will be ground to walk upon; or scenes of luxuriance to delight the corporeal senses; or the kindly intercourse of friends talking familiarly, and by articulate converse together; or, in short, any thing that has the least resemblance to a local territory, filled with various accommodations, and peopled over its whole extent by creatures formed like ourselves-having bodies such as we now wear, and faculties of perception, and thought, and mutual communication, such as we now exercise. The common imagination that we have of paradise on the other side of death, is, that of a lofty aerial region, where the inmates float in ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothingwhere all the warm and sensible accompa niments which give such an expression of strength, and life, and colouring, to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imperceptible, and utterly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below-where every vestige of materialism is done away, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstacies, with which it is felt impossible to sympathize. The

can be, were to attempt a wisdom beyond Scripture: but to assert that this has been, and therefore may be, is to keep most strictly and modestly within the limits of the record. For, we there read, that God framed an apparatus of materialism, which, on his own surveying, he pronounced to be all very good, and the leading features of which may still be recognised among the things and the substances that are around us-and that he created man with the bodily organs and senses which we now wear-and placed him under the very canopy that is over our heads--and spread around him a scenery, perhaps lovelier in its tints, and more smiling and serene in the whole aspect of it, but certainly made up, in the main, of the same objects that still compose the prospect of our visible contemplations-and there, working with his hands in a garden, and with trees on every side of him, and even with animals sporting at his feet, was this inhabitant of earth, in the midst of all those earthly and familiar accompaniments, in full possession of the best immunities of a citizen of heaven-sharing in the delight of angels, and while he gazed on the very beauties which we ourselves gaze upon, rejoicing in them most as the tokens of a pre-holders of this imagination forget all the sent and presiding Deity. It were venturing on the region of conjecture to affirm, whether, if Adam had not fallen, the earth that we now tread upon, would have been the everlasting abode of him and his posterity. But certain it is, that man, at the first, had for his place this world, and, at the same time, for his privilege, an unclouded fellowship with God, and, for his prospect, an immortality, which death was neither to intercept nor put an end to. He was terrestrial in respect of condition, and yet celestial in respect both of character and enjoyment. His eye looked outwardly on a landscape of earth, while his heart breathed upwardly in the love of heaven. And though he trode the solid platform of our world, and was compassed about with its horizon---still was he within the circle of God's favoured creation, and took his place among the freemen and the denizens of the great spiritual commonwealth.

This may serve to rectify an imagination of which we think that all must be conscious-as if the grossness of materialism was only for those who had degenerated into the grossness of sin; and that, when a spiritualizing process had purged away all our corruption, then, by the stepping-stones of a death and a resurrection, we should be borne away to some ethereal region, where sense, and body, and all in the shape either of audible sound, or of tangible substance, were unknown. And hence that strangeness of impression which is felt by you, should the supposition be offered, that in the place of eternal blessedness there

while, that really there is no essential connection between materialism and sin-that the world which we now inhabit, had all the amplitude and solidity of its present materialism, before sin entered into itthat God so far, on that account, from look ing slightly upon it, after it had received the last touch of his creating hand, reviewed the earth, and the waters, and the firmament, and all the green herbage, with the living creatures, and the man whom he had raised in dominion over them, and he saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was all very good. They forget that on the birth of materialism, when it stood out in the freshness of those glories which the great Architect of Nature had impressed upon it, that then the "morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." They forget the appeals that are made every where in the Bible to this material workmanship--and how, from the face of these visible heavens, and the garniture of this earth that we tread upon, the greatness and the goodness of God are reflected on the view of his worshippers. No, my brethren, the object of the administra tion we sit under, is to extirpate sin, but it is not to sweep away materialism. By the convulsions of the last day, it may be shaken, and broken down from its present arrangements, and thrown into such fitful agitations, as that the whole of its existing frame-work shall fall to pieces, and by a heat so fervent as to melt its most solid elements, may it be utterly dissolved. And thus may the earth again become without form, and

void, but without one particle of its substance going into annihilation. Out of the ruins of this second chaos, may another heaven and another earth be made to arise; and a new materialism, with other aspects of magnificence and beauty, emerge from the wreck of this mighty transformation; and the world be peopled as before, with the varieties of material loveliness, and space be again lighted up into a firmament of material splendour.

