METAMORPHOSES. 73 



nature ; when no longer confined to the earth they can 

 traverse the fields of air, their food is the nectar of 

 flowers, and love begins his blissful reign ; who that 

 witnesses this interesting scene can help seeing in it a 

 lively representation of man in his threefold state of ex- 

 istence, and more especially of that happy day, when at 

 the call of the great Sun of Righteousness, all that are 

 in the graves shall come forth, the sea shall give up her 

 dead, and death being swallowed up of life, the nations 

 of the blessed shall live and love to the ages of eternity ? 

 But although the analogy between the different states 

 of insects and those of the body of man is only general, 

 yet it is much more complete with respect to his soul. 

 He first appears in this frail body a child of the earth, 

 a crawling worm, his soul being in a course of. training 

 and preparation for a more perfect and glorious exist- 

 ence. Its course being finished, it casts off the earthy 

 body, and goes into a hidden state of being in Hades, 

 where it rests from its works, and is prepared for its 

 final consummation. The time for this being arrived, 

 it comes forth clothed with a glorious body, not like its 

 former, though germinating from it, for though " it was 

 sown an animal body, it shall be raised a spiritual body," 

 endowed with augmented powers, faculties and privileges 

 commensurate to its new and happy state. And here 

 the parallel holds perfectly between the insect and the 

 man. The butterfly, the representative of the soul, is 

 prepared in the larva for its future state of glory ; and if 

 it be not destroyed by the ichneumons and other ene- 

 mies to which it is exposed, symbolical of the vices that 

 destroy the spiritual life of the soul, it will come to its 



