leaving it dark and cold, and pruning away the branches of yet another, we might be disturbed. We might say to him, I love all my plants, and I would have you make the soil of every growing thing as rich as it can be, and give to it abundant food and slake its thirst, and flood it with sunlight and genial heat, and let its. exuberant growth extend itself at will. But, if he knew his business and was faithful to our iu- 1? V ■ 146 FAKASISB. terests, he would answer, then will the growth be unwholesome, and decay will stain it, and the blossoms will not open, or the fruit will be scanty and fall before it ripens. What then would we do? That depends upon our confidence in his skill and fidelity ; if we had no doubts there, we should tell him to take his own course, and we should be patient and hopeful. And must we doubt the skill and fidelity of Him in whose wide garden we are all as hving plants ? Of Him, who with unimaginable love, with perfect skill, with exact adaptation to the wants of each, provides for the- culture and the growth of each, and endeavors to give to every one the greatest possible beauty and fruitful- ness. He who cannot err, knows when it will be well to make rich and when to make poor ; when to supply abundant food, and when to withhold it ; when to encourage and promote a rapid growth, and when to cut away "with a sharp knife what, were it un- checked, would be but unwholesome- and exhausting luxuriance. But even while we learn this lesson, we must remember, that we are not only as plants, but living plants ; and all which He gives to us. He offers to our freedom, our responsibility, and our co-opera- tion. It is they which set limits and give direction to our growth, and determine the character of the fruit we bear. It is they which make of it the grape, the olive, or the ripened corn, or the apples of Sodom. "We, wko have human life, are fed in one way, and things which have imperfect life in another, and PiA«AI>ISE. 147 tilings whicli have no life in yet another, and yet all derive their constant subsistence from the same source, and the same effiuence. Infinite as is this mystery of the Divine Providence, we may yet see and understand a little, a very little, of the way and means by which that prayer of the Psalmist, "Feed me with food convenient for me," a prayer which is eternally going •up from every created thing, is always answered spe- cifically and with special adaptation to each one. Man has reason ; and to him a world is given upon which he may exercise his industry and his skill to obtain food, and then use a sound judgment in the* selection and use of food ; and this is the way in whicli •he should be supplied with food convenient for him. But what are the reason and the judgment and the energy thus employed in obtaining food for man? They are the Lord's in man. They are an influx into man of the wisdom and the love of God, which are determined into these forms and these actions and expressions, by the inmost form and nature of the man who receives them. But when it comes to the beast, the bird, the insect, all these are fed through what we call their instinct ; by which word we commonly mean nothing more than an indefinable something. But this instinct is the same love and wisdom, determined into those forms and tendencies which suit the animal and "will preserve its life, by the inmost form and nature of the animal itself. And when we come to the vegetable ■world, we find only another instance of the same universal law. We do not call it instinct now ; al^ 148 PARADISE. though we might as well for any idea that the wotd conveys to the mind ; and there are naturalists who have found it difficult to distinguish between the facul- ties sometimes apparently exercised by vegetables in the search for food, and Similar faculties employed by animals for the same purpose. Thus, in any of our rocky forests, trees may be seen, which having ex- hausted the food in the cleft where they grew, then sent out a root over the crest and down the side of a rock and found the nearest earth which could supply them, and there the root took hold and grew with the tree, and became its chief instrument of nutrition. Bury a bone, or a heap of manure, some feet from a vine, and it will send out a root or two in that direction and be sure to find it. And trees of almost any kind, growing near enough to a ditch to reacii it, will be sure to grow in that direction, until they fill it with their roots. Sometimes it is attempted to explain these things, by supposing that the ditch sends a moisture towards the plant, and the manure or bone exudes a nourishing efliuvium which makes the root of the grape vine elongate in that direction ; and the tree upon the rook sent its roots out in all directions, and only that which first found earth lived, and the rest all perished and passed away. In some cases, explana- tions of this kind are appropriate ; but in some, also, they are utterly inapplicable and inadmissible. But it would make no difierence in any case, whether this explanation or any other were received. The law still remains, as wide as the universe, and is an eternal PABADI8E. 149 manifestation of the love and the wisdom of G-od, that everything which exists, lives or exists because it is so formed, as to determine the influent life which it receives, into precisely those forms and qualities and faculties and activities which are adapted tp that thing; and then all the world is so adapted to every- thing, that each thing, by putting forth its life by its own faculties, may procure and possess the means of preserving life. Let us now look at the difference, in this respect, between man and the lower animals. We have seen already that this difference consists mainly in the fact, that an animal is governed by his inmost form, or nature, or by that instinct which is the effect of this nature, and acts unerringly in obedience to it ; while man has reason, and judgment, and will, and freedom to use, or to abuse all of these. Therefore he nmst use aU of these, if he