432 MISCELLANEOU'S THOUGHTS. every place where it hadjust before sought a refuge, and still met with new disquietude and pain. At last I observed, said he, that having turned on all sides in vain, it lifted its head upward, and raised its length as high as possible in the air, where it found nothing to annoy it ; but the chief part of the body still lay prone on the wood ; its lower or worser half hung heavy on the aspiring animal, and forbid its as- cent. How happy would the worm have been, could it then have put on wings and become a flying insect ! Such, said he, is the case of every holy soul on earth ; it is out of its proper element, like the worm lodged amongst hot em- bers. The uneasy spirit is sometimes ready to stretch its powers, its desires, and wishes, on every side, to find rest and happiness amongst sensible goods ; but these things instead of satisfying its nobler appetites, rather give some new pain, variety of vexation, and everlasting disappointment. The soul finding every experi- ment vain, retires and shrinks back from all mortal objects, and being touched with divine influence, it raises itself up towards heaven to seek its God : but the flesh, the body, the meaner and worser half of the man, hangs heavy, and drags it down again, that it cannot ascend thither, where rest and ease are only to be found. What should such a soul do now, but pant and long hourly for a flight to the upper world, and breathe after the moment of its release ? What should be more joyful to such a spirit, than the divine and almighty summons to depart from flesh? O blessed voice from heaven that shall say to it, " Come up hither ?" and in the same instant shall break off all its fetters, give it the wings of an angel, and inspire it with double zeal to ascend. At another time, said Philemus, I happened to be with this good man when he was walking through a grove, and we un- perched a squirrel and a lark. The squirrel leaped nimbly from bough to bough, and ran round half the trees of the grove to se- cure itself; but the lark, after it had just tried a bough or two, took wing upward, and we saw it no more. Just such is the dif- ference, said Theophron, between a christian and a man of this world. When the sons of earth are beat off from one mortal hope, they run still to others, they search round among all the creatures to find relief, and dwell upon earthly comforts still ; but the soul of a christian, unperched from his rest on earth, flies immediately towards heaven, and takes its relief in the upper world among things that are invisible. When Philemus told these little occurrences of Theophron, together with his pious remarks upon them, Ridelio sat simpering with an air of contempt till the story was done, and then burst out into aloud laugh. " What, says he, is the old puritanical age returned again ? Must we spiritualize the affairs of larks, and
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