And they could give the very trees, and vallies, and hills,* a tongue to celebrate the praises of a merciful Deity; and bid the plants and flowers of the field break forth into singing, and join the great harmony of thanksgiving to the Saviour of mankind.

Nor did the expressive spirit of type and allegory cease with the ancient prophets. Christ himself loved, by these means, to enlist the tried sympathies, and the very prejudices themselves of his hearers in the furtherance of the cause he espoused. The love of father and child was too deeply grounded in the human heart to be overlooked in his appeals to them for a greater than filial obedience to a more than earthly parent.† The sense of property and the thirst of accumulating wealth were called in play, to appreciate the value of those imperishable "treasures which are laid up in heaven. The appetites of our physical nature themselves helped his hearers to conceive, by a distant analogy, the excellence and delight of the "banquets" and "feasts" of the blessed. Ambition and the love of power could furnish another image to the same effect, as explanatory of the high exaltation of the adopted children of God. And even the low and calcu

* Isa. lv. 12. † Luke xv. 21, xi. 13. § Luke xiv. 16.

Matt. xix. 21, xiii. 44. || Matt. xix. 28.

*

lating wisdom of a selfish world was held up,-at least in as far as relates to the restless assiduity and skill with which it plies its operations,-as a model not to be despised by the aspirants after the wisdom of the children of light. The humblest of creation's works supplied our Lord with parallels to the concerns of our immortal being. He looked through the expanse of nature, and he found nothing there which could not tell of heaven, or point some moral, or illustrate some eternal truth. Full of the impressions of the glory which he had so lately left, he saw even in our external creation analogies to things above. The fig-tree, the mustard-seed, the decaying grass, the lilies of the field,-these, and many other images equally humble, helped him in his delineations of spiritual things. And in many of the more lengthened allegories of scripture we find the things of the present and the future compared together as if there were more than a mere general similitude between them; and as though the visions which we now "see through a glass, darkly," were the distant prospect of the same glories which we may hope to see hereafter "face to face."

V. But, in conclusion, let it not be supposed that enquiries of this nature terminate in

*Luke xvi. 8.

speculation alone. We learn from the apostle's words that, notwithstanding the incalculable blessings of the gospel even on earth, and though it be indeed our only "light" "shining in darkness," and as "streams of water in a thirsty land," yet the views we have from thence are comparatively partial ones, and the benefits we derive from it in this world are trifling and insignificant to those we may enjoy hereafter. But let it be distinctly observed that we know positively nothing of heaven, unless we have caught the spirit of heaven in our thoughts, our words, and our lives. We are but as children here, children the whole character of whose future being, the whole extent of whose present hopes, must depend on the moral culture of these the days of their minority. It is by "keeping his commandments," and "doing his will," that we must learn to "know God" as he is.* "Without holiness," we are sure, 66 no man can see the Lord." Without holiness, the spiritual eye is dim, the spiritual ear is dull. We must be sanctified, to understand the blessings of sanctification. We must be redeemed, before we can appreciate the vast privileges and the full value of redemption. The knowledge, -the foretaste, the hope,-the visions-of a better world

*John vii. 17.

must not arise from the mere fantasies of the imagination, or come forth from the laboratory of speculative thought;-they must grow up in us from the culture of painful experience, from the earnest of the spirit in the heart, from the influence of those Christian graces which lead the soul upwards to the source from which they sprung,-like those flowers which spontaneously turn towards the beams of the sun which has supplied them with life and animation. If we would wish to paint the glories of heaven aright, we must dip our pencil in the sober colours of experience, we must draw the sketch from the outlines which a Christian spirit, and the habits of a Christian life have already engraved upon the heart. To "grow up unto the fulness of the stature of Christ," we must have walked in the footsteps of Christ on earth. To understand the communion of saints hereafter, we must have taught ourselves to practice charity here. And to enter into the most distant conception of the real joys of eternity, we must have learned to feel, in the trials that we give it within the little range of our earthly experience, that in the law of God alone "righteousness and peace and love and joy" are really and permanently to be found.

Oh! think not then that you are advancing on your way to heaven, unless the spirit of

heaven has grown up already in your hearts. Think not you can see and enjoy the blessings that are provided there, the society of perfected spirits the presence of Christ,--unless you have spirits-the imbibed even now sentiments congenial to theirs, and have been conformed already to the image of the Son of God. We must "grow in grace," or the childhood of our imperfect nature in this life will never ripen into the full manhood and maturity of the next. We must "grow in grace;" and even the stages of our earthly existence must be marked by deeper lines than those with which we are wont to define the number or the

character of our fleeting years. The epochs of our mortal life must be epochs in the progress of an advancing and improving soul. The ardour of youth is wasted and unprofitable, unless it kindles the heart into a proportionate intensity of devotion. The consistency of manhood should bring with it, or it is of none effect, a corresponding consistency and steadiness of faith. And the wisdom of age must be the wisdom of the children of light, not the cold and crafty policy of a selfish world. Oh! come then, ye who have not tried the experiment, "come, taste and see how good and gracious is the Lord." To those and those alone who diligently seek it, and make actual proof and experience the test of the value