FullReads

“Does it not thrill the soul with the joy of a beautiful hope to imagine Abraham, or any loving spirit, as rising from the material to the spiritual world, ‘full of years,’ or states of wisdom and love, for ever to grow young among his ‘own people?’

“What to Abraham, now, were all of those flocks, and herds, and men servants, and maid servants, that had made his earthly riches? They were nothing more to him, in his new heavenly life, than that ghost of a, body ‘he gave up.’ The only riches he could carry with him were his spiritual riches–his powers of thinking and feeling. All of his outer life was given to him to develop these powers. All of his natural surroundings were as a body to his natural thoughts and feelings, in which they might grow to the full stature of a man, that he might become ‘full of years,’ or states.

“And thus to us is given a natural world; and its duties and ties are all important, for within the natural thought and feeling the spiritual thought and feeling grows, as does the soul in its material body. And like as the soul ever feels within itself a separate existence, higher, and above that of its material organization, so also does the spiritual thought and feeling realize itself in its world of natural thoughts and affections; it sighs to be gathered to its ‘own people,’ even while it loves its natural ties. And, now and then, it has beautiful glimpses of the consociation of spirits according to spiritual affinities.

“The love of the spirit, thus warmed into life, should descend into its natural ties. Uncongenial brothers and sisters are often thrown together and bound by the most indissoluble natural ties. We should cultivate these natural affections and family ties as types of the beautiful spiritual consociations of Heaven.

“Our spirit must grow in the constant exercise of natural affections, or we can have no capacity for the spiritual. If in this world we live morose, ungenial lives, crushing down the budding affections, and the active thoughts springing from them, can we ever be angels? No, assuredly not; for the angels are like the Heavenly Father, in whose light of love they live. They delight to do good to every created being, whether good or evil. They would not, and could not recognise an evil person as a congenial spirit, but for the sake of awakening in him some spark of a beautiful love, a disinterested thought and affection; they would crown his whole life with loving kindness and tender compassion. A true, heavenly angel could be happy in the effort to do good to the most fallen human spirit; and should not we imitate them, that we may be as one of them, one in thought and feeling with them?

“To love!–love with our every power of being–is the only eternal reality. From love springs thought; and thought and affection are the flesh and blood of the spirit. The spirit grows upon what it feeds, as does the body upon its material food; and to stint the spirit of its food is a sad detriment to our after-life.

“A perception of the heavenly life should arouse us to a power of loving every human being that we come in contact with, and make us realize that to love and serve is the happiness of angels, and the principle which conjoins men and angels to God.”

When the last word was breathed, as it were, in a soft, holy brightness, from Rosa’s lips, Paul sealed them with a kiss. How much he had learned from the perception of a mind that was so wholly gentle and feminine, that its substance seemed all of love; of a love that received the impression only of heavenly things!–while he, with all of his brilliant talents and masculine understanding, felt that his contact was with this hard outer world of material facts and realities; and that oftentimes the very density of the atmosphere in which his mind dwelt obscured and clouded the delicate moral perceptions of his being.