797. “Perhaps the state of the saints previous to the resurrection of the body, and in the first stage of their future being, may be analogous to (but of course higher than) a state of ordinary sleep, with active, pleasant dreaming. In dreams, the spirit acts and enjoys, unconscious of the body; and may we not suppose that the spirit after death may, to a certain extent, act and enjoy without the body? Perhaps it may in this state pass profitably and pleasantly through the first stages of its future history. It may, so to say, become habituated to eternal things, and develop its spiritual capacities to such a degree as to be prepared, at the time of the resurrection, to enter upon a more tangible and positive state of existence. It may thus, also, become acquainted with purely spiritual beings, and with the modes of purely spiritual existence. This will be useful, because the saints after the resurrection will be required to hold communion with things material and immaterial. While the saint is in this world, in the body, he becomes conversant with material things, and habituated to them; now, in the other world, in a disembodied state, previous to the resurrection, he will become conversant with and habituated to purely spiritual existence, so that after the resurrection, when soul and body are again united, he will be able to hold converse and communion with either material or immaterial existences at pleasure. 798. “To this it may be objected that while those who lived in the early ages of the world would have a long time to remain in this state of celestial pupilage, those who live in later ages would have less, and those in the last days scarcely any. 799. “This objection, so far from militating against this idea, most beautifully illustrates and confirms it. Thus the souls of men are more developed in spiritual things now, and will be still more in future, than they were in the earlier ages of the world. Those who lived in the morning of the world had very limited and indistinct ideas of divine and eternal things. Their views of a future world, especially, were exceedingly misty and obscure. As the church advanced, life and immortality were more and more brought to light. Revelation passed from types, shadows, and ceremonies, into brighter and clearer realities; and spiritual conceptions gained a firmer and more distinct hold upon the consciousness of men. The new dispensation was an advance upon the old, as under the old the age of prophecy had been upon the law, and the law upon the simple twilight of the patriarchal age. In what a different light those who lived after the new dispensation dawned, stood from those under the Old Testament, is clear from what the Saviour says—‘Among those that are born of women, there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist; but he that is least in the kingdom of God’ (in the new dispensation) ‘is greater than he.’