that ere the immaterial soul of man has reached the ultimate glory and blessedness which are designed for it, it must return and knock at that very grave where lie the mouldered remains of the body which it wore-and there inquisition must be made for the flesh, and the sinews, and the bones, which the power of corruption has perhaps for centuries before, assimilated to the earth that is around them-and there, the minute atoms must be re-assembled into a structure that bears upon it the form and the lineaments, and the general aspect of a manand the soul passes into this material frame-work, which is hereafter to be its lodging-place for ever-and that, not as its prison, but as its pleasant and befitting habitation-not to be trammelled, as some would have it, in a hold of materialism, but to be therein equipped for the services of eternity-to walk embodied among the bowers of our second paradise-to stand embodied in the presence of our God.

Were our place of everlasting blessedness so purely spiritual as it is commonly imagined, then the soul of man, after, at death, having quitted his body, would quit it conclusively. That mass of materialism with which it is associated upon earth, and which many regard as a load and an incumbrance, would have leave to putrefy in the grave without being revisited by supernatural power, or raised again out of the inanimate dust into which it had resolved. If the body be indeed a clog and a confinement to the spirit, instead of its commo- There will, it is true, be a change of dious tenement, then would the spirit feel personal constitution between a good man lightened by the departure it had made, before his death, and a good man after his and expatiate in all the buoyancy of its resurrection-not, however, that he will be emancipated powers, over a scene of en- set free from his body, but that he will be largement. And this is, doubtless, the pre-set free from the corrupt principle that vailing imagination. But why, then, after is in his body-not the materialism by having made its escape from such a thral- which he is now surrounded will be done dom, should it ever recur to the prison-house away, but that the taint of evil by which of its old materialism, if a prison-house it this materialism is now pervaded, will be really be. Why should the disengaged done away. Could this be effected without spirit again be fastened to the drag of that dying, then death would be no longer an grosser and heavier substance, which many essential stepping-stone to paradise. But think has only the effect of weighing down it would appear of the moral virus which its activity, and infusing into the pure has been transmitted downwards from element of mind an ingredient which serves Adam, and is now spread abroad over the to cloud and to enfeeble it. In other words, whole human family-it would appear, what is the use of a day of resurrection, that to get rid of this, the old fabric must if the union which then takes place is to be taken down, and reared anew; and that, deaden, or to reduce all those energies that not of other materials, but of its own maare commonly ascribed to the living prin- terials, only delivered of all impurity, as if ciple, in a state of separation? But, as a by a refining process in the sepulchre. It proof of some metaphysical delusion upon is thus, that what is "sown in weakness, this subject, the product, perhaps, of a is raised in power"-and for this purpose, wrong though fashionable philosophy, it it is not necessary to get quit of materialwould appear, that to embody the spirit is ism, but to get quit of sin, and to purge not the stepping-stone to its degradation, materialism of its malady. It is thus that but to its preferment. The last day will be the dead shall come forth incorruptible— a day of triumph to the righteous-because and those, we are told, who are alive at the day of the re-entrance of the spirit to this great catastrophe, shall suddenly and its much-loved abode, where its faculties, mysteriously be changed. While we are so far from being shut up into captivity, compassed about with these vile bodies, as will find their free and kindred develope- the Apostle emphatically terms them, evil ment in such material organs as are suited is present, and it is well, if through the to them. The fact of the resurrection working of the Spirit of grace, evil does not proves, that, with man at least, the state of prevail. To keep this besetting enemy in a disembodied spirit, is a state of unnatural check, is the task and the trial of our Chrisviolence and that the resurrection of his tianity on earth--and it is the detaching of body is an essential step to the highest per- this poisonous ingredient which constitutes fection of which he is susceptible. And it that for which the believer is represented is indeed an homage to that materialism, as groaning earnestly, even the redemption which many are for expunging from the of the body that he now wears, and which future state of the universe altogether will then be transformed into the likeness

