sion, and to shine with greater
splendor as a perfect image of the living God.

CHAPTER III.

THE BEATIFIC VISION. (CONTINUED.)

In the Beatific Vision our intellect is glorified, and our thirst for
knowledge completely satisfied.

Man was created with a thirst for knowledge which can never be
satiated in this world. Sin, which greatly weakened and darkened his
mental faculties, has not taken away his desire and love for
knowledge. And the knowledge which he acquired by eating the
forbidden fruit, rather increased than satisfied his thirst.

But all his efforts to reach the perfection of knowledge, even in the
natural order, have been fruitless. With all his boasted discoveries
in astronomy, chemistry, geology, mechanics, and other kindred
sciences, his knowledge of nature's secrets is still very limited.
But could he even master every natural science, and compel nature to
reveal her most hidden secrets, his thirst for knowledge would still
remain unsatisfied.

Let us, for the sake of illustration, suppose a man so gifted that he
not only knows all that can be known about this world, but soars
beyond it, and learns the exact size, distances, laws, and relations
to each other of the countless worlds that shine in the blue sky.
Supposing these distant orbs to be peopled like ours, he knows the
character, manners, laws, and languages of their respective
inhabitants. He knows, moreover, all their sciences, the characters
of their plants, animals, and minerals. In a word, he sees and knows
every star as perfectly as he knows his own house and its inmates.
What vast knowledge would not that man possess! He would certainly be
far more learned than all the philosophers that ever lived, taken
together. But would his thirst for knowledge be completely quenched?
Would he say that his mind is so completely full that he can long for
no more, or that it can contain no more? No, he could never say that;
for the knowledge of the creature alone can never completely fill or
satisfy the mind.

We are little, and very limited, it is true, and if we are aiming at
Christian perfection, we are accustomed to look upon ourselves as
such. And the oftener we compare our borrowed perfections with those
of God, the more deeply convinced of our littleness shall we become.
But yet, how little soever we may be, we have, in a certain sense,
capacity for the infinite; and for it, only the infinite is
sufficient. Hence, as all the wealth