delicious food and generous wines in a rich variety should regale your taste: if he should give you a splendid retinue of people, to caress and attend you, offering you their humblest services, and acknowl edging the most servile dependence upon your favor: especially if with all this he should furnish you with a set of companions just of your own temper and disposition, with whom you might spend what proportion of time you pleased, in gaming and jollity, in riot and debauchery, without any interruption from the reproof, or even the example of the children of God, or from indispositions of body, or remorse of conscience: this you would be ready to call life and happiness indeed: and if the great dis poser of all things were but to add perpetuity to such a situation, you would not envy persons of a more refined taste the heaven you lost, for such a Paradise as this.

Such indeed was the happiness which Mahomet promised to his followers: flowery shades and gay dresses, luxurious fare and beautiful women, are des cribed with all the pomp of language in almost erery page of his Alcoran, as the glorious and charming rewards which were to be bestowed on the faithful after the resurrection. And if this were the felicity which the Gospel promised, extortioners and idolators, whoremongers and drunkards, would be much fitter to inherit the kingdom of God, than the most pious and mortified saints that ever appeared on earth. But here, as almost every where else, the Bible and the Alcoran speak a very different

language; and far from leading us into such gross and sensual expectations, our Lord Jesus Christ has told us that the children of the resurrection neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are like the angels of God in heaven (1), and enjoy such pure and spiritual delights, as are suited to such holy and excellent creatures.

It is true that in the book of Revelations, stately palaces and shining habits, delicious fruit and har monious music are all mentioned, as contributing to the happiness of those, who have the honor to inhab it the New Jerusalem. But then the style of that obscure and prophetical book naturally leads us to consider these merely as figurative phrases, which are made use of to express the happiness that Divine wisdom and love has prepared for the righteous, in a manner accommodated to the weakness of our conceptions; or at least, if in any of these respects provision be made for the entertainment of a glorified body, whatever its methods of sensation and perception will be, all will be temperate and regular; and after all, this is even there represented but as the least considerable part of our happiness, the height of which is made to consist in the most elevated strains of devotion, and in an entire and everlasting devotedness to the service of God and of the Lamb.

Let us therefore immediately proceed to settle the point in question, by a more particular survey of the several branches of the celestial felicity, as represented to us in the word of God; and from thence

it will undeniably appear, that were an unregenė. rate soul in the same place with the blessed, and surrounded with the same external circumstances, the temper of the mind would not by any means allow him to participate of their happiness. For it is plain the Scripture represents the happiness of heaven, as consisting,-in the perfection of our minds in knowledge and holiness;-in the sight and service of the ever blessed God,-in beholding the glory of our exalted Redeemer; and enjoying the society of glorious angels and perfected saints,-throughout an endless eternity. Now, sinners, it is impossible you should enter into any such delights as these, while you continue in an unregenerate state.

1. One very considerable part of the happiness of heaven consists, "in that perfection of knowledge and holiness to which the blessed shall be there exalted;" in which the unregenerate soul can have no pleasure.

Thus we are told, that the spirits of just men shall there be made perfect (1); for nothing that defiles, as every degree of moral imperfection does, shall enter into the New Jerssalem (2). An Old Testament saint conceived of future happiness, as consisting in being satisfied with the likeness of God (3): a character that is manifestly most agreeable to the view of it, which the beloved disciple gives us, where he says, that when Christ shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (4); which must certainly refer to the glories of the mind, which are of infinitely greater importance than the highest imagi

(1) Heb. xiii. 23.
(3) Psal. xvii.

(2) Rev. xxi. 27.
(4) 1 John . .

2

nable beauty and ornament, that can be put upon the corporeal part of our nature in its most illustrious state.

Now from this perfection and holiness, which shall then be wrought in the soul, there will naturally arise an unspeakable complacency and joy, something resembling that which the blessed God himself possesses, in the survey of the infinite and unspotted rectitude of his own most holy nature. And in proportion to the degree, in which the cys of our understandings are enlightened to discern wherein true excellency consists, will the soul be delighted in the consciousness of such considerabla degrees of it in itself.

But surely it will be superfluous for me to undertake to demonstrate, that an unregenerate soul can have no part in this divine pleasure, which implies the complete renewal of the mind as its very foundation. For to imagine that he might, would bə supposing him regenerate and unregenerate at the same time. As Mr. Baxter very well expresses it, "the happiness of heaven is holiness; and to talk of being happy without it is as apparent nonsense, as to talk of being well without health, or being saved without salvation."

I would only add on this head, that the highest improvement of our intellectual faculties could not make us happy, without such a change in the affections and the will, as I have before described under the former general head. For the more clear and distinct the knowledge of true excellence and perfection is, the greater would be your asguist and

horror to see and feel yourselves entirely destitute of it; and it is exceeding probable that spirits of the most elevated genius have the keenest sensation of that infamy and misery, which is inseparable from the prevalence of sinful dispositions in such minds as these.

2. Another very considerable branch of the celestial happiness, is that which arises "from the contemplation and enjoyment of the ever blessed God;" but of this likewise an unregenerate sinner is incapable.

As our own reason assures us, that God is the greatest and best of beings, and the most deserving object of our inquiries and regards, one would think it would naturally lead us to imagine, that the perfection and happiness of the human soul consists in the knowledge and enjoyment of him; and that when it arrives at the seat of complete felicity, it must intimately know him, and converse with him. And in this view, I have sometimes been surprised, that men of such distinguished abilities, as some of the heathen poets and philosophers appear to have been, should have had no greater regard to the Supreme Being in the descriptions which they give us of the future happiness. That sort of friendship for them, which an acquaintance with their writings must give to a person of any relish for the beauties of composition, makes one almost unwilling to expose the low and despicable ideas, which they often give of the state of their greatest heroes in the regions of immortality. But the word of God speaks a very