this in view, we will proceed with our illustration. An example of the distinct appearances of light, when manifested by the different recipient objects, has been presented in the instance of the charcoal and the diamond. We will now present one having reference to heat. With the coming heat of Spring and Summer, dead nature revives. All things in the vegetable kingdom start up, put forth presently their heads from the ground, and prepare to develop into full existence, and to perform their part on the theatre of nature. But the bad spring up as well as the good, weeds as well as flowers, the poisonous plant side by side with the delicious and the useful. The same heat of the sun vivifies both kinds. The same power or the same substance (whichever heat may in itself be) being received, taken up and assimilated, so to speak, by both, becomes in the one case, delicious nutriment,—in the other, deadly poison. Here we see, then, that the constitution or structure of the various recipient objects, has power to convert the inflowing influence or substance into a nature corresponding to its own, and thus cause it to nourish its own life, of whatever nature that life be, whether good or evil, ugly or beautiful. There is but one sun for all—but one light and heat for all—yet how various are the colours, how different the qualities, of the myriad objects in the natural world. It is plainly the differing organization and structure of the several recipient objects, which, modifying the influent heat and light of the sun, and at the same time the juices from the earth, produce all these differences.
Here, then, we discover a great natural law, to which there is a great correspondent spiritual law. God, as