would sustain life ; therefore he may use them all wrong. He may pervert his faculties, and give himself up to a gross sensuality ; and the appetite, which was intended to operate by its healthy and orderly gratification, as a stimulus to proper effort and an innocent pleasure, becomes de- praved into a minister to gluttony, or, what may be even worse, a selfish and wasteful epicureanism. And all this may happen, because it is for man to deter- mine whether he will so exercise these faculties as to , make them subservient to good, and cultivate habits of order, industry, and temperance, and give to himself eveiy day the fhov^ht, and good cause for the thought, 150 PAEADISE. of G-od's unceasing goodness ; or convert them, as he may if he will every other of the gifts of God, into the means of his own destruction. For to man, and to man alone, there comes the gift of freedom ; and with freedom, responsibility. And there is another lesson we may learn from this. It is a lesson which helps to explain, why, in the pro- vidence of G-od, there are upon earth, comparatively few who, on the one hand, are so rich that they have no inducement to exert themselves in their own sup- port, or, on the other hand, those who are so poor that they must exert themselves in vain, because they cannot acquire by any reasonable endeavor, a comfort- able subsistence. The reason is, thg,t for the great majority of mankind it is well that they should have every inducement to cultivate and strengthen by ex- ercise the faculties and qualities properly employecf in gaining subsistence ; these are foresight, persistent in- dustry, courage, order, and the power of adapting means to ends. By the growth of all of these, the human character is improved, and better adapted to the end for which man was created. Nor is it harmful to him to feel that he is thus earning his own bread, if he knows also that it is G-od who gives him his strength, and his power and will to use his strength, and the bread which is the fruit of his exertions. For , he may thus acquire the habit, and learn, or at least prepare for, the blessing of voluntary co-operation with God. It is not the least of His gifts, nor is it the feeblest PABADISE. 151 evidence of His infinite love, that He does not desire to see men wait upon him as dead recipients of life ; but as living persons, endowed with life which they may possess as their own, and with faculties which they may use as their own. They are not mere channels through which influent life may flow forth unobstructed and imchanged. But they are forms fitted to receive life and become alive thereby ; and not only alive, but formed of self-hood which gives the full sense of indi- viduality, and makes man capable of a consciousness that all his good work is co-operation with a Divine "Worker, and is conjunction with Him by means of co- operation. And for all this, the beginning and founda- tion are the capacity and the habit of work, or of usefulness ; and that this foundation at all events may be laid, leaving to men, in their freedom, to erect what ^perstrncture they wUl upon it, — nearly all men must work. Beyond all this there is yet a higher lesson to be learnt from the manner in which He feedeth all things with food convenient for them. He so feedeth all vegetables and organisms which have no consciousness of life ; so He feedeth the animals which have a con- sciousness but not an immortality of life ; He so feedeth the bodies of men, which are to die ; and He so feedeth their souls, which wiU never die. Food convenient for them He gives to all. Food adapted to them ; the food 152 PAHADI8E. which will contribute' most to their sustenance, and growth, and happiness. At every hour, under all circumstances, of hope or fear, or distress, or enjoy- ment, we have the food that is, at that moment, the most fit for us. Is it angels' food ? That is offered to all ; but what one receives, depends upon himself. We have seen that all vegetable creatures are so con- structed that their inmost forms compel them to select, with an almost unerring wisdom, each one that food, or those elements of subsistence, which each one needs. In the same way, the spiritual nature of each man, or the inmost form of his soul, causes him to select and appropriate from the surrounding affluence of life, liiat which by affinity and adaptedness shall best support his life. The vegetable, because it must select that which best accords with its existing form and nature, does select that which must nourish, support, and confirm its own original form and nature. The spirit of man may do only the same ; and will do so unless the man exercises the power which the tree has not, and gradually modifies and improves his own nature, and in the selection of the food of his soul, takes care that it shall not only minister to its support, but to its improvement, and to such changes as may promote its improvement. The tree cannot grow to be a different tree, or a better tree ; and therefore no such duty rests upon it. The man may grow to be a different man, and a better man ; for precisely the food of the soul which will produce this improwment is offered hian. He may PARADISE. 