Page:The Other Life.djvu/90

 from pure lips and illumine the mind with a heavenly radiance. There are churches where the Word of God is unfolded with a beauty and glory, of which the human intellect has never yet dreamed.

What language, then, is spoken in the spiritual world?

Earthly language is constructed by the slow and tedious process of passing from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation, certain sounds which represent things or states of feeling, until their meaning becomes fixed and permanent. These slowly-accumulated words, or signs of our ideas, differ and have given rise to different languages, according as the races of men have started from different centres; were surrounded by different natural objects and influences; and were of different mental and spiritual constitutions.

At the very best, the richest, most copious and flexible languages in the world, but feebly represent or bring to view the powers and wonders of human thought and imagination.

The language of the spiritual world is the language of ideas, and is therefore common to all spirits. The word used by a spirit to convey his idea, contains in it innumerable things necessary to its perfect representation. When we use the word