that we have said, to keep within the limits of the record, and to offer no other remarks than those which may fitly be suggested by the circumstance, that a new earth is to be created, as well as a new heavens for the future accommodation of the righteous. We have no desire to push the speculation beyond what is written, but it were, at the same time, well, that in all our representations of the immortal state, there was just the same force of colouring, and the same vivacity of scenic exhibition that there is in the New Testament. The imagination of a total and diametric opposition between the re

of Christ's glorified body. And this will be his heaven, that he will serve God without a struggle, and in a full gale of spiritual delight--because with the full concurrence of all the feelings and all the faculties of his regenerated nature. Before death, sin is only repressed--after the resurrection, all sin will be exterminated. Here he has to maintain the combat, with a tendency to evil still lodging in his heart, and working a perverse movement among his inclinations; but after his warfare in this world is accomplished, he will no longer be so thwarted--and he will set him down in another world, with the repose and the tri-gion of sense and the region of spirituality, umph of victory for his everlasting reward. certainly tends to abate the interest with The great constitutional plague of his na- which we might otherwise look to the perture will no longer trouble him; and there spective that is on the other side of the will be the charm of a genial affinity be-grave; and to deaden all those sympathies tween the purity of his heart, and the purity of the element he breathes in. Still it will not be the purity of spirit escaped from materialism, but of spirit translated into a materialism that has been clarified of evil. It will not be the purity of souls unclothed as at death, but the purity of souls that have again been clothed upon at the resurrection.

that we else might have with the joys and the exercises of the blest in paradise. To rectify this, it is not necessary to enter on the particularities of heaven-a topic on which the Bible is certainly most sparing and reserved in its communications. But a great step is gained simply by dissolving the alliance that exists in the minds of many between the two ideas of sin and materialism; or proving, that when once sin is done away, it consists with all we know of God's administration, that materialism shall be

of immortality. It altogether holds out a warmer and more alluring picture of the elysium that awaits us, when told, that there, will be beauty to delight the eye; and music to regale the ear; and the comfort that

between man and man, holding converse as they do on earth, and gladdening each other with the benignant smiles that play on the human countenance, or the accents of kindness that fall in soft and soothing melody from the human voice. There is much of the innocent, and much of the in

But the highest homage that we know of to materialism, is that which God, manifest in the flesh, has rendered to it. That He, the Divinity, should have wrapt his unfa-perpetuated in the full bloom and vigour thomable essence in one of its coverings, and expatiated amongst us in the palpable form and structure of a man; and that he should have chosen such a tenement, not as a temporary abode, but should have borne it with him to the place which he now oc-springs from all the charities of intercourse cupies, and where he is now employed in preparing the mansions of his followers; that he should have entered within the vail, and be now seated at the right hand of the Father, with the very body which was marked by the nails upon his cross, and wherewith he ate and drank after his resurrection---that he who repelled the imagina-spiring, and much to affect and elevate the tion of his disciples, as if they had seen a heart, in the scenes and the contemplations spirit, by bidding them handle him and see, of materialism--and we do hail the inforand subjecting to their familiar touch the mation of our text, that after the dissolution flesh and the bones that encompassed him; of its present frame-work, it will again be that he should now be throned in universal varied and decked out anew in all the graces supremacy, and wielding the whole power of of its unfading verdure, and of its unheaven and earth, have every knee to bow bounded variety-that in addition to our di at his name, and every tongue to confess, rect and personal view of the Deity, when and yet all to the glory of God the Father--- he comes down to tabernacle with men, we that humanity, that substantial and embo- shall also have the reflection of him in a died humanity, should thus be exalted, and lovely mirror of his own workmanship; a voice of adoration from every creature, and that instead of being transported to be lifted up to the Lamb for ever and ever--- some abode of dimness and of mystery, so does this look like the abolition of materi-remote from human experience, as to be bealism, after the present system of it is de-yond all comprehension, we shall walk for stroyed; or does it not rather prove, that transplanted into another system, it will be preferred to celestial honours, and prolonged in immortality throughout all ages?

It has been our careful endeavour, in all

ever in a land replenished with those sensible delights, and those sensible glories, which, we doubt not, will lie most profusely scattered over the "new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."