153 accept it ; but he may also refuse it. He may refuse it and still live ; but never grow better ; and if he does not grow better, he must grow worse. There is one virtue, or quality, which gardening is peculiarly fitted to exercise and develop. This is, foresight. The prosperity, the orderly on-going of life in all its forms, demands this also ; but for the gardener it is a quality constantly in -exercise. Much of every day must be spent in providing for to-morrow ; and while a large proportion of the labor of a garden may seem to be mere routine, there is no more constant cause of the difference between good gardening and bad gardening, than the difference between doing this very work as mere routine, or in doing it with a watchful foresight and skilful adaptation. Because there is no virtue which the practice of gardening so certainly requires, as this virtue of foresight, so there is no one which successful gardening so certainly implies. And if we may assume, that this is a quality which demands culture, improvement, and invigoration, then we may understand why, on the one hand, the cultiva- tion of the ground is, in some form, a universal neces- sity ; while on the other, all the varied circumstances under which it must be carried on, call forth this virtue and keep it in constant exercise. Are we, however, so sure that foresight is a virtue ; that it will be good for us, as immortals, to cultivate foresight ? True it may 154 PARADISE. be, Uiat every day our garden will tell us whether the work of yesterday was well or ill done ; and that to- morrow it will tell us whether we have done, or neglected, the work of to-day. But why should we thus learn to think at all about to-morrow ? Is there not an express command against such thoughts ; are we not told to take no thought for the morrow ? No, we are not told so, if we use these words in the sense they bear at present ; for this is one of the instances in which the- gradual change in the meaning of words has affected a passage of Scripture. In reference to this very tesct, an English scholar has brought some instances to show what the word •" thought" meant when the translation of the Bible in common use was written. After alluding to Shake- speare's phrase, " Sicklied o'er with the pale cast' of thought," and some others, he quotes from a history written at the time that translation was made, a pas- sage, stating that a certain princess did not die of a fever, as was commonly supposed, because she " died of thought." Here we have a key to the meaning which the word had then ; and this meaning answers to that of the Greek original. The command is, there- fore, do not indulge in distressing, wasting anxiety, about to-morrow. We may, therefore, think about to-morrow ; not to do so would be impossible, and fool- ish if it were possible. We may, and we should pro- vide for to-morrow with prudence and caution. But where, and how shall we draw the line between this commendable foresight, and that prohibited anxiety? B.&11AOISE. 155 between th© thought for to-morrow which may prevent evil that. wo~uld otherwise occur, and that thought which would only add to the sufficient evil of to-day ? The answer is, we may do this hy resisting and putting •away an evil faith, and receiving and cultivating a good faith. Every man must have faith of some kind, for otherwise it it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to live. But there are two kinds of faith. There is a natural faith in self, and there is faith in God. And these two are antagonistic and incompatible. So far as a man has faith in God, he has not faith in himself, without God ; and so far as he has faith in himself, without God, he cannot have faith in God. The self-confident, self-relying man may, for a. while, go on his way, exulting and triumphant. But there will come the lesson, if indeed he is capable of learning the lesson, that misfortune is stronger than he. For if he stUl seems to command success, be sure that some compensative fear or sorrow is waiting for him. And then he will be as the strong man bound ; and all his days wiU be tormented with the thought, that to-morrow the enemy may come and spoil his goods. His goods ! They are his evils. Be sure of this also, that never did anxiety yet visit us except to prompt us to find peace ; never, except to weaken and stifle, in a way we cannot see, some enemy of our peace. We may not hear the lesson, or understand it, or profit by it. And' the visitation will be repeated ; the storm will beat so long as there is hope that we may be led to 156 PAKADISK. give up faith in self, and take in exchange for it faith in God. But when the storm is loudest, and the waves are highest, it is that we may remember Him who only waits that call, to come and bid the wild wind and the angry sea be still. , Self-faith is the child of self-love. And we are taught what, until the doctrine of the New Church declared it, was never distinctly known, that neither the parent nor the child, neither self-love nor self-faith, are to be slain or suppressed ; But that both are to be regenerated. "When we say that faith in self is the antagonist of faith in God, we speak of natural and unregenerate self-faith. You cannot love yourself too .well, or care for yourself too kindly, if only you re- gard yourself as the servant, the child of God, and His instrument of use in this universe of use, to be kept always clean, and always near His hand. You cannot have too much faith in self, if it be in self only as His instrument, in self as having no power, no foresight, no good, no hope, but what is given by Him to you. Most true it is, that God watches, provides, acts for all, with perfect wisdom and perfect love. But equally true it is, that while He always acts for us. He desires to do so by acting in us, by us, and through us ; by His own wisdom and His own strength, given to us in the measure in which we can receive them, and put them forth as our own ; yet always with the fervent acknowledgment that all are His. Better, far better than a natural and evil self-faith, is that 'suppres- sion and death of faith in self which lets one wait on FAKASiaE. 