tions of Truth are carried on in order and regularity: thus is the celestial paradise of the soul shadowed forth in and by the terrestrial paradise of the world.
In raising our thoughts to the subject of ingrafted trees, we shall be able to discover the religious or heavenly instruction that is reflected by the wonderful effects produced by ingrafting. To ingraft is to propagate trees by incision; to plant the sprig or shoot of one kind of tree in the stock or trunk of another, thus to ingraft an apple shoot upon a crab stock: by this process several kinds of fruit may be produced from one common stock, the sap of the sour crab being made available in producing the sweetness of the fruits that grow on the shoots; while each shoot, by a wonderful process of vegetable digestion, turns the food or nourishment it receives from the common stock into its own kind or quality. It is similar in animal digestion; for the various kinds of food taken into the body are, by the stomach, subdued, dissolved, re-modelled, conveyed inwards, and last into the blood, which it forms, and for which all the nutritious particles of food are adapted. The blood again circulating throughout the system, gives nourishment and strength to the whole body by renewing all its parts. Viewing, then, these wonderful operations in nature, and connecting them with the spiritual life of man, how beautifully instructive are the words, "The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He, hath planted." The trees of the Lord are representative of men: their being planted by the Lord denotes them to be imbued with heavenly love and truth; for God's life of love and wisdom is the life of their life—the very vitality of their being.
