pressed upon the same entablature. This does not, however, imply that the minds of men can, in their natural state, by their own powers of reason, originate this idea. It is not brought forth by the heart, but written in it; and only after it feels the impression made by a foreign hand, are its energies warmed and waked to a believing sense of it.

As the seed has the capacity to grow, bloom, and bear fruit, so the human spirit has the power of an endless life- but as the seed needs the presence of foreign conditions to actualize its own possibilities, so the human spirit needs revelation to enable it to unfold what lies in its own constitution. It may desire without revelation, but it cannot believe without it. It is not exactly true that

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast."

It only springs when it is touched by the warm finger of divine love. "Experience"-not reason-" worketh hope." Those that are outside of God's gracious revelations, "sorrow as those which have no hope," in reference to those who are asleep in death. It is God, through Christ, who "has begotten us unto a lively hope" of that inheritance which is "incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven." The heathen, who are strangers to the covenants of promise, "have no hope, and are without God in the world." Touched, however, by the least ray of promise, "hope springs ;" and thus the heart, having once an intimation of another life, never afterwards feels easy and at home amid the sorrows and wants of this. Then, dissatisfied with the present, man leans with anxious heart over the future, and

-Never is, but always to be blest."

Then, as has been the case amid "the groaning and travailing in pain" of the heathen in all ages and in all lands,

"The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come."

Thus to revelation belongs all the glory of discovering to us an endless life of bliss beyond the grave. This truth, like all truths, is only sweet "as it is in Jesus." In the painful yearnings of the pagans we discover the need of it; in the pages of divine revelation we discover the promise of it; and in our blessed Saviour we are, or may be, begotten to a lively hope of it. With the pagans, we all feel the need of such enduring bliss, beyond the narrow range of earth's sorrows and tears. It will be our own folly and bitterness if we cling not to the promise of it, and secure it in Christ. "Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of us should seem to come short of it!"

CHAPTER III.

Scripture Pictures of Beaven.

A sovereign balm for every wound,

A cordial for our fears.

THE most general and comprehensive idea we get of heaven from the Sacred Scriptures, is that of a place of perfect satisfaction to all saints. It lies before the hopes of each one as the exact counterpart and complement of the void or wound which may be in his heart. To the friendless and persecuted, it is a place of sympathy and love. To the stranger and outcast, it is home. To those who have borne much trouble and anxiety, it is peace. To those whose life has been one continued scene of labor and toil, it is rest.

These different ideas of heaven are all true, because its provisions extend to them all. While, therefore, the most general picture of our future blessedness is that of full satisfaction, the particular features of it may still be prominent to each one's hopes and desires, according to the peculiar preponderance of his wants and woes on earth. Heaven is a fulness of joy

"A sovereign balm for every wound."

A careful study of the names applied in Scripture to the fruition of the other world, will best illustrate to us how the general fulness of heavenly joy becomes a particular fulness to each saint, whatever may be his individual condition. We will also see that the sacred writers, in their consolatory addresses to the faithful, always presented those features of future bliss which were, at the time and under the circumstances, best adapted to afford them comfort. This gives us a glorious idea of that joy which may comfort us here, and bless us in perfection hereafter. As the sun, which hangs over us in one broad blaze of light, has nevertheless a ray for each flower that grows upon the earth, from which it may extract a color to suit itself; so, the spiritual heaven, towards which the mourning sons of earth are invited to look, has a joy for all who will appropriate it. "In thy presence is FULNESS of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."

The most common name given to our future home is HEAVEN. This refers not, in its primary sense, to the substance of our future felicity, but to that which is external or local about it. It refers not so much to state, as to place.

Future felicity has never, except in the vain speculations of carnal wisdom, been dissociated from place. The Bible, which always includes "the resurrection of the body" in its ideas of "the life everlasting," with a beautiful consistency, ever attributes locality and materiality to the inheritance which it promises to the saints. This place, this locality, it calls — Heaven.

As the glorious fact of "the life everlasting" was a matter necessarily not of sight, but of faith and of

hope, the spirit of inspiration was not at pains to be definite as to the where of this place. In a general way it was referred to, as in the empyrean heights above. More particularly, in the usage of the Scriptures, the word Heaven has three meanings. First, it designates the regions of the air, in which are the clouds and fowls of heaven; second, the regions of the blue firmament, in which are the sun, moon, and stars of heaven; third, the vast, and to mortal eyes impenetrable regions beyond, which were regarded as the holy of holies, in which God and all higher spirits are more particularly at home, and where the redeemed of the earth shall dwell in eternal felicity after death.

Regarding this third heaven as a place of happiness, the sacred writers applied to it various other names, which represent their views of its various features of bliss.

It was called PARADISE. The Saviour said to the penitent, believing, praying, dying thief: "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Luke xxiii. 43. Paul was "caught up into the third heaven, into paradise." 2 Cor. xii. 4. He that appeared in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, promised through John, to him that overcometh, that he should "eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Rev. ii. 7.

This name is applied to Heaven in allusion to that "garden which the Lord planted eastward in Eden," in which He made "to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden." That must have been a spot of beauty and loveliness such as has never else