157 Crod, only as the powerless babe opens its lips to be fed. But better, far better than this, is the regenerate faith in self, which feels the gift of understanding and of strength from God, and rejoicingly uses them in aU fitting modes of activity, but never forgets that its wisdom is foUy, and its strength weakness, and its joy sorrow, if the glory of all these things is withheld from Him and given to self. Many years ago, I read a pleasant anecdote from Luther's Table Talk. He was conversing with his friends one day about the sinfulness of thought for to-morrow. " Do you see that little bird ? " said Luther, pointing to one which sat upon a tree near the window, singing merrUy ; 'ido you know why he is so happy ? It is because he lives to-day for to-day only, and when night comes he puts his head under his wing, and sleeps, and lets God do his thinking." It is a pleasant anecdote — and yet Luther was mis- taken, in part. The bird does not let God do his thinking for him. It is true that God does it, and with infinite providence. But the bird does not know it, does not rejoice in it, does not cast away from his own mind trust in self, that he may the more rejoice in God's care of him. This man can do, but the bird cannot. That happy, singing creature, has no faith in himself, and no anxiety; — but he has no faith in God, and therefore knows not the blessing of anxiety over- come. Man begins with faith in self, for the very purpose that this may be regenerated, and filled, and vivified by a true fe,ith; and I3ien he may know a 158 PAKADISE. peace and gladness as much higher than the bird's, as heaven is higher than the earth. It has been said, and since often repeated, that men Buffer much more from evils which never happen, than from those which do happen. Persons differ on this point as on all others ; some are much more timid and fearful, and prone to anxiety, than others ; but it is certainly true of most men, and perhaps true of all, that if we reckon up the suffering from fear of what never takes place, and aU our painful care to guard against possible mischief, misfortunes which threaten, only, or seem to threaten, cause more wretchedness than those which happen. Hence, too, a celebrated writer (Montaigne) has said, " I fear nothing so much as fear." It is, then, a question of much interest, why is this world so con- structed and so governed, that over all the paths of life, and over all who tread them, the dark banners of fear perpetually wave. But if nothing is more certain or more obvious than that the absolute antagonist of anxiety is trust in God, then we may believe that anxiety is permitted that we may flee from its torment to the only refuge. We go farthest from anxiety when we go to faith in God. In vain shall we try to escape from it by a vain philosophy, or by hardening ourselves against misfortune, or by insisting that we will be too strong to fear, too self-centred and self-reliant to be shaken. All this only makes the matter worse ; it only makes the need of anxiety all the greater ; it only heaps upon PARADISE. 159 tte heart a thicker mass of the defilements which only the purifying fires of anxiety can burn away. But if we hmnbly, yet hopefully, ask of God to strengthen our trust in Him, two things will happen. First, that efiect will be produced for which anxiety is permitted to assail us, and therefore it wiQ be less necessary, and therefore it will be restrained ; and secondly, for all that remains we have an antidote which cannot fail. In the Apocalypse, the fearful and unbelieving are the first named in the long and sad list of those who shall die the second death. "Why is this such a crime, such a sin? The text itself, which associates the fearful with the unbelievers, answers ; for it reminds us that only the unbelieving are fearful. Let it not be supposed that the change from fear to trust can be made at once. There are those who struggle and strive against anxiety, until at length the principal ground of their anxiety is the anxiety itself, because they infer from it their deep and uncon- querable sinfulness. But this, too, is wrong. AU change from evil to good must be gradual. The con- flict is never ended in an hour. But with every increase of trust and faith anxiety will be diminished, and its hold will be loosened ; and if this work only begin here, it will be completed hereafter. The question may still recur, can it be a good thing for us to acquire and cultivate habits of mind, which ] 60 FAR&BISB. depend altogether upon that never-ceasing series of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow? For how will it be with the to-morrows of the spirit ? Can there be any in the spiritual world? One reason why this world is in the similitude of ■ the other is, that our life here may be a preparation for that ; and certainly we may believe that our train- ing here would be far less valuable, if the habita we confirm and the forms into which our life becomes moulded here, are to be rendered utterly useless by a total difference between the world in which we pre- pare and the world for which we prepare. Why then have we here, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow ? Can we have them hereafter ? Can we have them where the sun does not rise from its cradle of morning light, to run its course as a strong man, and then sinking into the shadows of the west, leave the world to darkness and night, and so end ta-day ? These things are not there ; and if we learn here, by the painful efforts of years, to spend to-day aright for the sake of to-morrow, to think of to-morrow aright, with caution and yet with faith, with hope and without presumption, what will all this avail us there, where there will be no to-morrow? Are we indeed sure that to-morrow will not go with us, even thither ? Space and time will not there be precisely what they are here, but we cannot read a single relation of Swedenborg without being sure that they are there also. To-day and to-morrow are there also, but with this difference : here they are deter- FABABISE. 161 mined absolutely by the revolution of the planet on which we dwell ; there they wUl be determined and i measured by the revolution of our minds, by those progressive and alternating changes of state by which we turn our faces towards the source of light, and rejoice in the sweet influences of day, and then, that we may not forget what we are, are left to ourselves, and turn ourselves away from the source of light ; and in the degree in which we do this we find ourselves in darkness. And from this darkness again, if we gather i from self-knowledge new aliment for true faith, we shall again, with new rejoicing, welcome the dawn of a new day. Thus, there also will be a past, a present, and a future ; there also memory wUl accumulate her treasury of warning and instruction ; there also hope will come, not to disturb our peace, but to be there what it may be here, what it should be everywhere, a joy and a blessing. But can all these alternations continue to eternity ? The days of this life never repeat themselves ; and yet few as are the days of the longest life, even here there is sometimes felt a sense of monotony, a wearying desire for change ; how wUl it be when this series, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow is extended through eternity ? Let us return to our garden and see if we can find an answer there. 