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Lord, and all evil be removed; but all good will be conferred, all that the words "salvation," "glory," the "kingdom," crown," "joy of the Lord," impart; all that the immortal soul and wonderful body of man were designed for; all that his capacities of happiness, little less than angelic, can receive; all the felicity which his glorified body and soul, in the possession of perfect holiness, can apprehend; all that is contained in the inconceivable gift of the immediate vision, presence, favor, and joy of God, the source of all felicity-man, in a word, come now to his end and consummation, and receiving all those species of happiness, and in the highest measure, of which Adam before the fall was susceptible, and which the mighty grace of Christ's death and resurrection was designed to restore.

4. We may perhaps be permitted to add, that the noble powers of the glorified saint will be ever advancing in measures of knowledge, love and happiness throughout eternity. It seems to be the law of our moral being that knowledge should grow with observation, experience, opportunities of comparison and reflection; that love should be enkindled more and more by intimate communion with its object, and as new materials are accumulated by the advancing operations of the understanding. As therefore there are, in the first instance, degrees of heavenly glory and felicity in proportion to our attainments upon earth, it may not be impossible that there may be a continual progress afterwards; that the same law of our moral nature may remain; and the endless lapse of ages add to our capacities of increased knowledge, love, and felicity. Just as it is not impossible that the disordered passions, the unsatisfied appetites, the rebellious affections, the malignity, envy, mutual reproach, torment of conscience, agonized remembrance of lost opportunities of salvation -in the word, "the worm that never dies and the

fire that never is quenched"-may, from the constitution of the human mind, be augmenting, through eternity, the sense of misery in the lost.

But this may be, or may not be ; extreme caution is required on such topics. I allude to it therefore with great reserve.

5. We are speaking perhaps with a higher probability, when we refer to the joy of reunion in the heavenly state with those whom we have known and loved upon earth; yea with all the "assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in heaven." It is evident that Lazarus and Dives are described by our Lord as personally known to each other, as well as to Abraham, in the future world. The kingdom of heaven is, also, depicted as a banquet, where we sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; whom it seems probable we shall therefore know. St. Paul calls his converts "his joy and crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus." And our Lord sets forth, by two parables," the joy which is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth ;' and in another, the affecting circumstance of the "friends whom we have made of the mammon of unrighteousness, receiving us into everlasting habitations." David in the Old Testament mentions it as a point then familiarly known, that he should rejoin his lost child after death.

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These and similar passages, connected with the general descriptions of the heavenly state, as removing every imperfection and enlarging all the capacities and sources of knowledge and happiness, leave little doubt as to the delightful prospect of the recognition of each other, to a certain extent, in that blessed world. Oh, the joy of reunion with the wife of our bosom, long gone before; with the children whose conversion was granted to our prayers; with the friends with whom we walked to the house of God in company! Oh, the joy of reunion between the pastor and his flock, the mas

ter and his scholars, the guardian and his pupils! Oh, the blessedness of meeting and knowing all the saints of all ages, if that should also be granted us-Adam, the father of our race; Abel, the first martyr; Abraham, the father of the Faithful; Samuel, the prophet; David and Hezekiah the kings of Israel; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Nehemiah and Malachi; Paul, and Peter, and John; as well as the martyrs and confessors of the primitive ages and the fathers and reformers of subsequent times in the Christian Church; all those, in short, whose names we have loved, whose histories we have perused, by whose writings we have been edified. If "the communion of saints" be an article of our creed, and a source of edification and comfort upon earth, how exalted will be the more pure and enlarged communion with them in heaven!

6. For we shall then be invested, all of us, of every age and dispensation, with glorious, spiritual, incorruptible bodies. Here we are safe in speaking of our prospects. These frail tenements, the hindrances of the soul, the dark fleshly prison, the chief stronghold of Satan, sin and the world, shall be left in the grave; and we shall be "clothed upon with our house which is from heaven;" our vile body will be changed like unto our Lord's glorious body." Then all our members will be aids to the soul. There will be no weariness in the service of God, no mist obscuring our gaze of divine objects, no weakness to impede our perpetual songs; but whenever the spirit prompts, the body will cheerfully and adequately follow and obey.

7. It is not improbable, also, that many of the mysteries of the divine wisdom, both generally in the scheme of redemption, and particularly in the events of our several lives on earth, may be unfolded. We shall still be finite creatures. But much may, perhaps, be developed to us in that brighter world, which was here too little understood by our con

tracted understandings and selfish hearts. Afflic tions may then be seen as the way to the blessed state of glory, with other degrees of clearness than we can now reach. The bitterest trials, the most dejecting disappointments, sorrows overwhelming as the ocean, separations, bereavements, deaths, which appeared at the time as proofs that God had forgotten us; all may assume a new position and bearing, on being beheld in their connection and result from one elevated and illumined point of view. What a burst of wonder will break upon the redeemed and happy soul, when the love and wisdom and power and grace of God in our salvation, are seen to have been the sole causes of our "light afflictions," heavy as they appeared at the time, but which were "but for a moment." How far this light may extend also over the general ways of the Almighty, and cast its glory on the mysteries of the present mixed state of things, and the scheme of redemption which was designed to remedy them, it would be presumptuous to conjecture. But, the joy of contemplating the storm, after we have arrived at the place of safety; the joy of looking back on the voyage, when we have reached the port; the joy of tracing out wisdom and love, where we once thought there was little but wrath and displeasure, may not improbably form an element of the heavenly felicity.

8. In like manner, the consideration of that most abundant reward of grace which we shall then have attained; the "rest from labor, our works following us;" the joy of the Lord opened to the good and faithful servant; the two and five and ten talents recompensed with proportionate dignity and happiness; the visits to prison, the food and clothing dispensed to the hungry and naked, the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple, all recorded in the face of the assembled universe, and recognized as done unto the Lord himself;

"they that were wise, also, then shining forth with the brightness of the firmament, and they that turned many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever ;" -these scriptural statements of the reward of grace vouchsafed to the faithful, may in all probability enter into the mass of our heavenly recollections and felicity; and may enhance that hymn of praise which we certainly know to be there continually sung, Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever!"

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9. This remark may be extended. For what must the happiness be of spending an eternity of gratitude. On earth, nothing more delightful than grateful emotions to a benefactor. On earth, no branch of religious duty more elevating than to dwell on the goodness and mercy of our God; and to inquire, "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits bestowed upon us?" Heaven may well be all felicity, partly because it will be all gratitude. A heart ever swelling with a sense of past benefits and ever receiving fresh ones; a mind engaging, without the slightest remains of error, misjudgment, or selfishness, in perpetual adoration and praise for the greatest of all blessings, to the best and most glorious of all Beings, in the purest and most exalted of all places, and with powers of attention, love, praise, never capable of weariness or satiety as to body or mind, may well be considered as a source of unutterable blessing.

10. I only venture to add, that to be in the vast assembly of all that is pure and holy in the creation of God, where each one loves the rest, and knows that he is loved in return with equal fervor; where the intercommunity of affection is perfect and uninterrupted, and no longer liable to decay, must constitute a source of felicity of which the faint adumbrations in the mutual love of Christians to each other