Page:The Other Life.djvu/88

 meaning lies in the smile, the frown, the tear, the laugh, and in the numberless gestures of the body! Our perception of these meanings is very obscure and faint; but the celestial angels who can read a man's entire life in the sound of his voice or the shape of his hand, find them a means of perfect communication. The face of nature also is as intelligible to them as the face of man, and through it God speaks to them a language of infinite wisdom and beauty.

This enables us in some degree to comprehend Swedenborg's statement, that this mode of expressing ideas, which seems to us a mere pantomime, is the most thorough and wonderful method of interchanging thought. Swedenborg says: "This speech as far excelled vocal speech as the sense of seeing excels that of hearing—that is, as the sight of a fine country excels a verbal description of it."

The first men of our earth conversed with the angels in this manner. This perception of the spiritual meanings involved in external forms and motions has various degrees of power. It is one thing in the celestial, another in the spiritual, and a far lower and more imperfect faculty in the natural degree. It is perception with spirits; intuition with men; instinct with animals. It is the means