that thing needs. If flint have one-tenth of its whole weight of water mingled with it in intimate communion, it becomes opal and shines with everchanging splendor. If blood has its due proportion of water, it pursues its glad way through the system, a living substance giving life. And this blood gives to every part of the human body precisely what that part needs; nourishing its life, with an equal and a perfect adaptation to the exact nature and requirements of every organ which it visits, whether that organ be an eye, a heart, or a hand, and whether it be formed of bone, or flesh, or nervous tissue, or any other of the varied forms within the body; for the blood, which is in itself a One composed of many elements, becomes, in its effect and fruit, precisely what it is made to be by each organ which appropriates it.

I cannot resist the wish to allude in this connection to a doctrine perpetually suggested by almost every topic that is considered in the light of New Church truth. It tells us that all men together may be regarded as one man, and then that all men stand to each other in the relation in which different parts of the body stand to each other; every man having a function and character of his own, which correspond to and may be represented by the functions and character of some part of the human body.

And it is the quality and especial nature of each man which enables him, and in some sort compels him to draw from the universal providence which surrounds him, and from that ever present and everywhere penetrating current of life which brings life to all, precisely that and only that which nourishes some principle or element of the life already in the man, and therefore capable of appropriation by him.

God alone is man; He alone is Man in Himself; He is perfect and Divine man. The perpetual effect of His Providence is to create a universe which may be as a man, receptive of Himself; and to make this man to all eternity, more and more His image and likeness, that He may more and more perfectly forever become its soul; become the "anima mundi." And each individual man is again the representative of the universe, and is, by every increase of wisdom and goodness, builded more into the image and likeness of God, and so conformed with Him, that the life of God may be his life.

This

But, while we hold this truth, and reverence God the more for it, let us avoid the fatal error, or, as Swedenborg calls it, "the execrable heresy of Pantheism," as we would avoid disease and death. error consists, not in the belief of a Universal man, but in the belief that this man is God; and that there is no other God. And this error will be driven away by the truth, that this Universal man is from God, and created by God, and is as much subject to the laws and phenomena of space and time, or

is, in every respect whatever, as truly finite, as any individual man.

To what has been said of the clouds of earth, it should be added, that there is a constant moisture in the sky, beside that which we see as clouds. It is one of the late discoveries of science, that it is to the water mingled with the air that much of the beneficent and beautiful effect of heat and light is due; and that this moisture differs much at different times, in dif ferent places, and under different circumstances, and often departs from the normal proportion, in either the direction of excess or of deficiency. And if it goes very far in either of these directions, injury, and perhaps disorder and distress ensue.

Nor does this water fall to earth, the same that it went up. While in the air it is filled with treasures the air has accumulated and sends down to earth by those swift messengers of good, the falling rain-drops. Every flower that opens, and every leaf that spreads itself to the sunbeams, sends forth its aroma, and fills the air with fragrant, and medicinal, and life-sustaining qualities. Earth sends up from all her children, from the stateliest tree, the sweetest flower, the humblest plant, all their gifts into the air which bathes her, and this in its turn offers them to the sunshine, and then earth waits to receive them back again, purified and vitalized. Mingled with these

treasures are those imparted to it by the sun's rays, which penetrate the inmost structure of the air. To the heat, and the light, and the electrical agencies, already known, science adds now the new force which it calls by the new name, Actinism, and to which it is already ascertained that the life-engendering breath of spring owes much of its power to open the ground that winter has sealed, and bid a dead world live. Even in our present ignorance, we may be sure that all these things mingle with the rain, and help it to be a blessing.

Yet one other remark should be made before we go farther. It is, that the clouds of earth are not, as we are apt to think them, bad things. We usually contrast them with fair weather and with a bright and smiling sky; and it is this we love and welcome while we wish the clouds away, and regard them as interrupting and deforming what, if they were but away, would be more enjoyable and lovely. But it is not so. I may again revert to this topic, and will only say now that there are spots upon the earth which tell us what the whole earth would be without clouds, and what this beneficial and vital air would be without its due moisture. They tell us that the earth would be what the desert of Sahara is; and they tell us that the air would be what the Sirocco is, the withering and blasting wind of death, which blows from that desert.

Let us now resume what we have already said, so far as to say, in general, what the clouds of earth are;

and then to say, and also in general, what these clouds correspond to and represent.

By the clouds of earth, we mean, as we said before, all the water drawn upwards from the earth into the air, by the sun's power, always, directly or indirectly, day or night, in the way we see, and in the many ways we do not see and do not know. Every organic thing and almost every inorganic thing; the whole face of the earth and nearly all things in it, are perpetually exhaling moisture into the air or sky. There it is exalted and vivified by the same power which raised it and had made the air ready to receive it, and ready to enrich it. And thence it descends to earth, bearing with it the power of fertilizing the ground from which it arose, and of awaking to exulting life all the innumerable seeds of life which lie ready to feel its influence.

And now what is it that clouds-using the word in this most general sense-what is it in the spirit world, in the world of thought and affection, that these earthly clouds correspond to and represent? The question almost answers itself. To what else can they correspond, than all that truth (and we must again use this word also in its widest sense), all ideas, thoughts, sentiments or knowledges, which are born of the earth and the body, or are suggested by the objects of sense and through the senses, and then are formed and fashioned by the mind acting on the low and sensuous plane of thought, and then are lifted up, perhaps visibly to us and with our consciousness, more often