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sublime mountains, in "those eternal flowers of the skies" the stars, in the endless heavens, and in the great deep, to lift our spirits from the visible to the invisible, and raise our thoughts above this grave of things-from moving time to steadfast eternity, from ourselves to God-in whom our hopes may rest for fruition, far beyond what the brightest and highest faith can promise. Thus we receive from the Parent of our spirits, if we trust Him, a sustaining consolation proportioned to the need we may experience in our pilgrimage. The beauties of nature are subject to decay; darkness may obliterate the skies, and a dart from the clouds may quench our sight, but there is no interruption to the benevolence of God, or to the peace of those that trust Him.

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CHAPTER IX.

TEACHINGS OF LIGHT.

As, in treating of sensation in this place, it is not the object to teach its physiology, but merely to point out the influence of moral motive upon the formation of ideas, it will suffice to direct our thoughts more particularly to sight, since this is the most intellectual of our senses, and the medium through which we ordinarily become conscious of our moral relation to existence. Without light-poetry, philosophy, literature, and religion must have remained unknown to man. But we are not appointed like our kindred worms to house ourselves in darkness. Our souls, familiar with the light, expatiate in immensity, and converse with beauty.

The direction of the eye expresses the state of man's mind, but it turns not to Heaven except when we are excited by strong emotion, or by the urgent longing for comfort, light, and truth. Every feeling has its appropriate action. Adoration and pathos naturally express themselves in much the same manner, by raising our eyes upward, because these states of soul call those muscles into action which are peculiar to the eye of man. No other creature is formed voluntarily to look upward; but devotion and agony equally constrain us to turn from the troubled earth toward the calm of eternity and heaven, as if in our necessities to demand the help of the Highest.

Light was made for us, and therefore the soul looks for it in all directions. It comes to us in its sevenfold harmony from above, and the sublimest vision of our spirits is heaven itself. Whether we contemplate the

abyss of stars, the serene moon walking in her brightness, or the sun enthroned in his glory, we are almost ready, in the bare sensation of unsearchable magnif cence, to bow in worship to the visible majesty above us. Thus the earliest idolatry began when men looked up to heaven, and forgot their origin. But we have been spiritually instructed, and in spirit would adore the uncreated Light that in the beginning called all things into being. Thus the eye becomes the instrument of intelligence, and by its aid we perceive that the moral law is founded in the nature of physical, in relation to rational existence. The Commandments, written by the finger of God on the top of Sinai in the tablets of granite, and also in the heart of man, are but a condensed transcript of the law of the universe, brought into direct accommodation to the human socialities of earth. The grand code of God, as the moral Governor of all worlds, is inscribed by his own hand upon the starry firmament of his power, and all existence is the development of law. If we ascend into the heavens, He is there. In the Father's house are many mansions; the glories of the revealing night speak of the household of our God. Suns and systems indicate in light the overflowing beneficence of their present Maker, and it is not in the power of our reason to believe that the associated spheres revolving together in their varied radiance, and modifying seasons to each other, as they roll on in eternity, are without the doctrines of love among them. We can not believe that the ten thousand beauties unknown to earth, with influences innumerable, effectuating accommodations intricate and excellent beyond conception, belong to dead and spiritless worlds. No: a plenitude of goodness is for beings who can enjoy gifts, and praise the Giver. Those arrangements, so vast, various, and sublime, for the unceasing manifestation of benevolence and power, must be intended to

meet the demands of moral and intellectual existence. The myriads on myriads of worlds must teem with appropriate inhabitants, who learn from the reciprocal ministrations of Heaven that the Creator is among them. We can not look up, and think otherwise than morally, for the socialities of heaven are visibly expressed in the very light that enters into our souls; and as surely as light is every where, and every where brings visions of Divine beauty to minds formed to receive them, so surely must we conclude that the worlds above and on every side of us are the abodes of beings having some discernment of their relation to each other and to their Maker.

There must be ideas among them, and ideas are but the responses of reason to the intentions of the Creator, in the existence of objects. Ideas, therefore, must be attended by corresponding emotions and affections; and wonderful beyond our thoughts must be the pleasures of beings who reciprocate sentiments of joy and of knowledge, in their contemplation of the magnificence, wisdom, loveliness, and love, revealed every where in the scenery and arrangements of the heavens.

All objects and all elements are but adaptations to the social necessities of mind. We may not be able clearly to infer the moral and physical constitutions of the dwellers in those far-off worlds, but we are certain that all their experience in the marvels of creative skill, so richly at work for their bliss, must largely teach the universal lesson-" God is love." All who can receive this word so far apprehend the Divine nature, and must feel that law which says, He alone is worthy of supreme affection who bids us love one another. This, at least, is the law propounded to man; and turning from the heavens to our homes, we feel that beings incapable of love are incapable of reason and of happiness. Moral beauty is the image of God, and we minister His spirit only when we enjoy and

diffuse His charity. The world that is not constituted on this plan must be a world of darkness and disorder —a place of minds that would hide themselves from God, because they will not trust Him. Would they but think of Him as love, they would ask and feel forgiveness, and then walk on rejoicing in light.

Thus, whether we look to the associations of heaven or those of earth, we return, at last, to our moral consciousness, and therein seem to stand as upon the interminable firmament, from whence we every where perceive the operation of the same law wrought into the very materials of existence, as well as into the very being of our souls-love-the bond between the Creator and the creature, without the felt indwelling of which it is the manifest will of God that none shall be blessed. The absence of this principle is that outer darkness, in the unsearchable depth of which every spirit wanders who in selfish loneliness seeks a path to which wisdom has not pointed. There is no curse but in the essential malediction which the perverse heart utters on itself, and on all that oppose it; for the mind that is willfully set upon merely obtaining its own way, finds the happiness of others is apt to be an impediment to its selfish aims, since the law of righteousness is the law of charity, embracing all alike: hence disobedience is always associated with wrath, and its anger is so mad that it always acts as if it thought the law was hate; for to be at variance with heaven is to depart alike from love and from truth.

All power is God's; we see it in creation, we feel it in our minds, and our very eyesight informs us that love and power are infinite, and therefore impartial. We turn toward the heavens, and the boundary is not there, but in ourselves: we find no limit but in our capacity to expatiate, and if in thought we would follow our vision into space, and pass on, we become conscious that we have entered into eternity, for there is no

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