ought to be meted out for our short-comings, or how much reward for our well-doing, as it is: Has the mind learned to see spiritual things—spiritual principles, ideas and uses, or has it not? Is the mind in harmony with the kingdom of God, or is it not? Has it entered into the spirit and purpose of that which essentially constitutes the heavenly kingdom, or has it not? You might as well ask the Hottentot, who has no musical development above his tom-tom, to enter into the refined enjoyment of the strains of Mendelsohn or Mozart, as to invite a merely natural or sensuous man, when he enters upon the other-world life to partake of the spiritual joys, associations, thoughts or uses of the heavenly kingdom. He would neither understand, appreciate or enjoy them. It is requisite that one should be born again to see the kingdom of God. Properly, this spiritual development should be made on earth. It is as much designed of God that the natural man should become a spiritual man, as it is that the physical babe should become a rational being.
If, then, it be true, that earth life is educational, looking to the preparation of the individual for the never-ending existence which awaits him in the world to come, it is the one great theme from which the mind should never be wholly averted. No one who leans in the least degree toward the doctrine of the superiority of spiritual things can doubt this.
