Page:Natural Phenomena and their Spiritual Lessons.djvu/32

20 clearest intellectual conviction that, passing by the object of desire, the Lord gives us that which will promote purification from evil and fitness for eternity;—that when we ask for earth He offers heaven. So long as we desire to choose our position in life, to select our path, and guide our steps in agreement with our own will, the knowledge that our heavenly Father is actually doing all this for us, better and more wisely than we can do it for ourselves, is a source of neither rest nor peace. But when the truth is elevated into the affections, and we love the end which He regards, and, like little children clinging to a father's hand, willingly abandon self-dependence to be led by Him alone, the truth is transformed into good, and yields pure consolation, sweet peace, and profound repose.

Our reflections have as yet been limited to the first and last stages of insect life; but between them lies a third;—a state of temporary death. Death also intervenes between the corresponding states in all the degrees through which they have been traced: the death of the mere love of knowledge, of the intellectual love of truth, of the natural selfhood, and, finally, the death of the body. Life is sweet to the little insect, as it feeds on soft vegetable tissues, basking in the sunshine and warm summer air. Dear, too, is the accumulation of varied knowledge from the fertile plains of science and literature; not less attractive are the wide intellectual fields of spiritual truth; dear is the life of the proprium, with all its selfish and worldly ends and aims; while the love of animal life itself is instinctive and ineradicable. But, when the larva state is mature, the insect retires from its life's occupation of eating, and prepares for its approaching metamorphosis. It