9.  There is not, in my opinion, a more pleasing and triumphant consideration in religion than this of the perpetual progress which the soul makes towards the perfection of its nature, without ever arriving at a period in it.  To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she 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 its inhabitants.

2.  If we consider those parts of the material world which lie the nearest to us, and are therefore subject to our observations and inquiries, it is amazing to consider the infinity of animals with which it is stocked.  Every part of matter is peopled:  every green leaf swarms with inhabitants.  There is scarce a single humour of the body of a man, or of any other animal, in which our glasses do not discover myriads of living creatures.