find themselves punished, not only by their moral state and judicial sentence, but by a condition of shameful. physical inferiority; so that while the justified soar away as on angels' wings, they are left to grovel. As however scripture gives us not definite information on this subject, it would be wrong to speak of it in the language of confidence.

We learn from the New Testament that there shall be not only a severance of the just from the unjust, but great diversity in the rewards of grace bestowed on the righteous. The parable of the labourers is not inconsistent with this view, for the only reason why some stood idle for hours was, that no man had hired them. Political economy takes cognizance only of the doings of workmen. In the kingdom of heaven, the disposition is the rule of recompense: and inasmuch as it was in the heart of all the labourers to obtain employment, all were recompensed alike. And while that parable is in harmony with the variety of the future rewards of the saints, other parts of the New Testament directly assert such variety, extending in some cases so far that the last shall be first, and the first last. The excellence which will secure the recompense of grace, is not bodily, nor intellectual, but moral; it is not greatness, but goodness. He who best obeys the two great commandments of the law, will be tallest among the sons of light. "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your slave." And inexpressibly cheering to a benevolent mind, is this view of the kingdom of Christ; for it presents to the poor, the unlearned, and obscure, that is to the many, the prospect of elevation and dignity such as earth knows not; and assures them that in the heavenly race, it is quite possible for them to win the richest prize. Taking as our guide the rule of adju

dication which has been cited, it is impossible not to conclude that, in very many cases, members of our churches, uninfluential from their station, and whose unobtrusive excellence is little known, will rise to peculiar honour hereafter, and leave behind them others who here have been foremost because of eloquence, or wealth, or mental superiority. It is not however easy to understand how these changes shall be accomplished. We compare a good man of meagre knowledge, and very limited capacities, with Watts, Doddridge, Robert Hall; and are ready to conclude that he can never outstrip or overtake them. A correct view of the resurrection may help to solve this difficulty.

The body is the instrument by which the mind acts; and the measure, pleasantness, freedom, and success of our activity, seem to depend quite as much on the instrument as on the agent. A writer must have a good pen, or the penmanship will not be good. A spirit must have a suitable body, or its operations will be impeded, or at least imperfectly assisted. The writer once saw a lad who was blind, deaf, and dumb; and had been so from birth. His look was that of inertia. Informed by means of touch, in the practice of which he had been carefully instructed, that a stranger was near, his countenance instantly brightened into a look of recognition and pleasure. What a vastly different position would his spirit have been placed in, had there been given to him a perfect mortal body! He was shut out from almost all things in the universe, for want of a suitable instrument by which the mind might work. As we are thus able to look downwards to corporeal organization exceedingly defective as compared with our own, so are we able to conceive that as an instrument of the mind, the spiritual shall be as far superior to the natural body, as is the perfect natural body to that of the man born

Diversities in knowledge,

blind, deaf, and dumb. power, and dignity, are not disconnected now with bodily organization; and where Paul writes at greatest length of the resurrection, he teaches us that they who are counted worthy of its advantages shall differ as do sun and moon and stars. Such difference in spiritual bodies may itself be the means by which the recompences of the righteous shall be varied. The feeble spirit of earth, invested with a very glorious body hereafter, may almost at a bound spring before those who here apparently left it far behind, and retain its precedency for ever. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive by means of the body-dià тoû σpatos-according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."*

The Syriac translation of the verse-2 Cor. v. 10- is, "For all of us are about to stand at the judgment seat of the Messiah, that each may be recompensed in his body [according to] whatever he hath done, whether good, or whether bad."

CHAPTER XXI.

ETERNITY.

By this word we denote duration without beginning, and without end. Sometimes, separating the two ideas, we apply the name to either. We speak of the past eternity, in which sense of the term, none but God is eternal. The word is used also to mean duration which had beginning, but shall know no termination. "Beyond," says Milton, "is all abyss, eternity." So considered, eternity may be regarded as meaning everlastingness: though it is perhaps open to question, whether the mind does not distinguish between eternal life and everlasting life; thinking of the former, in the case of man, not merely as the perpetuation of that which is, but as the junction of that which is with that which was, a drop absorbed into the ocean, a line short and straight attracted into the great and ever revolving circle of duration. Hence one sings of an era,

"When weak time shall be poured out into eternity,
And circular joys, dancing an endless round,

Again shall rise."

Eternity past, or duration without beginning, if perplexing, is to us a necessary, that is to say an inevitable conception. We cannot imagine an hour which had no hour before it. When we attempt to apply the abstract idea to actual existence, we are conscious of mystery wholly unfathomable; mystery pressing alike on men of every creed, and-if such there be-men of no creed. Out of nothing, said a heathen, nothing can arise.

Inasmuch therefore as many things are, there must always have been something. Faith recognizes in God the self-existent being, and finds in him an explanation of all other existence. If man were to believe in the existence of an eternal and universal nebula, he would gain thereby no explanation of the existence of the sun. Did he believe in an eternal sun, it would leave him wholly at a loss to account for moon, or stars, or mountains, for the fish in the sea, or the bird in the air. The theist and the atheist have an insoluble difficulty in common, namely existence without beginning. The theist cannot by searching find out the secret of the divine existence; but by it he can explain the existence of all things beside. The atheist has as many difficulties as there are objects in all the universe, for his theory plains nothing.

To the mind which has apprehended eternity past, the conception of a future eternity presents but little difficulty. To our senses indeed, change and decay are everywhere revealed; but readily can we think of the perpetuation of that consciousness which we possess, and so receive with intelligent faith the great promise of everlasting life. A good man prizes existence more highly the longer he lives, because of his enlarging experience of its capacity of happiness; and it may reasonably be inferred that the same rule of judgment will obtain hereafter. Never probably on earth would Paul have shrunk from the prospect of annihilation with so much terror, as when he said "the time of my departure is at hand." Moses, who in all his writings mentions not eternal life because he knew it not, probably while in this world had but a dim idea of a perpetuated existence in Hades; but fourteen hundred years afterwards, when he appeared and spake with our Lord on the mount of Transfiguration, the thought