This will make plain to you how it is that

II. But though a paradise of sense, it will soul, and spirit, and body, under the presidnot be a paradise of sensuality. Though noting authority of heaven's principles. so unlike the present world as many apprehend it, there will be one point of total dis-it could be said in the New Testament, that similarity betwixt them. It is not the entire the "kingdom of heaven was at hand"substitution of spirit for matter, that will and how, in that book, its place is marked distinguish the future economy from the out, not by locally pointing to any quarter, present. But it will be the entire substitu- and saying, Lo here, or lo there, but by the tion of righteousness for sin. It is this which simple affirmation that the kingdom of heasignalizes the Christian from the Mahome- ven is within you-and how, in defining tan paradise-not that sense, and substance, what it was that constituted the kingdom and splendid imagery, and the glories of a of heaven, there is an enumeration, not of visible creation seen with bodily eyes are such circumstances as make up an outward excluded from it, but that all which is vile condition, but of such feelings and qualities in principle, or voluptuous in impurity, will as make up a character, even righteousness, be utterly excluded from it. There will be and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost-and a firm earth, as we have at present, and a how the ushering in of the new dispensaheaven stretched over it, as we have at pre- tion is held equivalent to the introduction sent; and it is not by the absence of these, of this kingdom into the world-all making but by the absence of sin, that the abodes of it evident, that if the purity and the princiimmortality will be characterized. There ples of heaven begin to take effect upon our will both be heavens and earth, it would heart, what is essentially heaven begins with appear, in the next great administration-us, even in this world; that instead of asand with this speciality to mark it from cending to some upper region, for the purthe present one, that it will be a heavens pose of entering it, it may descend upon us, and earth, "wherein dwelleth righteous-and make an actual entrance of itself into ness."

Now, though the first topic of information that we educed from the text, may be regarded as not very practical, yet the second topic on which I now insist, is most eminently so. Were it the great characteristic of that spirituality which is to obtain in a future heaven, that it was a spirituality of essence, then occupying and pervading the place from which materialism has been swept away, we could not, by any possible method, approximate the condition we are in at present to the condition we are to hold everlastingly. We cannot etherealize the matter that is around us-neither can we attenuate our own bodies, nor bring down the slightest degree of such a heaven to the earth that we now inhabit. But when we are told that materialism is to be kept up, and that the spirituality of our future state lies not in the kind of substance which is to compose its frame-work, but in the character of those who people it-this puts, if not the fulness of heaven, at least a foretaste of heaven, within our reach. We have not to strain at a thing so impracticable, as that of diluting the material economy which is without us; we have only to reform the moral economy that is within us. We are now walking on a terrestrial surface, not more compact, perhaps, than the one we shall hereafter walk upon; and are now wearing terrestrial bodies, not firmer and more solid, perhaps, than those we shall hereafter wear. It is not by working any change upon them that we could realize, to an extent, our future heaven. And this is simply done by opening the door of our heart for the influx of heaven's affectionsby bringing the whole man, as made up of

our bosoms; and that so far, therefore, from that remote and inaccessible thing which many do regard it, it may, through the influence of the word which is nigh unto you, and of the Spirit that is given to prayer, be lighted up in the inner man of an individual | upon earth, whose person may even here, exemplify its graces, and whose soul may even here realize a measure of its enjoyments.

And hence one great purpose of the incarnation of our Saviour. He came down amongst us in the full perfection of heaven's character, and has made us see, that it is a character which may be embodied. All its virtues were, in his case, infused into a corporeal frame-work, and the substance of these lower regions was taken into intimate and abiding association with the spirit of the higher. The ingredient which is heavenly, admits of being united with the ingredient which is earthly-so that we, who, by nature are of the earth, and earthly, could we catch of that pure and celestial element which made the man Christ Jesus to differ from all other men, then might we too be formed into that character by which it is that the members of the family above differ from the outcast family beneath. Now, it is expressly said of him, that he is set before us as an example; and we are required to look to that living exhibition of him, where all the graces of the upper sanctuary are beheld as in a picture; and instead of an abstract, we have in his history a familiar representation of such worth, and piety, and excellence, as could they only be stamped upon our own persons, and borne along with us to the place where he now dwelleth-instead of being shunned as aliens, we should be welcomed and recog

