Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/176

 this abnormal course, sooner or later death ensues. Such is the law, fixed and unalterable. There is no escape from it. And what a striking exemplification does it furnish of the great law of spiritual life, the law of neighborly love!—yes, and the sure consequence of a persistent violation of this law.

Although one life pervades all the bodily organs, they do not all receive it alike. Their receptivity is as various as their forms. Some receive it in a higher degree than others, and perform more important and varied functions, and may therefore be said to be of a higher grade. And so there are gradations of rank among the members of the body. No one is entirely independent of the rest. No one is so high that it can dispense with the services of the most humble, and no one so low that it cannot do something to promote the health and strength of the highest. The head needs the foot, and the heart the hand, no less than the foot needs the head or the hand the heart. Even the hair and nails and the coarse cuticle on the soles of the feet have their use, and add to the beauty, completeness and perfection of the whole.

Behold, here, then, in the human body, a representative image of heaven!—the most perfect image of order, harmony, unity, freedom, mutual dependence and brotherly love! The relation of the bodily organs to each other, and the uses they respectively perform, are as the relation existing among the angelic societies, and their respective uses; because heaven as a whole and in each of its parts, is in the human form. And notwithstanding there are in heaven as in the human body grada-