THE IMAGE OF GOD. 301 



of the soul. For angels and spirits, who are souls, are brought to 

 us by the Bible in the human form. Heaven also, the holy city, 

 which lieth four-square, has the same stamp, being "according to 

 the measure of a man, that is, of the angel." By this apocalypse 

 we are among brethren in every world, and we know that their hu- 

 manity is distinct according to the eminence of their form. 



Here occurs another field of subsidiary revelations ; for the world 

 (not the skeptical but the real world) is complete in cases wherein 

 parted souls reappear to us, and show us that the human form is 

 not meet for death : and even when intangible to the grosser man, 

 still the form stands before his eyes, because its very colors are im- 

 mortal. 



To turn from what is revealed to what is perceived, the eye opened 

 by revelation is the eye also of reason, which now sees the same om- 

 niprevalence of the human form divine. Our thoughts of God are 

 thoughts of an infinite humanity : the love and wisdom counted for 

 all manliness, are attributed to our Creator by the very brightness 

 of our minds. Whenever reason shines and becomes half angelic 

 it talks humanities of the living God. The mind is constructed for 

 revelation, and its functions of loving and thinking, once opened, 

 flow according to the truth of divine things, as the body when launch- 

 ed into the world in breathing, falls in with the laws of the world in 

 rearing its own constitution. It is not easy to discriminate between 

 the gift and the giver, but in the better faculty, perception is re- 

 vealed, and revelation is perceived, and our powers are properly our 

 own, v>hcn we own that they are of God; for in the soul the claim 

 of private property abrogates the possibility of possession. The re- 

 sult is that thought is necessarily directed to the God of Revelation, 

 whom understanding and affection meet; i. c, to a divine human- 

 ity : in the case of our fellows, to a soul of which the body is the 

 counterpart, i. e., to a soul in the human form : and with those who 

 have left our world, still to human souls and shapes, to whom " he' 7 

 and " she," and the like pronouns of our love apply. 



Let us register here, that the body of man is the anchor of these 



perceptions, and attaches to every contemplation of the human form. 



For body is the exigence of spirit, the partner of its love and the 



throne of its power. And though God be not as we, it is not our 



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