nised as seemly companions for the inmates | It is thus that heaven may be established of that place of holiness. And, in truth, the great work of Christ's disciples upon earth, is a constant and busy process of assimilation to their Master who is in heaven. And we live under a special economy, that has been set up for the express purpose of helping it forward. It is for this, in particular, that the Spirit is provided. We are changed into the image of the Lord, even by the Spirit of the Lord. Nursed out of this fulness, we grow up unto the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus-and instead of heaven being a remote and mysterious unknown, heaven is brought near to us by the simple expedient of inspiring us where we now stand, with its love, and its purity, and its sacredness. We learn from Christ, that the heavenly graces are all of them compatible with the wear of an earthly body, and the circumstances of an earthly habitation. It is not said in how many of its features the new earth will differ from, or be like unto the present one-but we, by turning from our iniquities unto Christ, push forward the resemblance of the one to the other, in the only feature that is specified, even that "therein dwelleth righteousness."

upon earth, and the petition of our Lord's prayer be fulfilled, "Thy kingdom come." This petition receives its best explanation from the one which follows: "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." It just requires a similarity of habit and character in the two places, to make out a similarity of enjoyment. Let us attend, then, to the way in which the services of the upper sanctuary are rendered-not in the spirit of legality, for this gendereth to bondage; but in the spirit of love, which gendereth to the beatitude of the affections rejoicing in their best and most favourite indulgence. They do not work there, for the purpose of making out the conditions of a bargain. They do not act agreeably to the pleasure of God, in order to obtain the gratification of any distinct will or distinct pleasure of their own, in return for it. Their will is, in fact, identical with the will of God. There is a perfect unison of taste and of inclination, between the creature and the Creator. They are in their element, when they are feeling righteously, and doing righteously. Obedience is not drudgery, but delight to them; and as much as there is of the congenial between animal nature, and the food that is suitable to it, so much is there of the congenial between the moral nature of heaven, and its sacred employments and services. Let the will of God, then, be done here, as it is done there, and not only will character and conduct be the same here as there, but they will also resemble each other in the style, though not in the degree of their blessedness. The happiness of heaven will be exemplified upon earth, along with the virtue of heaven-for, in truth, the main ingredient of that happiness is not given them in payment for work; but it lies in the love they bear to the work itself. A man is never happier than when employed in that which he likes best. This is all a question of taste; but should such a taste be given as to make it a man's meat and drink to do the will of his Father, then is he in perfect readiness for being carried upwards to hea ven, and placed beside the pure river of water of life, that proceedeth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. This is the way in which you may make a heaven upon earth, not by heaping your reluctant offers at the shrine of legality, but by serving God because you love him; and doing his will, because you delight to do him honour.

And had we only the character, of heaven, we should not be long of feeling what that is which essentially makes the comfort of heaven. "Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest iniquity; therefore, God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness, above thy fellows." Let us but love the righteousness which he loves, and hate the iniquity which he hateth, and this, of itself, would so soften and attune the mechanism of our moral nature, that in all the movements of it, there should be joy. It is not sufficiently adverted to, that the happiness of heaven lies simply and essentially in the well-going machinery of a well-conditioned soul-and that according to its measure, it is the same in kind with the happiness of God, who liveth for ever in bliss ineffable, because he is unchangeable in being good, and upright, and holy. There may be audible music in heaven, but its chief delight will be in the music of well-poised affections, and of principles in full and consenting harmony with the laws of eternal rectitude. There may be visions of loveliness there, but it will be the loveliness of virtue, as seen directly in God, and as reflected back again in family likeness from all his children-it will be this that shall give its purest and sweetest transports to the soul. In a word, And here we may remark, that the only the main reward of paradise, is spiritual joy possible conveyance for this new principle -and that, springing at once from the love into the heart, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the possession of spiritual excellence.that in no other way, than through the It is such a joy as sin extinguishes on the moment of its entering the soul; and such a joy as is again restored to the soul, and that immediately on its being restored to righ

teousness.

acceptance of its free pardon, sealed by the blood of an atonement, which exalts the Lawgiver, can the soul of man be both emancipated from the fear of terror, and solemnized into the fear of humble and holy