Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/113

 -or, of a person passing quickly from an infernal to a heavenly state, and remaining permanently in it? Paul's conversion while on his way to Damascus, was sudden. But were all his evil loves as suddenly subdued, and "the old man" or the natural proprium brought under complete subjection to the Divine? So far from it, we find him many years after his conversion, making this sad but frank confession: "I am carnal, sold under sin. . . . To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. . . . I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me;" and he concludes with the exclamation "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. vii. 14-24.) Which shows that the apostle's state was yet many removes from that of heaven.

And the Scripture confirms the teachings of analogy and experience. Our Saviour as to his humanity, is our pattern. And we read that "He grew, and waxed strong in spirit;" that He "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man" (Luke i. 80; ii. 52)—language which shows that the process of glorification, or the descent of the Divine Life into, and its union with, the human, was gradual. We are told also that "the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard-seed . . . which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." (Matt. xiii. 32.) Again it is compared to seed which, when sown, springs up