Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/230

 and the more thousands of years they pass, they attain to a more joyous and delightful spring; and so continue on to eternity, with fresh increments of blessedness according to their respective proficiencies and gradations of mutual love, charity and faith. Those of the female sex who had departed this life broken with the infirmities of old age, having lived in faith towards the Lord, in charity towards their neighbor, and in conjugial love with their husbands, after a succession of ages appear to advance towards the bloom of youth, with a beauty surpassing all description; for goodness and charity form their own image in such persons, and express their delishts and beauties in every feature of their faces, insomuch that they become real forms of charity. Certain spirits that beheld them were astonished at the sight. Such is the form of charity, which in heaven is represented to the life; for it is charity that portrays it, and is portrayed in it, and that in a manner so expressive, that the whole angel, more particularly as to the face, appears as charity itself in a personal form of exquisite beauty affecting the soul of the spectator with something of the same grace; by the beauty of that form, the truths of faith are exhibited in an image, and are also thereby rendered perceptible. Those who have lived in faith toward the Lord, that is, in a faith grounded in charity, become such forms or such beauties in another life. All the angels are such forms with an infinite variety; and of these heaven is composed."—A. C. n. 553.

Every candid mind must admit that this is altogether reasonable. And not only so, but any different view would at once appear unreasonable. And the rejuvenating process in the other world, though it may proceed more rapidly than the aging process in this, proceeds according to a law no less fixed or intelligible. The Divine wisdom and beneficence are alike reflected in both