In a very fine passage, in the noble discourse on "True Religion," Smith says: "I wish there be not among some such a light and poor esteem of Heaven, as makes them more to seek after _Assurance of Heaven onely in the Idea of it as a thing to come than after Heaven it self_; which indeed we can never be well assured of untill we find it rising up within ourselves and glorifying our own souls. When true Assurance comes, Heaven it self will appear upon the Horizon of our souls, like a morning light chasing away all our dark and gloomy doublings before it. We shall not then need to light up our Candles to seek for it in corners; no, it will display its own lustre and brightness so before us that we may see it in its own light, and our souls the true possessours of it." "Should a man hear a Voice from Heaven or see a Vision from the Almighty to testifie unto him the Love of God towards him [and the {314} Assurance of his Salvation]; yet methinks it were more desirable to find a Revelation of all _from within_, arising up from the Bottome and centre of a man's own soul, in the Reall and Internal impressions of a Godlike nature upon his own spirit; and thus to find the Foundation and Beginning of Heaven and Happiness within himself; it were more desirable to see the crucifying of our own Will, the mortifying of the meer Animal life and to see a Divine life rising up in the room of it, as a sure Pledge and Inchoation of Immortality and Happiness, the very Essence of which consists in a perfect conformity and cheerful compliance of all the Powers of our Souls with the Will of God."[33] The consciousness of Immortality rises or falls with the moral and spiritual height of the soul. Nothing makes men doubt or question the Immortality of their souls so much as their own "base and earthly loves," and so, too, inward goodness "breeds a sense of the Soul's Immortality": "Goodness and vertue make men know and love, believe and delight in their Immortality. When the soul is purged and enlightened by true sanctity it is more capable of those Divine irradiations whereby it feels it self in conjunction with God. It knows that Almighty Love, by which it lives, is stronger than death. It knows that God will never forsake His own life which He has quickened in the soul. Those breathings and gaspings after an Eternal participation of Him are but the energy of His own breath within us."[34] Smith finds the world in which he lives a fair world, everywhere full of "the Prints and Footsteps of God," the finite creatures of which are "Glasses wherein God reflects His glory." There are many "golden links that unite the world to God," and good men, "conversing with this lower world and viewing the invisible things of God in the things that are made in the outward Creation, may many times find God secretly flowing into their souls and leading them silently out of the Court of the Temple into the Holy Place."[35] {315}