pose to tell you more now; but you will at some future time, I hope, learn a great deal more about this. You can learn nothing which it is more important for you to know.

To one who has only natural knowledge, that is, to one who possesses no spiritual knowledge, it is difficult to believe that our Lord was at once God and Man. The natural appearance of things, and all natural reasons, oppose this belief, and hinder this truth from coming into our minds. Persons who are so unhappy as not to know any better, sometimes say, how could one be God, who lived like a man among men, and eat, and drank, and slept, and wore clothes, and journeyed about just as men do. Whoever says or thinks so, reasons from natural appearances and natural truths against our Lord. And all who do so, act as the Jews did, when " they took up STONES to stone Jesus Christ, because, being a man, HE MADE HIMSELF GOD."

L*

LESSON

EIGHTEENTH.

We have now gone through the various instances and examples of correspondence which I propose to consider in these lessons. And I would say to you some things about the subject, generally. That is, I would speak about correspondence or the science of correspondence, and not about particular examples of it.

I will first tell you what you must not mistake it for. You must not suppose correspondence to be the same thing as comparison or resemblance. I spoke of this a little in lesson fourth, but have now more to say of it. Where there is correspondence, there may be always some kind of comparison. But there is often resemblance and comparison where there is not correspondence. It often happens that comparisons are made in poetry, or in conversation, which serve to make one's meaning plainer, because of the resemblance between the things compared, although there is no correspondAnd comparisons of this kind are called

ence.

similes, or figures of speech, or metaphors. A poet describes the morning of a fair day thus

"From amber clouds I see the morning rise;
Her rosy hands begin to paint the skies;
And now the city emmets leave their hive,
And rousing hinds to cheerful labor drive.
The joyful birds salute the sun's approach;
The sun too laughs, and mounts his gaudy coach;
While from his car the dropping gems distil,
And all the earth and all the heavens smile."

In this description almost every line contains a simile or metaphor, which is founded upon the resemblance between some natural things and others; but none of them are founded upon correspondence. If you wish it, your teachers will point out these similes and metaphors, and will explain them to you. I will try to state to you some of the differences between mere figures of speech, or metaphors, and instances of true and real correspondence.

Correspondence, in the way in which we have used the word—that is, the kind of correspond

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SUNDAY

LESSONS.

ence we have spoken of, and which we mean when
we talk of the science of correspondence-exists
That is, it
only between higher and lower things, and not
between things of equal degree.
exists between things internal and things ex-
ternal; between things which belong to the soul
and things which belong to the body. But it
does not exist between two things both of which
are spiritual, or both natural; or both of the spirit,
or both of the body. Between two things which
are both of the same degree, as between the two

hands of the body, there may be comparison and
resemblance, and there may be one kind of cor-
respondence; for this word has many meanings;
but there is not here the kind of correspondence
which we mean when we speak of the science of
correspondence, for this phrase has only one
meaning.

There is another difference which I will men-
tion, and try to make as plain as I can.

I have said that correspondence exists only between things of a higher degree and things of a lower degree; as between the soul and the body.

I will now add that correspondence exists only between such things as are of different degrees, and are also connected together, and are mutually dependant, one on the other. Thus, the soul and the body are closely connected together, and are mutually dependant on each other. If your soul had no body, you could not live for a moment. Therefore you have a natural body while you are here, and when you die and cast this off, you will have a spiritual body. And you can see, by reflecting a very little, that if you had no body you could not live.

So, if the body had no soul it could not live; after death the natural body has no soul in it; and you know what becomes of it.

Thus, the soul depends upon the body, as upon something which supports it, as something which clothes it, as something which is its instrument, as something without which the soul itself would be nothing. And the body depends upon the soul for its life. And for all these purposes the Lord has not only provided a body, but a body which corresponds with the soul.