11 162 PAKADISE. The inexhaustible variety which lies all around MB in every garden accompanies the wonderful beauty prodi- gally spread abroad. Perhaps this variety is an element of this beauty. If these roses were all alike, they would be less attractive ; but every flower, every leaf glowing with the freshness of its verdure, is the more beautiful, because the beauty of each one is its own ; is, in some respect, unlike that of another, and possesses, as soon as it is examined, the charm of novelty and individuality. Nor are there, in the world, two gardens, or two fields, or two trees, which are not, at once, distinguishable. Hence, as the year rolls on, it is not the spring only which comes to us as a uew thing, and brings promise and hope as well as present enjoyment. Everything we look at, even to the cloud which floats above us, or the bending and intertwining gracefulness of the boughs that winter has bared, discloses, as soon as the eye is fixed upon it, something which we have not seen before. We are not always conscious of this, and perhaps seldom conscious of its efiect ; but that effect is, that to him who has learned to see, there can be no satiety in life, no repetition, no monotony. And we may infer, from that desire for variety, or rather that weari- ness under unbroken sameness, which is among the most universal principles of human character, that it will be hereafter as it is now, and there wiU be constant change, constant progress, constant hope ; and when liie same thing is repeated,. it will come always with a new dress and bring a new delight; -always, FAI^AXlI^. 163 bee^use even eternity can never exhaust infinity ; always, because the perfect unity of God is from the perfect iinion of infinite elements of- life. This 'inexhaustible variety may give new (ioofirma- tion and illustration to a principle of which ve have abeady spoken. All those lovely flowers, of whiqh there are no two leaves perfectly alike in form, in tex- ture or in hue ; and the fruits, which come forward each in its season, each bringing precious food; and around them the graceful forest trees, every leaf of which would name for us the kind of tree which was its parent, all this variety is perfectly constant also, within its appointed limits : no two roses, no two grapes, no two leaves are precisely alike ; but the species are never confounded. This rose will never bear a red flower, and that never a white one ; this will bloom but once, and that through the summer. Every grape, every peach, every strawberry, will be true to its name and its na.ture. But all of them grow in one garden. The same soil feeds their roots ; the same sun and rain and dew nourish and ripen them. Whence this unvaried variety ; and with it this constant dif- ference ? The truth which answers this question, announces that great and universal law which is the key to problems offered for investigation by all the provinces of nature, or rather of the universe, and by all the hours of time, and of eternity. From the beginning of creation this law has declared and will declare forever, that the quality of everything receiving, determineatlw 164 PAEADISE. operation and effect of that -which it receives ; or, to vary the formula slightly, the law th"at everything is received according to the nature and quality of that ■which receives it. This is one of those universal laws, which in its profoundest operation is concealed within the hidden counsels of God ; and yet comes forth to view in aU the affairs of men, and compels an acknowledgment of itself in the simplest and directest manner. Thus, who needs to be told, that if he puts the wholesomest food into a diseased stomach, it may become poison ; or that if he heaps benefits upon a thankless and an evil man, to him they are no benefits, and the only reply that such a man will make, is to turn again and rend the giver. "When we ascend to general and universal truths, we find the effect of this law to be, that everything which exists, be it .an atom of dnst, be it an archangel, is but a receptive form, into which being and life may flow, and which will give back a use, a manifestation and an effect, which are determined by that form. How else does this rose differ from that, and why, else, will it blossom year after year into petals that have a form, a hue, and a fragrance that distinguish them at once, and with perfect certainty, from every other flower that blooms in its neighborhood ; while these again retain their own nature, and display it with the same unerrin" consistency. The answer to this question is, each plant is a form, receptive of the common life and nourishment that come to- all, but each is compelled by PARAMSE. 