any
resemblance of the spirit to it. Besides, not the faintest proof
can be adduced of any such perceptible correspondence subsisting
between them.

Turning again to the facts of experience, we find that it is not
alone, nor indeed chiefly, by their visible forms and features
that we know our chosen ones. We also, and far more truly, know
them by the traits of their characters, the elements of their
lives, the effluence of their spirits, the magic atmosphere which
surrounds them, the electric thrill and communication which vivify
and conjoin our souls. And even in the exterior, that which most
reveals and distinguishes each is not the shape, but the
expression, the lights and shades, reflected out from the immortal
spirit shrined within. We know each other really by the mysterious
motions of our souls. And all these things endure and act
uninterrupted though the fleshly frame alter a thousand times or
dissolve in its native dust. The knowledge of a friend, then,
being independent of the body, spirits may be recognised in the
future state by the associations mutually surrounding them, the
feelings connecting them. Amidst all the innumerable thronging
multitudes, through all the immeasurable intervening heights and
depths, of the immaterial world, remembered and desired companions
may be selected and united by inward laws that act with the ease
and precision of chemical affinities. We may therefore recognise
each other by the feelings which now connect us, and which shall
spontaneously kindle and interchange when we meet in heaven, as
the signs of our former communion.

It needs but little thought to perceive that by this view future
recognition is conditional, being made to depend on the permanence
of our sympathies: there must be the same mutual relations,
affinities, fitness to awaken the same emotions upon approaching
each other's sphere, or we shall neither know nor be known. But in
fact our sympathies and aversions change as much as our outward
appearance does. The vices and virtues, loves and hatreds, of our
hearts alter, the peculiar characteristics of our souls undergo as
great a transformation, sometimes, as thorough a revolution, as
the body does in the interval between childhood and manhood. These
changes going on in our associates frequently change our feelings
towards them, heightening or diminishing our affection, creating a
new interest, destroying an old one, now making enemies lovers,
and now thorou