Take the thousands of persons who have read some literary work, say, for instance, the Iliad of Homer. They all had eyes, and all could read; they all possessed the whole book as completely as if it had been written for each one in particular; and, no doubt, they all received pleasure from the perusal of that beautiful poem. But, did they all receive the same amount of pleasure? They certainly did not. Not even two individuals ever received the same degree of pleasure or enjoyment from the perusal of that book. Each one received and appropriated to himself his own pleasure--which was great in proportion to the cultivation and elevation of his mind. Hence, while a superior and highly cultivated mind is entranced at the beauty and sublimity of some particular passage, an inferior one sees neither meaning nor beauty in it, and, perhaps, even casts the book aside in disgust. It would be easy to multiply illustrations; but this one is sufficient to show that the amount of pleasure we derive from the use of creatures depends upon the degree of development and perfection in our receiving faculties. So it is in heaven, among the blessed. They all see and possess God; they all love and enjoy Him; but it by no means follows that they all enjoy the same amount of happiness from that blessed vision. And why so? Because each one sees and enjoys only in proportion to his individual development and elevation of mind--which is given to him by the Light of glory. And, as that blessed Light is given to each one according to his own personal merits, it follows that each one sees and enjoys God in proportion to the holiness of the life he lived while upon earth. Hence, they who have practised virtue in a heroic degree--they who have sacrificed the pleasures of this world, honors, wealth, and even life itself, for God, possess the highest elevation of mind, and, consequently, the highest degree of enjoyment. They possess the most intense and perfect vision of the Divine Essence; they soar higher, and penetrate more deeply into the unfathomable being of God. They see more of the divine beauty, wisdom, goodness, and other perfections of God, and partake more largely of the Divine Nature. In a word, their higher elevation of mind, by a more intense Light of glory, is to them the source of the highest and most perfect enjoyment in the Beatific Vision; while persons of very inferior virtue, though perfectly happy too, enjoy a vastly inferior degree of blessedness.