—and either with or without such an agency, by the demonstration of that Spirit, which is given unto faith, to make the kingdom of God come into your hearts with power.

DISCOURSE VI.

HEAVEN A CHARACTER AND NOT A LOCALITY.

"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still and he that is holy, let him be holy still." -REV. xxii. 11.

OUR first remark on this passage of Scripture, is, how very palpably and nearly it connects time with eternity. The character wherewith we sink into the grave at death, is the very character wherewith we shall re-appear on the day of resurrection. The character which habit has fixed and strengthened through life, adheres, it would seem, to the disembodied spirit, through the mysterious interval which separates the day of our dissolution from the day of our account-when it will again stand forth, the very image and substance of what it was, to the inspection of the Judge and the awards of the judgment-seat. The moral lineaments which be graven on the tablet of the inner man, and which every day of an unconverted life makes deeper and more indelible than before, will retain the very impress they have gotten-unaltered and uneffaced, by the transition from our present to our future state of existence. There will be a dissolution, and then a reconstruction of the body, from the sepulchral dust into which it had mouldered. But

there will be neither a dissolution nor a renovation of the spirit, which, indestructible both in character and essence, will weather and retain its identity, on the mid-way passage between this world and the next-so that at the time of quitting its earthly tenement we may say, that, if unjust now it will be unjust still, if filthy now it will be filthy still, if righteous now it will be righteous still, and if holy now it will be holy still.

Our second remark, suggested by the scripture now under consideration, is that there be many analogies of nature and experience, which even death itself does not interrupt. There is nought more familiar to our daily observation than the power and inveteracy of habit-insomuch that any vicious propensity is strengthened by every new act of indulgence; any virtuous principle is more firmly established than before, by every new act of resolute obedience to its dictates. The law which connects the actings of boyhood or of youth with the character of manhood, is the identical, the unrepealed law which connects our actings in time with our character through eternity. The way in which the moral discipline of youth prepares for the honours and the enjoyments of a virtuous manhood, is the very way in which the moral and spiritual discipline of a whole life prepares for a virtuous and happy immortality. And, on the other hand, the succession, as of cause and effect, from a profligate youth or a dishonest manhood, to a disgraced and worthless old age is just the succession, also of cause and effect, between the misdeeds and the depravities of our history on earth, and an

inheritance of worthlessness and wretchedness for The law of moral continuity between the different stages of human life, is also the law of continuity between the two worlds-which even the death that intervenes does not violate. Be he a saint or a sinner, each shall be filled with the fruit of his own ways-so that when translated into their respective places of fixed and everlasting destination, the one shall rejoice through eternity in that pure element of goodness, which here he loved and aspired after; the other, a helpless, a degraded victim of those passions which lorded over him through life, shall be irrevocably doomed to that worst of torments and that worst of tyranny -the torment of his own accursed nature, the inexorable tyranny of evil.

Our third remark suggested by this scripture is, that it affords no very dubious perspective of the future heaven and the future hell of the New Testament. We are aware of the material images employed in scripture, and by which it bodies forth its representation of both of the fire, and the brimstone, and the lake of living agony, and the gnashing of teeth, and the wailings, the ceaseless wailings of distress and despair unutterable, by which the one is set before us in characters of terror and most revolting hideousness of the splendour, the spaciousness, the music, the floods of melody and sights of surpassing loveliness, by which the other is set before us in characters of bliss and brightness unperishable; with all that can regale the glorified senses of creatures, rejoicing for ever in the presence and before the throne of God. We

stop not to inquire, and far less to dispute, whether these descriptions, in the plain meaning and very letter of them, are to be realized. But we hold that it would purge theology from many of its errors, and that it would guide and enlighten the practical Christianity of many honest inquirers—if the moral character both of heaven and hell were more distinctly recognized, and held a more prominent place in the regards and contemplations of men. If it indeed be true that the moral, rather than the material, is the main ingredient, whether of the coming torment or the coming ecstasy-then the hell of the wicked may be said to have already begun, and the heaven of the virtuous may be said to have already begun. The one, in the bitterness of an unhinged and dissatisfied spirit, has a foretaste of the wretchedness before him; the other, in the peace and triumphant complacency of an approving conscience, has a foretaste of the happiness before him. Each is ripening for his own everlasting destiny; and whether in the depravities that deepen and accumulate on the character of the one, or in the graces that brighten and multiply upon the other-we see materials enough, either for the worm that dieth not, or for the pleasures that are for evermore.

But again, it may be asked, will spiritual elements alone suffice to make up, either the intense and intolerable wretchedness of a hell, or the intense beatitude of a heaven? For an answer to this question, let us first turn your attention to the former of these receptacles. And we ask you to think of the state of that heart in respect to