Page:Marriage Its Origin, Uses, and Duties.pdf/15

 life, and fertility, clothed anew with beauty, and determined anew to the production of uses. We see this resemblance in the economy of the animal, and even of the vegetable kingdom, by which the continuance of creation is provided for by successive generations. Nor is there a single object in nature, however minute, in which this resemblance may not be traced; for nothing exists which does not contain in itself something analogous to love and wisdom, and to their conjunction. Creation, therefore, from its highest spiritual to its lowest natural constituents, consists of a succession of forms produced from the united activity and operation of Divine love and wisdom,—forms, therefore, in which these may exist as in their created and finite receptacles. But the noblest of all created forms, are human minds, for they were so formed that the Divine love and wisdom might exist in them, not only as in their receptacles, but as in their images. And they exist in them as in their images, when man loves from the love of God and is wise from the wisdom of God—when love and wisdom from God are united in the human mind. The union of love and wisdom in the human mind we call THE HEAVENLY MARRIAGE, because it is a derivation from, and an image of the Divine marriage; and because it forms heaven in the soul, and thence gives birth to all those heavenly affections and thoughts, works and words, joys and delights, which make up the fulness and perfection of the heavenly life and of heaven itself. This holy union in human minds