Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/75

 the Divine Wisdom, Truth, or Light, which enlightens the understanding, is signified by the name of CHRIST, or MESSIAH; and when these increase and multiply in him, the extreme joy and bliss of this state takes the precedence of all that he has passed through, and the voice which first called upon him, and moved him to repentance, as the first opening step to this great joy, begins to be lost in the full enjoyment of the blissful state acquired. Thus he feels the truth of the prediction, that Jesus has indeed increased, while John has decreased.

The great object of John's preaching in the wilderness of Judea, was to insure the increase of Jesus, and the decrease of himself; and the man who has tasted the sweets of the regenerate life, feeling in himself the warmth of Divine Love, and beholding the beauty of its light, can say of a truth, that he feels the accomplishment in himself of John's prediction: "He must increase, but I must decrease."

Y this exhortation of the Prophet, we are naturally led to inquire, what is the nature of those things in man which are created by the Lord, and which demand our serious contemplation? They are things of the first importance, because they are connected with our best interests both here and hereafter. In man, as the spiritual and moral world, are contained a