165 its inmost foiin and structure and nature to bring forth its ovm flower and its o-wn fruit, and to be itself, and nothing but itself. It is easy to see this as a law of the material world. It is as true of the spiritual world, and only less obvi- ous there, because that world is less obvious to us, than is the material world. Let us, for example, remember the descent of the paternal love of God. One in its origin and the same thing always in its essence, how infinitely diversified it is in its action and its manifes- tation. Let us view it now in reference to this law. Wliat it is in the bosom of the Infinite Father, it is im- possible for us to know. But we recognize it from its effect and appearance in ourselves. All mankind know, — for it is of the Divine mercy, that none can escape tliis lesson, — that every child bom into this world, begins to live in utter helplessness ; and would not live, nor would the race be maintained, if there were not in human nature, the love of offspring, or parental love ; a love which in parents, or in those who, when the necessity occurs, act as parents, overcomes fatigue and distress, and leads to exertions that would otherwise be intolerable or impossible ; which softens, for a time and in a degree, even the hardest heart, and makes the mother, the devoted, self-sacri- ficing mother, the ideal of all that we can imagine of the tenderest love. The explanation, not as a poetical and fanciful theory, but the rigorous, scientific expla- nation of all this, is, that man is a vessel acceptive of this element of Divine love, and a form adapted to give 166 PARADISE. it forth in these effects ■; man in one way, woman in another ; this man or woman in this way, that man or woman in that way ; but all in some way, for where there is a total absence of parental love, that person is not human. If we look around, we" see that love in other mani- festations. We see it in the bird, which makes its warm and sheltered nest, and sits upon its eggs, not patiently, but delightedly ; and is so busy and so glad when it is finding food for the young life to which it has given existence. If we look at other animals, we see all, each in its own way, and never in another's, each in the way that is precisely best for it, apd not for another, manifesting this paternal love. What strange results come forth from this. The working bees of a hive can never be parents ; one only in the hive, the queen bee we call her, the mother bee we should call her, she alone lays the numerous eggs which are to perpetuate the swarm ; but what miser ever watched its treasure, and was ready to live for it or die for it, as all the bees of that hive watch for, live for, and if need be, die for, the mother bee ; and with what wonderful care and wonderful skill, they provide for the eggs she lays, selecting a very few, and just enough, from the many thousands, and so housing and feeding these few that they grow into queens or mothers, while all the rest become what their nurses were, working and childless bees. Let us look even at that canker-worm ; disgusting and hateful object as it is, it may more than repay us, PAKADISE. 167 by its lessons, for its devastation of our beautiful trees. We try to protect them ; we bind around the stem of that favorite elm the tarred bandage, which is to stop their ascent. We must renew it continually, not only because it may harden, but because the creature will be impelled, by a love stronger than death, to die upon it, until the dead have bridged it for the survivors. And why not tar the other trees ? Because we have learned that this little worm, with unerring wisdom, distin- guishes the trees, and selects the very ones, and only them, of which the leaves that will come forth when the mother is dead, provide appropriate food for the young which will then leave their nests. That worm began to_ live last summer. It never knew its parent ; ' it can never know its offspring. But it is ready to die in the effort to provide for this offspring fitting food. Who told that worm to do this, and how to do it ? Was it a voice from without, or a voice from within ? It was its own form ; its own inmost form which first determined its own inmost quality, and then received the paternal love of God, and gave to this love this peculiar effect and manifestation. That love, which leads a human mother to watch through the long night by a sick child, and give to the healthy fitting food, leads this crawling worm to seek, with passionate desire, the very tree which will nourish its future progeny. But look at the tree itself, and see the love and wisdom, for so they still are, and still the love and wisdom of God, received in and acting in every plant. 168 PARADISE. Look at the bud of that horse-chestnut tree. The loving human mother wraps her babe in its warm gar- ment to guard it from the winter's cold. • The horse- chestnut wraps its tender gem in thick leaves, so im- bricated and adapted to each other, that nothing can penetrate them, and covers the whole with a thick varnish, so exquisitely adjusted, that while no cold and no storm can affect it, it yields to the opening bud when the first breath of spring calls upon it to come forth. The parental love of God flowed into the mother's mind, and by the form and quality of that mind was made to manifest itself in her care of her bud of being ; and the same love flowed into the tree, and by its form and quality was made to manifest itself by the perfect care which the tree takes of its bud. Thus far, the woman, the bird, the insect, the tree are all alike ; each receiving one and the same influx ; each giving it forth in use and act, exactly -as its form and quality determine. But, beyond this, there is a vast difference between them. In the tree there is neither feeling nor consciousness ; and only for the sake of higher organisms does it accomplish its purpose. Every animal, whether insect, bird, or beast, has a vegetable nature, and has in addition, feeling, con- sciousness, afad in some degree, perhaps a high degree, a sense of happiness in thus doing its appointed work. Man has a vegetable and an animal nature, but also something superadded, which makes him human ; for he ha^ not only consciousness, and happiness, but he PARADISE. 