Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/69

 spiritual senses of the soul are exercised; and that every bodily sense thus corresponds to its spiritual faculty.

The bodily eye corresponds to the eye of the mind; we therefore conclude, both from reason and revelation, that the benefits which are here derived from bodily sight, correspond to those benefits which the mind derives from mental sight.

Thus, then, in everything, even those which are apparently most unimportant, there is a communication between earth and heaven; that

that we cannot exercise a single bodily function, a single outward act, which proceeds not from some inward motive—from some affection of the will disguised, it may be even from the man himself—and which acts not as indications of the internal disposition, like the hands of a clock serving not only to mark the movement of the works within, but the passage of eternal justice or wisdom without; that, in fact, a man in every affection and act of his life, judges himself. As his affections and his will rise, he himself rises in the scale of being; as they fall, so does he fall. And as every man, after death, goes to the place for which his affections fit him, so every outward act being the indication of the inward will, is the index also which points either to eternal happiness or eternal woe.

It is because the soul is from God, and designed for eternal happiness, that the body is so beautiful— beautiful still, even though it has been defaced by sin: but if we look to the Lord for aid, and shun evil as