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 human perversion; it nourishes, strengthens, and enlightens the intellect, and by effecting mental growth, opens all the capacious powers of the soul to a perception of the vast concerns of eternity. This truth is grounded in goodness, and is, as it were, distilled from it; it clings to goodness, and bespangles and adorns it, as dewdrops bedeck and refresh the luxuriant herbage of the fertile mountains. This truth, having pure good as its origin, is like dew, soft, sweet, and refreshing: it is compared by the Psalmist to the dew of Hermon, that descended upon the mountains of Zion; "for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore!" But inasmuch as this truth springs from pure goodness, it is therefore tinged with the warm or ruddy colour of celestial love, and hence called the droppings of new wine. It is as though celestial love were distilling its wine for the mental growth and refreshment of the favoured inhabitants of Zion.

In this blissful state of the church, not only are the mountains to drop new wine, but the hills are to flow with milk, and the rivers of Judah with waters. As hills are lower elevations of the earth than mountains they denote the principles of charity or love to the neighbour; for true charity to man is lower in the mind than celestial love, which is love to God; the one is enriched with new wine, and the other flows with milk. As the new wine of the mountains is that truth which especially points out our love and duty to God; so the milk which flows from the hills is that which instructs us in the charities and duties which we owe to each other. It is the truth, which, like milk, is soft and nutritious, teaching that from the hills or