Page:The Other Life.djvu/129

 transcendent mirrors of their being, are like music which can never be translated into words.

Yet even the loftiest celestial height is attainable by men who were born in the moral darkness and gloom of a world so wicked; that the Divine Man had to visit it in the flesh to redeem it from the power of hell.

Man is a microcosm, an epitome of the entire universe, a miniature heaven, because he was created in the image and likeness of God. We have rational, natural, spiritual and celestial degrees of life folded away in potency behind and within the flesh and blood of this corporeal life. These degrees are shut at birth, and are gradually opened by instruction, discipline, experience; by the development of the rational principle, by temptations, by a life according to the commandments; by the reception of love and wisdom from the Lord.

Man's moral state at death, his ruling love, the possibility of putting away for ever the evil, and of developing the good things of his nature; these determine what spiritual sphere he will go to, what society he will live in, what position he will hold, and what surroundings he will have.

All these things are foreseen by the Lord alone. His eternal providence watches over us, to lead us