Centuries of Meditations

78

The Heavens and the Earth serve you, not only in shewing unto you your Father’s Glory, as all things without you are your riches and enjoyments, but as within you also, they magnify, beautify and illuminate your soul. For as the Sun-beams illuminate the air and all objects, yet are themselves also illuminated by them, so fareth it with the powers of your soul. The rays of the sun carry light in them as they pass through the air, but go on in vain till they meet an object: and there they are expressed. They illuminate a mirror, and are illuminated by it. For a looking-glass without them would be in the dark, and they without the glass unperceived. There they revive and overtake themselves, and represent the effigies from whence they came; both of the sun and heavens; and trees and mountains, if the glass be seated conveniently to receive them. Which were it not that the glass were present there, one would have thought even the ideas of them absent from the place. Even so your soul in its rays and powers is unknown: and no man would believe it present everywhere, were there no objects there to be discerned. Your thoughts and inclinations pass on and are unperceived, but by their objects are discerned to be present: being illuminated by them. For they are present with them and active about them. They recover and feel themselves, and by those objects live in employment, being turned into the figure and idea of them. For as light varieth upon all objects whither it cometh, and returneth with the form and figure of them: so is the soul transformed into the Being of its object. Like light from the Sun, its first effigies is simple life, the pure resemblance of its primitive fountain, but on the object which it meeteth it is quickly changed, and by understanding becometh all Things.