How beautiful is the explanation of the Apostle Paul upon the doctrine of degrees. Speaking of the condition of those who have died and shall be again quickened into life by the power of the resurrection, he says: "There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth {186} from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. xv, 40-42). Here are three distinct degrees, mansions or kingdoms that are spoken of, and how appropriately are they compared to the shining orbs that illumine the heavenly expanse. The analogous figure used to convey to the mind a glimmering of the innumerable differences that will exist in the third grade of the final abodes of human intelligences, immediately impresses the mind with the minuteness of detail in the provisions of the divine scheme, in the wonderful adaptability to the capacities and conditions of an infinite variety of individualities. Not only is there a condition of future existence that will be as the stars compared with the greater lights that revolve in space, but in that plane of existence there shall be differences as peculiar and apparently as numerous as those which characterize the shining worlds. In speaking of the merciful providence of the Most High in preparing ultimate abodes suited to the capacities of His children, surely Paul was a good authority. Not only was he able to speak advisedly by the manifestations of the Spirit of Truth, that was in him by virtue of his holy apostleship, but he had, while still a dweller in mortality, been made an actual partaker of the glories of the other world. He had received a foretaste of the exquisiteness of heavenly bliss, having been, by the goodness of God, made a visitant to one, at least, of the future degrees. Speaking of his personal experience, he said: "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven" (2 Cor. xii, 2). Taking this statement, as all professing Christians should, as worthy of credence, the only logical conclusion to be arrived at is that there are at least three heavens, the mention of a third rendering the existence of two others imperative. For our part we will accept the statement of an authority like Paul in preference to that of a wholesale combination of uninspired expounders and commentators, who stand upon different ground from that taken by him.