Page:Natural Phenomena and their Spiritual Lessons.djvu/16

4 have long since come to be regarded as meadow, grove, and stream, and nothing more; and thus

only to be regained by retracing in an ascending order the steps by which the descent was accomplished. Still, though perception, knowledge, and conviction of the representative character of the outer world have ceased, there are a few phenomena whose lowest and most external analogies are even now recognised;—not, indeed, as types of corresponding spiritual phenomena, but as emblems that poetry willingly appropriates as belonging to her own domain. Prominent among these is the metamorphosis of insects; and, in particular, the transformation of the crawling caterpillar into the winged butterfly, resplendent with colour and burnished gold.

The contrast between the first and the final state of this insect is too striking, and some of the analogies of each are too obvious, to have escaped general notice; the one being received as an emblem of man's mortal, earthly life; and the other as an image of his immortal and heavenly state, when released from the trammels of materiality. The caterpillar is a creeping worm—often unsightly and repulsive—living close to the earth, and possessing feeble powers of locomotion and imperfect senses. It feeds with indiscriminate voracity, nearly the whole of its body being occupied by a capacious stomach; and dwells alone, without power to perpetuate its species. The butterfly is an aerial creature, all grace and beauty. It inhabits a higher element, emulative of a discrete degree above the scene of its former existence, and sails in freedom on the soft summer breeze, above the stains and dust of earth. With