he is to shine for ever with new accessions
of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding
virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge; carries in it something
wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of
man. Nay, it must be a prospect pleasing to God himself, to see his
creation of ever beautifying his eyes, and drawing nearer to him, by
greater degrees of resemblance.

10. Methinks this single consideration, of the progress of a finite
spirit to perfection, will be sufficient to extinguish all envy in
inferior natures, and all contempt in superior That cherubim, which now
appears as a God to a human soul, knows very well that the period will
come about in eternity when the human soul shall be as perfect as he
himself now is: nay, when she shall look down upon that degree of
perfection as much as she now falls short of it. It is true, the higher
nature still advances, and by that means preserves his distance and
superiority in the scale of being; but he knows that, how high soever
the station is of which he stands possessed at present, the inferior
nature will at length mount up to it, and shine forth in the same degree
of glory.

11. With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own soul,
where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such
inexhausted sources of perfection! We know not yet what we shall be, nor
will it ever enter into the heart of man to conceive the glory that will
be always in reserve for him. The soul considered with its Creator, is
like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for
all eternity, without a possibility of touching it: and can there be a
thought so transporting, as to consider ourselves in these perpetual
approaches to him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of
happiness!

_On the Animal World, and the Scale of Beings_.

SPECTATOR, No. 519.

1. Though there is a great deal of pleasure in contemplating the
material world, by which I mean that system of bodies into which nature
has so curiously wrought the mass of dead matter, with the several
relations which, those bodies bear to one another; there is still,
methinks, something more wonderful and surprising in contemplations on
the world of life, by which I mean all those animals with which every
part of the universe is furnished.

The material world, is only the shell of the universe: the world of life
are i