not so. It were strange indeed that purified spirits should possess less activity than our dull souls confined in sluggish bodies. If our sweetest enjoyments consist not in indolence, but in activity and excitement, it were strange that the spirits of the "just made perfect" should be so far below us in the scale of being, as to be incapable of none but torpid and passive satisfaction. It is not so; for though, as regards exemption from all painful exertion, "those who sleep in Jesus" are blessed because they rest from their labours, as regards the full exercise of their faculties, they possess the same advantage over us which the superiority of their natures might induce us to suppose. The will of God is done in heaven as well as on earth, and the everlasting Sabbath is as consistent with holy employment as the Prototype which reflected its glory amongst men. The only difference is, that the imperfection of our nature requires regular intervals of repose, to enable us to return with increased application to our respective engagements, which vary according to our several circumstances. But in the heavenly Jerusalem there is no repose, for there is no exhaustion; there is no intermission, for there is no night; there is no difference of engagement, for there is one work-the full employment of our faculties in the enjoyment of the blessed God. "Holy, holy, holy" Lord of Sabaoth! Blessed Source of enjoyment! Completely inconceiv

able to the world-incompletely intelligible to the sons of God. Completely inconceivable to the world, for the carnal mind is enmity against God. Can the love of the world dwell in the same heart as the love of the Father? Can ambition find pleasure in self-abasement, or pride, which is its own worshipper, in the exclusive worship of the supreme God? Incompletely intelligible to the sons of God, for we now see through a glass darkly," though we shall afterwards "know even as we are known." A rude peasant can find no satisfaction in the works of art which give the highest pleasure to a man of taste; and the adepts in all sciences feel a secret sense of pleasure in their various departments, to which others are strangers. What would be the transport of an enthusiast in human knowledge, were a chamber at once opened to his view presenting at a glance the subjects of interest which it formed the business of his life to investigate! In like manner, could we imagine the spirit of a believer made perfect, just discharged from its earthly prison, possessed with a full capacity for the enjoyment of all that is most holy and pure, admitted without stint to delight itself in the perfections of the living God, we may conceive what must be the transports of the soul, as it bathes in that infinite sea of holiness, and with senses completely competent to estimate the beauty of goodness, to find the desires of its heart gratified without limit or re

straint. The result must be a fulness of joy which words cannot express, or which must discharge itself in exclamations of ecstatic delight: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty." "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created." Truly, "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

THE GOSPEL.

"If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ?"-JOHN iii. 12.

YSTERIES in a revealed religion are a necessary

MY

consequence of the circumstances of the case, and only what might be expected. Are we not met with difficulties in natural religion, which no human mind can fathom? Are there not enigmas respecting the nature of eternity, the freedom of the human will, the Divine prescience, which baffle the keenest understandings? Nay, natural science presents its difficulties; and the very devices of human ingenuity, the contrivances of one part of mankind are unintelligible to others, who are inferior to them in capacity or civilization. If in earthly things we are met with these perplexities, why should we be surprised to experience them in heavenly things? If

the revelations from heaven respecting the permission of evil, the introduction of sin, the restitution of our spiritual nature, the ministrations of angels good and evil, principalities and powers, involve difficulties of the most perplexing kind, though they only concern creatures, we must not be surprised that our understandings are baffled with difficulties much more unintelligible, in discoveries respecting the Creator, who is blessed for evermore? It might be presumed that any discoveries in these subjects would, to our limited faculties, appear incomprehensible-in many respects, self-contradictory. The natural instinct of the carnal mind would be to reject or dilute what it could not reconcile; but the victory of our faith, and of our reason also, is to confess itself blind in what it cannot understand-to acknowledge the reality of the truths which it cannot explain. We should reckon him a more intelligent savage who believed the accounts of a traveller respecting the reality of electric telegraphs and railways, though they seemed to contradict his reason, than one who, because he could find nothing to illustrate their workings, disbelieved their existence. It has been an almost invariable rule, that the greatest discoveries which have been presented to the world in natural science have received its warmest opposition before they have received its sanction; that time has at last hallowed those truths which ignorance has persecuted.

Now, if the few discoveries which Science has made in our own world have educed facts which are so much at variance with our antecedent suppositions, we may form an idea of the number of strange propositions we should be called on to receive, were she permitted to extend her domain into any of those worlds which surround us. How incredible would the result be! The report, how unreasonable! How would our judgments start back from submitting to such an imposition? Much more, were we permitted to ascend beyond these to the heavens, and the heaven of heavens, into the bosom of the Creator Himself-to learn His eternal nature, and the Godhead of Him who is from everlasting to everlasting! We ought rather to be so much the more thankful that less is revealed, that we may be the less in danger of disbelieving; for, were the secrets of the whole heavenly world exposed to our view, according to the instincts of carnal curiosity, it is not improbable they would offer to our understandings (so far as we could understand them) one great mass of apparent contradictions. "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned."