their ardour, and become ministering spirits to those who are heirs of eternal life.

The kingdom of Satan, on the same supposition, may be considered as unseen around us. Then he is called with propriety the "prince of the power of the air" and the "ruler of the darkness of this world." In this way wicked spirits of men, having entered into affinity with the kingdom of Satan, may aid him in carrying out his hellish malice against men. Those demoniacal possessions so common in the days of Christ, and perhaps still more common than we imagine, though not so palpable, may be considered as the intrusion of wicked spirits into the sphere of human life. We know that good spirits, evil spirits, and men are in a real contest with each other, and why not suppose them to be really near each other in space? We know that the wind, though unseen, bloweth where it listeth, when we see its effects; why not conclude, on the same principle, that this contest, the fact of which is so evident, is carried on by beings existent in the same field of space?

It is also supposed that these beings, in the world unseen, may have capacities to communicate with the remotest inhabitants of God's universe. The facilities of communication may be so great in these ethereal climes, that space is annihilated, and the different hosts of intelligences in the wide universe may commune with each other and God, as one family in their "father's house." Caught up, as it were, by the inspiration of the idea, the author exclaims-"might we then rest for a moment upon an animating concep tion such as this, namely, that the field of the visible

universe is the theatre of a vast social economy,

hold

ing rational intercourse at great distances. Let us claim leave to indulge the belief, when we contemplate the starry heavens, that speech, inquiry, and response, commands and petitions, debate and instruction, are passing to and fro; or shall the imagination catch the pealing anthem of praise, at stated periods arising from worshippers in all quarters, and flowing on with a thundering power, like the noise of many waters, until it meet and shake the court of the central heavens!"

Here let us stop in astonishment and wonder at the things which the human mind imagines and contrives in reference to its future home. The deep earnestness in which it bends over its eternal destiny, if it serves for nothing else, is a strong evidence of its immortality. It shows also that it is ready to open its eyes with admiration and gratitude upon the blessed scenes of the future life, whatever be their nature, where God shall cause them to pass before his redeemed saints in another world. Before the light of revelation, however, this sublime structure of fancy and speculation vanishes like the mist of the morning.

It does violence to the scriptural idea exhibited in the first chapter, that the future abode of the blest is distant in space from this present world. This idea. brings it immediately around us, and to enter it, it is not so much necessary to remove through space as to lay down the present conditions of life, to become insensible to and free from its affinities. Death, according to this idea, is as when one lies down to sleep in

a room of a certain form and furnished with certain furniture; but during sleep the whole room and furniture is changed, and he awakes to new scenes, and in the midst of new relations, without changing his position. If this be so, what need, we may ask, was there then for Elijah to be removed visibly from the earth upwards through the air to heaven? Why did the chariots of Israel cleave the heavens and carry their precious treasure beyond the reach of sight? Why did the risen Saviour disappear from the sight of his disciples, going up "far above all heavens ?"

It makes also the future abode more ethereal than is warranted from Scripture. We have seen in chapter I., that heaven must be not only material, but tangible even to our sight. The Saviour being there, with the same body in which he appeared to his disciples and others after his resurrection, and which he carried away with him in their sight to heaven, is a proof that heaven, where he now is in his body, must be a place, as tangible to the sense of sight, as his body itself was. Here we see, that while Christ was in his resurrection body and his disciples not, he was tangible to them; for they saw him, felt him, and heard him speak. Here we have the Saviour standing in the conditions and affinities of the eternal world with his glorified resurrection body, and the disciples standing in the affinities and conditions of this life, and yet they were tangible to each other. This, according to this theory, could not be, for the two worlds, though in and through each other, are supposed to stand in no active affinities to each other. If, therefore, what is said here and in chapter I.,

about the nature of heaven, rest on good ground, then this theory cannot be true.

Besides all this, it grates on the feelings of one familiar with the Scripture representations of heaven, and sounds wild and unnatural to a deeply pious Christian consciousness. There seems, to say the least, something undesirable, if not repugnant to our hopes, in the idea that at death we are to be launched forth into a world with no other material substratum but ether, or something still more subtle and refined. No, rather let us call back our minds from the superstitious and ideal to what is more real, and therefore better suited to the bent which our existence has received, from all previous habit, while connected with such bodies as we now have, and resident in a world like the present. In the language of the author of this theory, in another place, let us "bring our religious conceptions into definite alliance with the real world, and with nature, and break up a little those vague and powerless notions which place our religious expectation at a dim remoteness from whatever is substantial and effective. Let us try to persuade ourselves that the future and unseen world, with all its momentous transactions, is as simply natural and true as is this world of land and water, trees and houses, with which now we have to do."

6

SECTION IV.

THE SUDDEN CREATION OF A HEAVEN.

We have another theory from the same source, * which may be briefly stated. It supposes "that the visible universe, replete every where with various forms of animal life, is to fill one period only in the great history of the moral system, and that it is destined, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, to disappear and to return to its nihility, giving place to new elements and to new and higher expressions of omnipotence and intelligence.'

It is said that the visible universe exists only by the will of God, and that to destroy it, is only for him to will that its existence shall cease. The same

word of power, which spake it out of nothing, can bid it return. Indeed, he need not exert any power to destroy it, he need only cease to support it and it will vanish like smoke. Should he just withdraw his sustaining power, the solid spheres would disappear as the flame of a taper disappears when sunk into gas. Life being perfectly above and superior to matter, would sustain no injury, not even a shock. Silently as fog disappears before and around the traveller, and leaves a world of glory around him without disturbing him at all, so silently but more suddenly would the conditions and affinities of the present life disappear, and the spirit be unclothed of the mortal and clothed upon by the immortal. Thus, at the last day, in the

* Chapter 18.