Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/136

132 living efforts. In other words, the soul became, in a strict sense, truly living for the first time. The living soul was called a creeping thing, because our first living efforts at a spiritual life, are, as all first efforts are, infant like, creeping rather than walking. The birds were representative of our thoughts and conceptions of spiritual things, now of a living character and of a kind, which, bird-like, soar into the loftier regions of the mind and gain grand views of life and its real purposes.

Now, however, beasts are created. Beasts are symbols of affections. The creation of the beasts on the earth represents the creation of truly spiritual affections in the mind. In the fifth state of regeneration we have living conceptions of the Lord and his truths, and from those living ideas we think and discourse after a spiritual manner. We have deep faith in the Lord and a clear insight into the question of what love to the Lord means. We live spiritually, but we love because we have faith. Our faith is the primary element of our life and our love is secondary. We are more on the intellectual plane of religion yet, although our intellectuality is a living one, than we are on the love plane. But in the sixth state all this is changed. Where belief was before the predominant principle, now affection rules. We no longer love because we believe, but we believe because we love.