purity and virtue. These attainments will not only prepare them for happiness in heaven; but these will also be the brightest ornament of their characters in every domestic and social relation on earth these will render every task comparatively easy, and support them under every trial incident to the state of woman.

This observation directs our minds to the solitary state of a widow, a state often insupportable but by the consolations and hopes of religion. When by the dispensation of divine providence a wife follows her husband to the house of silence, it not unfrequently happens, that she finds the whole system of her life suddenly changed. She is no longer at the head of the family. Instead of being the responsible wife, and the mother full of cares and labor, she becomes a solitary widow. The estate and the business of the household go into new hands. She cannot maintain an independent establishment, but must become an unimportant member of a family. How gloomy! How forlorn is this state of widowhood! Deprived of the society of those who were essential to her happiness; taken from the dignified employment, which might have engaged her attention and occupied her time, her situation is truly deplorable. Children by respect and kindness may sooth her sorrow; but she must realize that her consequence is diminished, that her sphere of useful action is contracted, and that her sources of earthly enjoyment are abridged. In solitude, this widow, when she is not supported by religion, must indeed be unhappy. A retrospective view of her moral life presents to her mind a desert without any profitable culture her present sufferings are not alleviated by a communion with the Father of mercies, and her anticipations of the future are destitute of a rational hope of acceptance and reward.

In other instances the condition of a widow is widely different. By the death of her husband, she becomes the sole head of the household, and the important concerns of the family fall under her exclusive management. This situation is fitted to bring to a severe test the strength

of her resolution, and her capacity to execute the duties of an extended trust. As the sphere in which she moves is enlarged, so opportunity is given more fully to exercise the powers of her mind, and to manifest the soundness of her discretion, and the extent of her prudence. Having the exclusive control of property, she may more clearly discover the bent of her disposition to offices of munificence and charity. Unbiassed, she may make more evident the independence of her Christian opinions, and render more apparent the power of religion on her heart and life.

How happy the situation of the widow in an advanced period of her present existence, who, during the scenes of busy life, in all domestic and social relations, filled up the measure of her duty; who, in the age of health and vigor, accumulated a fund of moral enjoyment; and who still maintains an habitual course of piety and virtue. In the solitude of widowhood, and under every worldly suffering, she is supported by reflections on her past life. Having performed her duty in the religious as well as domestic education of her children, she enjoys unmixed delight in seeing them honorably supporting their characters, and rising to offices of trust and dignity in society. She herself brings forth fruit in old age ;-she still abounds in good works, in alms giving, and in deeds of charity. Piety becomes the habitual sentiment of her soul; and she is more and more qualified for the society of heaven. She contemplates death without amazement; and at last closes her eyes on terrestrial objects in the hope of a resurrection from the darkness of the tomb to immortal life and endless joy, through the mercy of God in Christ Je

sus.

BY REV. ALVAN LAMSON, OF DEDHAM, MASS.

FUTURE STATE OF THE GOOD.

I PETER, V. 1.

And also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed.

Or the doctrines made known, or recognized by the instructions of Jesus, one of the most important and interesting is that of our immortality, particularly as it relates to the happiness to be hereafter enjoyed by those, who love, fear, and obey God. We are not distinctly told in what this happiness consists. The language, in which the future state of the good is mentioned or alluded to, in the scriptures, is indefinite, popular, and figurative. Christians are described as 'begotten to an inheritance. incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.' We are told of a crown of glory,' and of life,’—of 'treasures which neither moth nor rust corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal,'-of a kingdom, which shall never be moved,'-of a building not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,-of a ‘place prepared from the foundation of the world,' into which the righteous shall be admitted, and where God shall wipe away all tears from all faces,' and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow.'

These and similar expressions and imagery are fitted to impress us with the excellence, the indestructible character, the extent and greatness of the rewards held out as

the object of our hopes, but leave us much in the dark concerning their nature. The glory' in which we are to participate remains to be revealed.' Something, however, may be inferred, from the general strain of revelation, concerning the several classes of gratifications to be hereafter tasted by the faithful, though nothing can be known of the particular objects, which will minister to those gratifications, or of the manner in which they will be furnished.

Nor is the topic adapted merely to occupy and amuse speculative understandings; it has a deep practical interest and importance. On the views we entertain of the character of the state, which succeeds to the present, mainly depend the kind and amount of exertion we shall make in preparing ourselves for an entrance on it. The hopes of hereafter tend powerfully to sway the heart, but it is only when the objects, on which those hopes fasten, correspond to truth and reality, that they exert, to the full, their quickening and healthful influences.

What are the conceptions, then, we are encouraged to form of the several classes of enjoyment, which make up the happiness of the life to come, and for which it should be our principal concern, at present, to fit ourselves?

I. In the first place, the scene on which we shall enter will, we are led to believe, minister to rich intellectual gratification. Death, which is attended with a dissolution of our present connexions, with the shutting up of our present senses, and the return of our bodies to their kindred earth, is but a passage to a nobler and more spiritual life. There is much in our condition here, in our immersion amid surrounding forms of matter, in our ordinary occupations, our competition for worldly distinctions, pleasure, and wealth, which has a depressing influence, tends to bring down the soul from its loftiest elevations, to retard and confine its operations, and overshadow its excellence. This influence we cannot now wholly shake off; it is incident to our situation and state, but reaches not beyond the grave. Our spirits, enlarged from