Page:The Other Life.djvu/89

 whereby creatures without speech communicate with each other, and seem to exercise both that thought and forethought which we ascribe to reason.

The body in its minutest movements was once a perfect effigy of the soul and its affections. Evil has so far closed our internal or spiritual forms, and separated the internal from the external, that little of this correspondence is left or understood. We still sometimes feel that the eye is more eloquent than the tongue; that a smile or a kiss conveys something which language could but feebly portray; that actions speak louder than words; and that the deeds done in the body are a pantomime involving the secret things of our spiritual life.

Speech, face to face, is the second and most common method of communicating ideas in the spiritual realm. There as here we have all the pleasures of conversation, which is the sunshine of social life. There are happy gatherings of congenial spirits for recreation and the interchange of affections and thoughts. There are schools of instruction where knowledge is imparted with a facility and a fullness, which amazes our torpid understandings. There are assemblies where words of angelic wisdom fall