124 EARTHLY SHADOWS OF 



It is a beautiful thought, by -whom originated I 

 know not, that all earthly things are typ^s of the 

 heavenlies; the visible, shadows and outlines of the 

 invisible. Specimens of this sort of representation 

 are presented to us with considerable copiousness in 

 the Holy Scripture, where ideas of heavenly and un- 

 seen things are reflected, as it were, from the familiar 

 objects around us. And this is the only way in which 

 they could be communicable, without a direct and 

 miraculous change in the constitution of our minds. 

 Perhaps it is not too much to presume that the order 

 and fashion of material things were planned expressly 

 with this end in view ; that the characteristics of the 

 lamh were given it to make it fitly shadow forth the 

 spotlessness and unresisting meekness of our great 

 atoning Sacrifice ; and the essential qualities of light 

 were prescribed not only (perhaps not principally) to 

 make it a medium of conveying intelligence through 

 our eyes of worldly things, but that it might represent 

 the glory, purity, truth and omniscience of God, "in 

 whom is no darkness at all." 



It is true that, as yet, we get but occasional glimpses 

 of these revelations : it is only now and then that a 

 homely object becomes a picture of something higher, 

 a dissolving view, that, while we gaze, changes its 

 lineaments into something of higher beauty and 

 deeper interest, a transparency lighted up in every 

 feature by a glory behind it. " Now we see through 

 a glass, darkly." But hereafter much may be plain 

 and patent, that now we only guess at ; and the cur- 

 tain may be broadly lifted that now hangs thick and 



