=10.= No earnest observer, no reasoning mind, can doubt the existence of intelligences and organisms which the senses of man do not reveal. This world seems but the temporal embodiment of things spiritual. The Creator has told us that He formed all things spiritual before they were made temporal.[666] The flowers that flourish and die on earth are perhaps represented above by imperishable blossoms of transcendent beauty and entertaining fragrance. Man is shaped after the image of Deity; his mind, though darkened by custom and weakened by injurious habit, is still a fallen type of immortal thought and Divine reason; and though the space separating the human and the Divine in thought, desire, and action, be as wide as that between sea and sky, for as the stars are above the earth so are the ways of God above those of man, yet we may affirm a strict analogy between the spiritual and the temporal. When the eyes of Elisha's servant were opened, the man saw the hosts of heavenly warriors covering the mountains about Dothan,--footmen, horsemen, and chariots, armed for fight against the Syrians.[667] When Israel encompassed Jericho,[668] may we not believe that the Captain of the Lord's host[669] and his heavenly train were there, and that before their angelic powers, sustained by the faith and obedience of the mortal army, the walls were leveled? [666] See Note, page 199. [667] II Kings vi, 13-18. [668] Josh. vi. [669] Josh. v, 13, 14. =11.= Some of the latest and highest achievements of man in the utilization of natural forces approach the conditions of spiritual operations. To count the ticking of a watch a hundred miles away; to speak in but an ordinary tone and be heard across the country; to signal from one hemisphere and be understood on the other though oceans roll and roar between; to bring the lightning into our homes and make it serve as fire and torch;--are not these miracles? The possibility of such would not have been received with credence before their actual accomplishment. The President of the Republic, sitting in his chair of state at the nation's capital, talks with all parts, even with the ends of this great country; and if the apparatus be in order, if operators and officials be true, he is rightly informed of every movement of importance anywhere in the land. The orbs of the universe are as truly connected by a system of inter-communication, surprisingly perfect in its action and adaptation. These and the other innumerable miracles of creation are accomplished in strict accordance with the laws of nature, which are the laws of God. But we must return to a further consideration of the specific manifestations of spiritual gifts within the Church.