Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/231

 them, so that we all live, and move, and have our being in Him. But the going forth of the Divine heat and light, are not only designed to preserve and sustain us, but are designed also to improve and to perfect us; to expand our powers, and, by enlarging, to fill them with new life: and we are so created, that we may go on from knowledge to knowledge, from wisdom to wisdom, from goodness to goodness, and, increase in these to all eternity. As an illustration, the process seems simply this:—We love our parents from instinctive affection; they are near to us; they supply our wants; they shelter us from harm; they first teach our powers to exercise themselves by observation; they prepare the soil by natural culture for raising the germ above the earth, into which the heat and light from heaven may enter, which, hereafter, shall assume angelic form. We love our parents, first from instinctive affection; secondly, from natural affection; and lastly, from internal affection. Thus our love becomes purer, as it is viewed from a higher and more interior ground. So is it in our views of the Divine Being. As God is ever seeking to make his creation a more perfect resemblance of his love and wisdom; and as this love and wisdom becomes more and more obvious, as our powers unfold themselves; and as these unfold themselves in proportion as our lives harmonize with our knowledge, it may be said, that the Lord is ever creating us, is ever making us again.