178 LIFE IN NAT HUE. 



this idea of a better state of being might assume a 

 more definite meaning. 



It is a moral change the deliverance from cor- 

 ruption which we are conscious of needing most ; 

 which all who are raised above the lowest most 

 earnestly desire. But in no man's thought of heaven 

 does the idea of a moral change stand alone. We 

 need more. There must be a change also in our 

 being a deliverance or a gain affecting the mode of 

 our existence. Guided by the thoughts I have men- 

 tioned, I felt that these two ideas united themselves 

 into one, or at least sprang from one root, and found 

 their full expression in the idea of a perfected life. 



For this perfected life, giving us the perception of 

 Nature as it is as spiritual and bringing us into 

 conscious relation not with the changing phenomena 

 alone (as now we seem to be), but with the essential 

 existence, the same in all and unaffected by their 

 changes, must involve a moral difference in us too. 

 Our relations being widened so, our interests could 

 no more revolve about our self, our passions be no 

 more perverted. The possibility of evil or of tempta- 

 tion to it, as now we feel them, would be gone. The 



