through its spiritual sense—we must first learn the true nature of the doctrine of degrees.
Every degree contains within itself, so to speak, the germ of that which is to succeed it, in the same way as the infant contains the germ of the youth, and the youth the germ of the man. God created the heavens and the earth: but the earth is the display of the lowest degree of wisdom, and is the natural degree. The breath of lives breathed into man constitutes him living, and thus prepares him for becoming spiritual, and by continuing in obedience to the Lord, and cultivating all the powers and faculties with which he is endowed, he has it in his power to become celestial. The second chapter of Genesis, therefore, treats rather of the celestial than of the spiritual man, and the wisdom of the Lord can alone fully describe the blessedness of that state. To understand the term celestial, we must ascend to the knowledge of the term by a series of degrees, and we must aim at understanding them by bringing ourselves into a teachable frame of mind. There are three terms neceseary to be used, natural, spiritual, and celestial. Each of these terms has its three degrees, of lowest, middle, and inmost; and each of these may be described as in some measure connected by a medium with the power or degree just above it; thus, the highest of the natural serves as the nearest approach to the lowest of the spiritual, and the highest of the spiritual to the lowest of the celestial. But the church has so degenerated, that these terms, spiritual as well as celestial, are almost meaningless, and it becomes needful in some degree to explain them. A man that is merely natural, is little better than one that is dead, for he
