extended application beyond. The mind grows by what it feeds on;
the heart grows by what it feeds on; love, hate, jealousy,
revenge, fortitude, courage, grow by what they feed on;
spirituality grows by what spirituality feeds on. Wherever growth
goes, through all the realm of God, this law goes; and the law
that every thing that produces shall produce after its kind, is
just as universal as this. It begins in material life, and runs up
through all life. Rather, perhaps, I should say, that it begins in
spiritual life, and seeks embodiment in material life, so that we
may apprehend it. The clouds were in heaven before there was any
rain, and the rain comes down from heaven to tell us what the
clouds are made of. I might go further, and say that every form,
of matter is but the embodiment of a divine thought, and that,
with that thought, there passes into matter the laws that reside
in divine things of corresponding nature and office.

But I am becoming abstruse--quite too much so, considering the
simple, practical truths to which I am seeking to introduce my
reader. I have been thinking how, in accordance with this law of
which we are talking, our moods, our passions, our sympathies, our
moral frames and conditions, reproduce themselves, after their
kind, in the minds and lives around us. I call my child to my knee
in anger; I strike him a hasty blow that carries with it the
peculiar sting of anger; I speak a loud reproof that bears with it
the spirit of anger; and I look in vain for any relenting in his
flashing eyes, flushed face, and compressed lips. I have made my
child angry, and my uncontrolled passion has produced after its
kind. I have sown anger, and I have reaped anger instantaneously.
Perhaps I become still more angry, in consequence of the passion
manifested by my child, and I speak and strike again. He is weak