all events, we
cannot suppose that the bliss of heaven will be suffered to diminish, by
remanding the emancipated spirit into connection with any thing which
will subtract from the state to which it will have arrived. There is a
law of progress in the divine government, by which the intelligent
universe will be forever advancing. We are to be changed "from glory to
glory;" not from a greater glory to a less, but into the same image with
Christ.

It is the opinion of some that every created being has a corporeal part,
and that God alone is perfectly a spirit. However this may be, it is
evident that the souls of believers after death, though advanced far
beyond their present earthly condition, and though they are "with
Christ," and though to die is gain, and though they are in the heaven of
heavens with Christ, (which is where the penitent thief went, and where
Paul had his revelation, and where Christ went when he died;--for Paul
uses the words "third heavens," and "Paradise," interchangeably,) are,
nevertheless, incomplete as to their natures, "waiting for the adoption,
to wit, the redemption of our body." Where in the Bible are we led to
suppose that they are detained in an inferior region, or that there are,
at most, only two redeemed human beings now in "heaven," viz., Enoch and
Elijah, or probably not even they? But a corporeal part, we may suppose,
is necessary to the fullest participation in the employments and
enjoyments of the spiritual world. Light requires atmosphere to modify
it for the human eye, which otherwise could not endure its brightness.
So it may be that a corporeal part is necessary to modify many of the
things which are unseen and eternal, that they may be apprehended by the
soul. Let no one say that matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the
soul; that a body must act as a veil to the spirit, and shut out much
knowledge. It is not so here. Matter helps us in the acquisition of
knowledge, as, for example, glass in optical instruments. The telescope,
with its lenses, gives the eye vast compass; the microscope gives it a
power, equally wonderful, of minute vision. True, in these cases it is
matter helping matter--glass assisting the eye; the analogy is not
perfect between this and the aid which the spiritual body may afford the
soul. But, if we remember that there is to be progression in the powers
and faculties of our nature, and that if a body is added to the
glorified spirit, it must be to assi