Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/50

 rudimental or infantile form, some of the organs which belong to him in his mature state are wanting, and others are very imperfect or but partially formed. Yet his form in general is human. There is the rudimentary man. But as to the higher capacities of his nature—as to those intellectual and moral powers which give to him the supremacy over all other creatures, and are the essential human characteristics—they do not manifest themselves at all at birth. No living creature is more destitute of the properly human faculties, than a newborn babe. But as this rudimental form unfolds beneath the salutary influences of heaven and earth, the man gradually comes forth, and increases in wisdom and in stature.

This law, then—the law of progress from the lower to the higher, or from the less to the more perfect, in everything endowed with life, until it reaches the fulness and perfection of its being—stands revealed on every page of the volume of nature. Nor do we meet with a solitary exception to this law. The Divine creative energy obeys it everywhere. "The principle of progressive advance," says Prof. Bush, "from the imperfect to the finished, from the rude to the refined, from the infantile to the mature, from primordial elements to elaborate formations, from tender germs to ripened fruits, from initial workings to ultimate consummations, is everywhere apparent." Yet what a palpable contradiction of this great law, is the doctrine that angels were created such, full-formed and perfect in the beginning!

Reasoning analogically, therefore, we are brought to the conclusion that angels, like all other created beings,