169 has, what is utterly denied to all creatures below him, a power over himself, which shall determine how that work which is given to him to do, shall be done. AU things and beings in the universe, all are vessels, and only vessels, or forms recipient of influent life ; aU are first formed by infinite wisdom so that they may receive of infinite love and wisdom, and exist by this reception, and live by giving forth, according to the form of each, what it receives. But to man, and to man alone, is given the power of afiecting a&d chang- ing the interior forms of his own being. He has freedom ; he may use it, not to prevent the influx of life, for that would be impossible ; but to change the quality of his own nature, to change the form of his own being, and in this way to change the operation, the manifestation, the character in act and effect, of the life, which having first fiowed into him, becomes his life, and then flows forth from him as his life. No animal and no plant has this power, for they are made perfect in their own way at the beginnings and could gain nothing by improvement. But man has the power, and therefore has the duty, of never- ending and unbounded improvement. See what the human mother may do. She may ascend to heights which the animal cannot contemplate. This paternal love which enters into her heart to be- come her life, even as it enters into their heart to becoiiie their life, she may spiritualize, which they cannot do, or think of doing. "Without in the least ftbatiag the warnftth and tenderness of her love and 170 PARADISE. care for the babe she nurses from her breast, she may look upon it as a recipient of life from a Heavenly Father, as endowed with a certain, an inevitable im- mortality ; as having the possibility of becoming an angel ; and she may look upon herself as called upon to nourish its inner life for this immortality, even as she is called upon to nourish its outer life for this world. That little babe now draws its life from her own bloocj ; how much more and better she will love it, when she remembers that she may, with the assistance of her Father and His angels, — an assistance which will wait upon every effort, — so train that young im- mortal, that he may presently draw spiritual food, angels' food, from the bosom of a spiritual mother. For God has provided His church to be a mother to the souls of its children ; and this is the mother whom, in the spiritual sense of the command, we are to honor.' So also every true church He fills with His paternal love ; and it is a function of a church to acquire and digest all knowledge of truth, all good affections, and incorporate them into its life, and prepare of them, for all who rest upon its bosom, the very food they need. It is not enough to say that man has power thus to change his very heart, and make of himself a new man. For he has no power not to do eithfer this, or its opposite. It is for this our days, and our to-mor- rows are given us here ; and will be given us forever. In every one of them we do, by an irresistible necessity, this work either of improvement, or of deterioration. Yesterday we were, to-day we are, and to-morrow we PARADISE. 171 shall be, only vessels receptive of life, and live only by the going forth of this life as our life, in our acts. But ■when we shall awake to-morrow, this life in its going forth, this life which is our life, wUl he, inevitably and certainly, more the life of heaven, or less the life of heaven, because of the influence we exert to-day upon the form, character, and nature of our inmost being, by resisting our evils, or by indulging our evils. Take no thought for to-morrow ! And yet forecast is a virtue, and a prudent provision for the future, an unquestionable duty. It is certainly well that all should endeavor, especially in the days of their strength, to lay aside, if they can, something from their super- fluities, and thus gradually accumulate the means of subsistence when their strength shall fail. Nay, more than this, it is well to labor in one's calling diligently, and profit by the opportunities given for accumulation, and thus gradually acquire the means of performing those uses for the neighbor, and for the church (for that is our neighbor), which require the expenditure of money. How are we to do this, without corrupting the soul? How are we to do this without exposing ourselves, to the danger, the fearful danger, of finding in the day of our account, that the seed sown in our hearts has perished under the sufibcating pressure of the riches of this world ? Let me answer this question from a passage of 172 PARADISE. Scripture. When the children of Israel were wander- ing in that wilderness which represented the wilder- ness of life, they were fed with manna. And they were to gather each day, enough for that day. And when, tempted by avarice, or by undue thought for to- morrow, they gathered for to-morrow also, before that morrow came, it stank and bred worms. But there was one exception to this. If they gathered it on the eve of the sabbath, and for the sabbath, then it re- mained pure, wholesome, and nourishing. The sabbath means peace ; and because there is but one true peace, because there is no sabbath peace for man but that which comes down- from heaven, born there of faith in God and the regeneration of faith in self, and possi- .ble for us only when we also have this living faith ; therefore the sabbath of the soul means a state in which that faith in the Lord prevails, which is the only possible source and the only possible foundation of a true peace. If we gather of ourselves, and only to ourselves, we gather /or ourselves destruction. If, and so far as, our faith in the Lord is true and genuine, — this faith tells us, that when we do what lies in us to do, and exercise the faculties He gives us in the way He points out, and walk in the light of His "Word,- and are prudent with the cautions which He teaches, then we may dismiss anxiety, and bid it return to the abodes from which it came. Then we shall believe, that the issues of success or disappointment are in His hands, and will be determined by His love ; we believe and we ask Him to help our unbelief; to help us to receive FAJRASISE. 