I saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem.
You may have gained the impression that we have described our life as a strange mixture of natural and spiritual; we have spoken of houses, lands, clothes, food, books—and on the other hand—have spoken of the will-power as the great creative agency of soul impressions rather than bodily senses.
Will-power is the great creative agency, of soul impressions rather than bodily senses.
That impression would be, in the main, a correct one, for our life here is a mingling of the old and the new; the past and the present; not yet wholly spirit, nor wholly of the earth; we partake of both natures. Like a girl who is just between childhood and womanhood may be a child one day and a woman the next; or like a dragonfly just emerging from its case comes out with folded wings, for a time that bears some proportion to his short life, he seems rather to crawl on these wings as if he were a grub than to open them and fly away.
Our pleasures and our duties are never separated here as they sometimes are with you.
There is no such thing as a pleasure disconnected from work, growth or duty; neither is there any beauty disconnected from true life; nor any idle sorrow or grief that is not distinctly healing in its effect, cleansing, or raising the soul. There is no weariness, such as comes from mere ennui, or from a vacant mind—real honest fatigue of the body comes only from the imperfection of the growing soul not yet strong enough to bear all the strain put on it by its spirit lord.
NGC 2146 being stretched out of shape | NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
