requires natural thought for the accomplishment of its purposes. It is necessary then that every man, let his mind have been ever so fully awakened to a sense of the superior importance of eternal concerns, should at times descend into natural thought respecting the temporal concerns of himself and his fellow-men; which natural thought has, for a time, the appearance of sleep, since, for a time at least, the great realities of the invisible world are not immediately presented to the mind’s view and observation. In this state, however, of natural thought, no danger is to be apprehended, inasmuch as spiritual thought is in it; and consequently the natural thought is not so much a separation from spiritual thought as its extension, by facilitating its descent into the ultimate sphere of usefulness and benefit to society and the world at large. It is evident therefore, that as there is a sleep of the mind unto death, consisting in the entire forgetfulness and neglect of all the grand concerns of eternity, so there is a sleep of the mind not unto death, but rather conducive to life,—consisting in the mind’s descent into natural thought and employment for the general benefit of mankind, that so it may bring down into the external man all the spiritual wisdom and heavenly purposes conceived in the internal man, which, without such descent, could never have been