178 from His hands what may seem to be a good, or -what may seem to be an evil, equally certain that if it comes from His hands, it must be the gift of mercy. Then, the sabbath is drawing very near to us. Then, we may gather safely, all that a reasonable and intelligent prudence, watchfiil for our neighbor's interests and rights as well as for our own, enables us to gather. And what we so gather will not be tainted with corrup- tion ; neither will it breed worms. But it will strengthen our strength ; it will nourish our life ; it will impart to our life something of the life of heaven ; it will infuse even into our natural enjoyments some consciousness of the peace of heaven. It will inspire the hope, and it will justify the hope, that we are spending to-day in this world aright, and that we shall find to-morrow in heaven. Let us once more return to our garden ; for I would gladly give some intimation of the lessons which may be learned by means of correspondence, not only from its laws, its seasons, and from its products, but from our operations there. Let me select that almost mysterious one, of budding, or grafting. It is in the season of summer that we bud our plants. To do this, we open the bark of a tree or plant of which we wish to change the fruit or flower, and insert the btid of another of the kind we desire to propagate. 174 PAKADISE. This inserted bud soon roots itself in the old stem ; and when everything else is cut away, the new bud becomes the plant. In this manner, or by grafting or inarching, which are similar operations, we multiply our finest fruit atid flowers, which it would be difficult to propa- gate otherwise. The operation is not difficult, and is generally suc- cessful, if we pay due regard to three conditions. One of them is this. There must be a proper affinity or relation between the natural stock and the inserted bud. If we bud a poplar on an oak, or a rose on a camelia, the bud will as certainly perish, as if you nailed.it to a post. If we bud a pear on an apple, there is kinship enough to let the bud live awhile, but not to let it thrive. So a rose may be budded on any other rose, and live ; but we must select the stock in refer- ence to the bud we insert, if we would have a healthy and prosperous plant. Now, let us remember this when we try to insert or insinuate our own truth into the mind of our neighbor. If he do not stand in a ■fitting relation to that truth ; if there be not some readi- ness and some affinity, we shall act more wisely, if we let him alone. Our labor will certainly be lost ; we may, perhaps, irritate and hurt him, but can do him no good ; the bud, if we succeed in inserting it, will surely perish. Another requisite for success in the operation is this. We must bud our plant at the right season, and this is when growth is active and life vigorous ; or, as the gardeners say, when the sap runs freely. We may PARADISE. 176 know this by the prompt and easy opening of the bark ; as we open it and lift it, it seems to welcome the stranger, and offer to it soft new wood to root into. At almost any time we may bud in some way, if we insist upon it, but not profitably. A few months since, I saw my gardener at work among my roses. He was a young man, without much experience. I asked whift he was about. " Budding the roses, sir." " But," said I, "the stocks are too hard; the bark will not open." " Well, sir," said he, " the bark does not open very easily, but I can get it open." And I answered, " The season has gone by. Perhaps warm rains and growing days may come again, and then try the bark again, and if it yields readily you may bud your roses. Now, when you must tear the bark open, the bud cannot live ; and you only make a wound and leave a scar.'' So said I to him then. Let me hope that I shall not forget the lesson I gave to him, and to my- self. The third thing to be carefully regarded, yea, very carefully,is this. We must be sure that the bud in- serted is really and truly that which should be inserted. There are persons who make it their business to act as budders and grafters. They are very useful, and pro- bably much the greater part of our finest frait is due to their labors. I have often employed them. Some times, however, the/ have deceived me, and did not put in the bud which I desired them to. And some- times they put in a new bud, of which I knew notliing, but accepted it in the belief that it woiild give me deli- 176 PARADISE. cious fruit, as they declared it would. Sometimes thejr were in error, and sometimes so indifferent that they did not care whether they were right or not, if they only satisfied me for the time. But, they were gener- ally good workmen, and did what they had to do with . a grace and facility, which induced me to place entire Sbnfidence in them. Now, whether they are mistaken from negligence,-7^ and extreme care is always necessary, — or whether they are poor and imperfect judges of what is genuine and good, and so deceive, in either case, or in any case, if the bud be a wrong one, the error cannot be found out until years afterwards, when the bud becomes a tree and bears its fruit. And if this fruit be poor and worthless, it is very, very vexatious to make the dis- covery then. This last season, some pear trees which were budded for me some ten years ago, with, as I supposed, the choicest kinds, came into bearing for the first time, and bore very miserable fruit. But I am no longer young, and hesitate about re-budding them. Let me, however, turn my disappointment to this account. Let me remember how sad a thing it will be for us, what a woe upon our very souls, if hereafter, years hence or ages hence, we discover by the fruit, that the workmen whose business it was to engraft new and genuine truths upon our minds, and whom we wel- comed because they did this work so pleasantly that we thought they did it well, were all the time de- ceivers or deceived, and heedless or ignorant; or through want of care, or of knowledge, or of gooi PARADISE. 177 judgment, were unfitted for the business they had undertaken. Is there not another lesson which the garden offers, — the greatest of all ? Shall we forget, while we are doing all that our garden demands, who it is that makes all we do effectual ? How much do we fail in the comprehension and recollection of the answer to this question, although it be one which all religion has ever given. "X