NATURE AND HER HARMONIES. 
49 
the spiritual or imaginative wliicli lie possesses in common 
with angelic beings. Why, even a coarse-grained Eussian 
would not resist this conclusion, and, with the vigor of the 
rude north, finely expresses the idea : 
" I hold the middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth. 
On the last verge of mortal being stand, 
Close to the realms where angels have their birth, 
Just on the boundaries of the Spirit-Land ; 
The chain of being is complete in rae, 
In me is matter's last gradation lost, 
And the next step is spirit — Deity." 
This chain of being is the Jacob's ladder of the allegory, 
the rounds of which, form, "principalities and powers in 
heavenly places," through all the orders of spiritual intelli- 
gences, lead down to man, resting with him, the link between 
earth and heaven. We have a perfect and just right to the 
argument, that the next step is pure spirit, unalloyed with 
matter — angelic being — and that there are grades and orders 
of this being, swelling sublimely up to the infinite. Before 
the discovery of the microscope, the world of the dew-drop — 
the atomic legions ' from the low herb where mites do crawl,' 
to the myriads of ' far spoomming ocean' and the wide air, 
were all as far beyond the apprehension of our senses as 
these spiritual existences now are. 
Yet the most patient investigation has gone to show that 
the analogies of higher existences hold good in these, and 
science does not hesitate in the application of these analo- 
gies to them. Why should they hold good at one end of 
the scale and not at the other ? Is it because we cannot see, 
taste, smell, or handle thought and spiritual existences? 
Neither can we do all this with the atom ; its very being is 
only arrived at through imperfect instruments ; while the 
existence of spirit and thought is proven by our conscious 
ness, than which there can be no higher evidence. Yet no 
man in his senses pretends to deny atomic existences be- 
4 
