unmingled, ardent, and entire. The disinterested love of the gospel dwells here in every bosom. Selfishness, since the ejection of the fallen angels from these delightful regions, has been here unknown and unheard of, except in the melancholy tidings, which have reached the happy inhabitants, of its deplorable effects on our apostate world. Here, every individual in the strictest sense fulfils the second great command of the moral law, and literally loves his neighbor as himself. No private, separate interest is ever proposed. A common good is announced by the voice of God, so great, as to comprise all individual happiness; so arranged as to furnish every one his proper portion, the part which he is to fulfil, and the means by which he is to act in it with absolute efficacy; and so noble as to fix every eye, engross every heart, and summon every effort. It is a good involving not only all that can be acquired, but all that can be wished, all that can exist. This great truth. is, also, admitted with perfect confidence by every celestial mind. Every individual completely realizes the import and the truth of that glorious declaration of Christ, the foundation of all pure and lasting good, whether personal or social: It is more blessed to give than to receive. Under its influence, all the hearts and hands, all the mighty faculties and unwearied efforts, of the heavenly inhabitants, are completely occupied in doing good. To what a mass must this good arise where the work is carried on by saints and angels, in the great field of heaven, throughout the endless ages of duration !

This friendship will endure forever. No degeneracy will awaken alarm and distrust, no alienation chill the

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THE HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN.

heart, no treachery pierce the soul with anguish. No parent will mourn over an apostate child, and no child over a profligate parent. No brothers, nor sisters, will be wrung with agony by the defection and corruption of those who, inexpressibly endeared to them in this world by the tender ties of nature, and the superior attachments of the gospel, have here walked with them side by side in the path of life, and have at length become their happy companions in the world of glory. Husbands and wives, also, here mutually and singularly beloved, will there be united, not indeed in their former earthly relation, but in a friendship far more delightful, and, wafted onward by the stream of ages without a sigh, without a fear, will become, in each other's eyes, more and more excellent, amiable, and endeared, forever.

To the eye of man the sun appears a pure light, a mass of unmingled glory. Were we to ascend with a continual flight towards this luminary, and could we, like the eagle, gaze directly on its lustre, we should in our progress behold its greatness continually enlarge, and its splendor become every moment more intense. As we rose through the heavens, we should see a little orb changing, gradually, into a great world; and as we advanced nearer and nearer, should behold it expanding every way, until all that was before us became a universe of excessive and immeasurable glory. Thus the heavenly inhabitant will, at the commencement of his happy existence, see the divine system filled with magnificence and splendor, and arrayed in glory and beauty; and as he advances onward through the

successive periods of duration, will behold all things more and more luminous, transporting, and sunlike, forever.

HEAVEN.

BISHOP KEN.

THE saints in happy mansions rest,
Of all they can desire possessed;
No misery, want, or care,

No death, no darkness there,

No troubles, storms, sighs, groans, or tears,

No injury, pain, sickness, fears.

There saints no disappointments meet;

No vanities, the choice to cheat;

Nothing that can defile;

No hypocrite, no guile;

No need of prayer, or what implies

Or absence or vacuities.

There no ill conscience gnaws the breast;

No tempters holy souls infest;

No curse, no weeds, no toil;

No errors to embroil;

No lustful thoughts can enter in,

Or possibility of sin.

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WHAT MUST IT BE TO BE THERE.

Saints' bodies there the sun outvie,
Tempered to feel the joys on high:
Bright body and pure mind
In rapture unconfined,
Capacities expand, till fit

Deluge of Godhead to admit.

With God's own Son they reign co-heirs
Each saint with him in glory shares:
Like Godhead, happy, pure,

Against all change secure,

In boundless joys they sabbatize,
Which love triune will eternize.

"WHAT MUST IT BE TO BE THERE!"

ANONYMOUS.

WE speak of the realms of the blest,
Of that country so bright and so fair,

And oft are its glories confessed;
But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its pathways of gold,

And its walls decked with jewels most rare,

Of its wonders and pleasures untold;
But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its freedom from sin,
From sorrow, temptation, and care,
From trials without and within;

But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its service of love,

Of the robes which the glorified wear,
Of the church of the first-born above;
But what must it be to be there!

Then let us, 'midst pleasure and woe,
Still for heaven our spirits prepare;

And shortly we also shall know
And feel what it is to be there!

ETERNITY.

HERVEY.

O ETERNITY, eternity! how are our boldest, our strongest thoughts lost and overwhelmed in thee! Who can set landmarks to limit thy dimensions, or find plummets to fathom thy depths? Arithmeticians have figures to compute all the progressions of time; astronomers have instruments to calculate the distances of the planets; but what numbers can state, what lines can gauge, the lengths and breadths of eternity? "It is higher than heaven, what canst thou do? Deeper