Are they to be like these?

But about those trees and houses, and the rest of your pretty things? Are they to be like these? I don't suppose that the houses will be made of oak and pine and nailed together, for instance. But I hope for heavenly types of nature and of art. Something that will be to us then what these are now. That is the amount of it. They may be as spiritual as you please—they will answer all the purpose to us. As we are not spiritual beings yet, however, I am under the necessity of calling them by their earthly names. You remember Plato's old theory, that the ideal of everything exists eternally in the mind of God. If that is so—and I do not see how it can be otherwise—then whatever of God is expressed to us in this world by flower, or blade of grass, or human face, why should not that be expressed forever in heaven by something corresponding to flower, or grass, or human face? I do not mean that the heavenly creation will be less real than these, but more so. Their spirituality is of such a sort that our gardens and forests and homes are but shadows of them.