out_ Man unites and communicates its riches
and virtues to the Spirit of the air that is _within_ Man. This love or
desire of God toward the soul of Man is so great that he gave his
only-begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, to take the human nature
upon him, in its fallen state, that by this mysterious union of God and
Man, all the enemies of the Soul of Man might be overcome, and every
human creature might have a power of being born again according to that
Image of God in which he was first created. The gospel is the history of
this Love of God to Man. _Inwardly_ he has a seed of the Divine Life
given into the birth of his Soul, a seed that has all the riches of
eternity in it, and is always wanting to come to the birth in him, and
be alive in God. _Outwardly_ he has Jesus Christ, who as a Sun of
Righteousness, is always casting forth his enlivening beams on this
inward seed, to kindle and call it forth to the birth, doing that to
this Seed of Heaven in Man, which the sun in the firmament is always
doing to the vegetable seeds in the earth.

"Consider this matter in the following similitude. A grain of wheat has
the air and light of this world enclosed or incorporated in it. This is
the mystery of its life, this is its power of growing, by this it has a
strong continual tendency of uniting again with that ocean of light and
air from whence it came forth. On the other hand that great ocean of
light and air, having its own offspring hidden in the heart of the grain
has a perpetual strong tendency to unite and communicate with it again.
From this _desire of union on both sides_, the vegetable life arises and
all the virtues and powers contained in it. But let it be well observed
that this desire on both sides cannot have its effect till the husk and
gross part of the grain falls into a state of corruption and death; till
this begins, the mystery of life hidden in it cannot come forth."

The sun only acts by stirring up in each thing, and calling into
activity, its own imprisoned, dormant, heat or life. Save by the same
nature-process, working in an inner sphere, there cannot come to pass
the flower and fruit of the Soul. The Sun, true emblem of the Redeeming
Spirit, helps each vital force to break forth from its state of
death--even though, like the grains of wheat found in Egyptian graves
and then new-planted, it has been immured there thousands of years--and
to enter into its highest possible state of life. Indeed