Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/200

 terms which are employed in all languages to express the most intimate and tender earthly relationships, are used to express the relationships existing in heaven, and among heavenly-minded people on earth. Thus God, in respect to the inmost, paternal, heaven-begetting principle of his nature— Divine Love—is called the Heavenly Father. And in his relation to the church, or to those whose hearts have become wedded to Him by love and obedience, He is called Bridegroom and Husband. And those thus wedded (which is the case with all who have in themselves the heavenly marriage of good and truth) are called Mother. Wife and Bride. And the angels and regenerate men—all who are born of this heavenly Father and Mother, that is, born again, "born from above"—are called children. They are God's children, begotten of Him in his own image and likeness; and viewed in their relation to each other, they are brethren, and are so called in Scripture. Thus Jesus says to his disciples: "One is your Father—God; and all ye are brethren."

Here, as in other passages of Scripture, we are taught that there are spiritual relationships to which the natural correspond, and of which they are the representative image. And as spiritual things are superior to the natural whereby they are shadowed forth,—the spiritual sense of the Word superior to the natural sense,—the spiritual world superior to the natural world,—the soul or spirit of man superior to the body,—therefore spiritual relationships are, and must needs be, superior to the natural. They are more interior, more enduring, more perfect and blissful.

Now, when the natural body dies, man passes (in a