Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/276

 again gifted with spiritual consciousness, such as was enjoyed by the most ancient church. When our thought dwells upon this state of existence, how appropriate seems its designation of the "Golden Age!" How beautiful human life must have been, when "families on the earth, and families in the heavens, made a one." Death, that now hangs like a pall of blackness over all our outer life, was then the highest culmination of joy to the loving heart; for the beloved were not removed from sight; there was no aching void left in anguished hearts; and the beauty of glorified spirits only elevated and purified more and more the glowing affections of those who yet walked in the outer life, and it cannot be imagined that the spirits of the most ancient church concerned themselves in the least with natural things. They were full of heavenly joy, and purified affections, and sought to lead those with whom they were consociated upon the earth to higher scenes of heavenly blessedness, and more interior perceptions of the Divine. Man did not then approach spirits to ask their guidance in their outer lives, for they were consciously led of the Lord. They lived in the heavenly sunshine, and sported, in an infantile purity and innocence of being, amid the joys of a heavenly existence.

What has been, will be. The spirit of man moves in gyres. Hitherto the gyres have been opened outwards and downwards; his whole external sensual life has been opened to his consciousness. The man of the most ancient church had not this consciousness; he was as the infant who has not yet realized the sensual life and power of the man. But now that the full manhood of the human race has been attained,