FUTURE LIFE OF THE GOOD.

REUNION OF FRIENDS.

When we ask for Scriptural evidence of the reunion of friends in a future state, are we not answered by every passage from Scripture which speaks of that state as a social one ?— and the fact is, that it is spoken of there in no other way. Whether the mention is incidental, or direct, it constantly presents heaven to our thoughts as a place or state in which the righteous shall meet together, not exist separately. If we listen to Jesus, we hear him declare, that where he is his disciples shall be also. If we turn to the Epistles, Paul tells us, that when Christ, our life, shall appear, we also shall appear with him in glory; and

the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews points with rapture to the "general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven." If we pass over to that grand vision which concludes the books of the New Testament, we hear in heaven "as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, and the voice of harpers harping with their harps." The blessed in heaven are always represented as being in society, as being with their brethren, with angels, with their Savior, and with their God.

Now hardly any thing can seem to be plainer, than that, as heaven is a social and not a solitary state, they who live together there must know each other, and that they who knew each other here must know each other there. And it is one of the

of all propositions, that if we tions with us into the future

most reasonable

carry any affec

state, they will

fly first of all to salute those, who in this state

were their cherished objects. When a mother joins the heavenly company of the redeemed, will she not, if she retains any thing of her former self and nature, if she has not lost her identity and the consciousness of it, will she not ask for "the babe she lost in infancy?" If she is herself, she will ask for it. If God is good, she will find it, know it, embrace it. How she will find it, by what marks know it, and with what exercises renew her love, must be left for immortality to reveal; but the rest, the simple fact of recognition is plain,—so plain that we are disposed to think that the reason why so little is said in the Scriptures of future recognition, is, that it was considered as naturally implied and involved in the fact of a future social state. On such a subject, intimation is equivalent to distinct declaration, and is sometimes even more forcible. Let us see if there are not such intimations of future recognition to be found in the Scriptures, as amount to a declaration of the fact,