Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/375

 one of the conditions which we know to be essential to people's highest happiness on earth. Indeed we can hardly conceive of the angels as being very happy, if the capacity for still higher human excellence were denied them. Certainly the angelic state would be less happy without than with the condition of eternal progress.

The truth of this doctrine may be further argued from the intense activity which exists in heaven. Wherever there is life, there is activity; and the higher the life, the more intense the activity. And it is an eternal law that all our human powers—our intellectual and moral faculties not less than our bodily organs—are expanded and strengthened by exercise. The man who daily exercises his powers of memory, reasoning, calculation or analysis for a considerable length of time, finds that he thereby comes to remember, reason, calculate or analyze with ever-increasing facility. These faculties are improved by exercise. So with the moral feelings. A person who exercises himself habitually in deeds of kindness, grows more and more kind. The more one practises the laws of charity, the more he comes to love these laws, and the more charitable he grows. The more we sympathize with the unfortunate and sorrowing, the more tender and sympathetic we become. And on the other hand, by the unrestrained indulgence of our lower propensities—our pride, avarice, conceit and love of self—the more proud, avaricious, conceited and selfish we become through such indulgence.

Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that all the powers of the intellect and all the dispositions of the heart are strengthened by exercise. And the more they