Page:Natural Phenomena and their Spiritual Lessons.djvu/33

Rh first provides a place of sepulture, weaves from its own body a soft, silken shroud, and then, with no consciousness of a higher destiny, and no consoling hopes, calmly surrenders itself to its fate. Throughout the entire series of analogous human transformations a similar surrender of the lower life is indispensable. Its extinction, it is true, must at some time be sustained, and is independent of human will and co-operation. Death, though it does not destroy the natural memory, so closes it, that to its possessor it is as though it were not. All the science and literature of which it is the depositary, all natural acquisitions of every kind, disappear from the sight and consciousness, and become entirely dormant. The interior memory then comes into activity, which is not admissive of natural facts; but registers the ends they were sought for, the uses they were applied to, and the rational principles derived from them. Does it follow from this that natural acquirements have no spiritual use? that there is no relation between the culture of the faculties the divine bounty has bestowed upon us and our state in eternity? Very far from it. The primary, the indispensable qualification for heaven, without which, indeed, all others are nugatory, is a purified will and the reception of affections of goodness from the Lord; but the distinction of 'the wise and simple' there,—that is, of those who can guide and govern, and thus perform important uses, from those who are led and obey, and are limited to mean ones,—rests upon the cultivation of rationality and intelligence as its basis. So, again, spiritual truths in the understanding, that have not been transmuted into goodness by reception in the will, drop off at death like leaves from a tree. All