and from these come all its charms and glories. As this principle signalizes most impressively the pneumatology of the Bible, and clears it heaven-wide of the slough of naturalism, we will endeavor to give it as lucid an illustration as it will bear.

In Revelation vii. 9-14, the Revealer describes the ritual of heaven, and speaks of the worshippers as "clothed in white robes," and again as having washed their robes "white in the blood of the lamb." We perceive at once that this describes the inmost life of the celestial worshippers, that the "robes" are put on, not from without, but from within, and are the exfigurations of that celestial purity and innocence which have been wrought in the redeemed by the Lamb of God.

Again, xxii. 1-2, we have a description of delightful scenery,-a river clear as crystal, fringed on either side with trees that hang with delicious. fruits. But the reader is not in the least danger of a relapse into naturalism, for he sees by the whole description that all this scenery is the manifestation of spiritual and moral attributes and qualities.

Again, we have a description of day without night, xxii. 3-5, but it is not day produced by natural suns. "Solemque suum sua sidera norunt," they know their own sun and their own stars. Such is the more full and open per

ception of God's presence, that this is the sun which invests the fields with light and makes an eternal day.

So again, with a secure grasp upon this principle, we are not in the least danger of being misled when we read the description of the state of unhappy souls, the lake of fire that ever burns, and the smoke of their torment that ever ascends. These also are descriptive of moral and spiritual qualities, of unclean lusts and dark delusions become phenomenal, and flinging their colorings and shapings over the world in which they dwell; not of a place into which souls are transferred by outward arrangements. There, too, is an outward world as well as an inward, but one unfolds and glasses the other, and the spirit always imprints itself on its own surroundings.

We cite these as special illustrations; but take any prophetical portion of the Bible, and seek the principle that underlies its imagery, and you shall find invariably that what we here regard as the natural qualities of things there cease to be such altogether, and are, so to say, completely humanized. They exist and combine under another law, and body forth a redeemed or a degraded humanity. In the whole gorgeous panorama which the prophet unrolls, there is not a shade nor a tint which is not a reflection of a more interior life, and all changes are but the

variations in its lights and shadows. Mohammedan or millennial Paradises, or the Tartarus of heathendom, or of a heathenized Christianity, are there unknown.

5. The proximity of the spiritual world to this is another truth brought distinctly into view; but if the reader will exercise a moderate amount of intelligence, he will perceive that this nearness is not of the nature of juxtaposition of body with body. Not as the author of the Physical Theory conjectures, nor as the current "Spiritualism" teaches, that the spiritual world is a subtilized natural one on the plane of materialism. It is above us, not in space, but in the higher degree of its life and the higher species of substances that compose it. But it is near us, and we are in it because our souls are of like substance, and are organisms to receive its spirit and breathe its airs, and have latent in them those orders of perceptive powers capable in due time of giving us open relations with it, and unobstructed sight of its transcendent glories.

Under the guide of these principles, very simple, and as it seems to us very plain, the Bible pneumatology stands before us clear, distinct, and rational. We leave behind us alike the nonentities of metaphysics and the absurdities of naturalism, and the spiritual world rises out of the

dreary inane, rank beyond rank, away towards the foot of the throne, each rank instinct with new life as it ascends, because nearer in degree to the source of being, each occupying a plane. of existence that grows in beauty as it rises;"Largior hic campos æther, et lumine vestit purpureo," where an ampler ether invests the fields with purpureal gleams.

6*

CHAPTER VIII.

DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT.

THE change which we call death is to be contemplated from two points of view: first, as an ordinance of Providence; and, secondly, as an evil after the laws of Providence have been infringed by sinful agency.

What death is in its essential nature doth very plainly appear. It appears from our preceding course of argument, and it appears from all that we know of it in lower natures. Death is the removal of an outgrowth after it has accomplished its functions and become a hinderance,the outward bark of the tree become dry, and scaling off that the tree may expand with more thrift and freedom. Death is a necessary stage in human progress, of which the lower analogies prophesy in strains of joy.

Man's progress has three distinct and successive stages. He has three times to be born before he knows the full endowments of his nature. He