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well-spring of their felicity-and the propelling power which prompts them forward in a cause of spontaneous and beneficent agency. The direct object of christianity is to inspire and mature this lovely disposition, and that with a view to its perfect exercise in the future life.

It is of importance, however, to remember here, that the sympathetic principle now blends itself even when it is most hallowed and refined by the power of religion, with a class of diversified feelings, which, though essential to the welfare and the very existence of human society, will not be extended to a future life. The conjugal affection, the fondness of parental love, the appetites which prompt us to provide for the sustenance and refreshment of the mortal body, and the many conventional wants which attach us to one another, independently of any spiritual or moral propension, will find no place in that new and exalted economy, under which the righteous are destined to live. These, indeed, are laws, which the Supreme Being has, for wise and benevolent reasons, impressed on human nature; and they are every where operating with peculiar force and beauty, like the principles, out of which spring the harmony and loveliness which pervade every department of the material creation. They are the origin of the relations and tender charities of private life. The minuter parts of the social

fabric are cemented by them. The sympathies of our nature are hereby prevented from evaporating in the wide region of general sympathy; and thus many most important objects are secured, which would never be accomplished, were the affections of men guided only by the dictates of reason, or the impulse of moral feeling. But still the instinctive determinations are inferior laws, belonging to the animal nature, and designed to answer a transient purpose. And we are, therefore, given to understand, that the pleasures of heaven will admit of no sensual admixtures, and that its affinities will all be of a pure and spiritual character. Our Lord himself, in the refutation of the Sadducean heresy, informs us plainly, that the natural affections and relations of the present life will be unknown in another state. "The children of this world," says he, "marry, and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." * In like manner does the great apostle of the Gentiles speak in reference to this subject: "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness

*Luke xx. 34.

"Flesh

and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." *

"*

But that sacred affection, that love of moral excellence, implied in love to God, that divine sympathy, which pervades the christian fraternity, exists independently of the exigencies of the present state, and is often seen to outlive them. The tribes of the animal creation, indeed, forsake their young so soon as they are able to provide for themselves ; and neither on the one side, nor on the other, is any specific attachment discovered. But it is otherwise with the human species. Where the power of religion is felt, the feelings of nature are blended with the sentiment of christian affection, which often not only survives them, but grows with the progress of time, and forms a moral bond stronger than that of nature, by which the parent and the child, the husband and the wife, are held together, when the instincts and exigencies, involved in their natural relations to each other, have ceased to operate. And it seems that death will serve only to augment and exalt this spiritual and surviving principle, by separating it from all earthly alloy, and by fixing it more entirely upon the supreme good. Thus the scaffolding will be removed; but the social edifice which it helped to rear, will

* Rom. xiv. 17. 1 Cor. xv. 50.

remain, and become more compact, as well as stand out with more beauteous prominence to the eye, when the temporary apparatus-the encumbrance of flesh and blood-is taken down, and laid for ever aside by the hand of the divine Architect.

It will not be thought impertinent to notice here, how the sentiments we have advanced are embodied in the scripture representations of the future life. It is worthy of remark, that almost every description of heaven is that of a society where all the finest sympathies of the social principle have full play and harmonious exercise. The tide of affection, pure and deep, and flowing incessantly from the throne of God, is kept in constant and vigorous circulation amongst the inhabitants of that supernal world; and such is the benevolent interest which they feel in the spiritual welfare of our race, that a general impulse of joy is felt on the repentance of a single sinner. The bosoms of the seraphim burn with the flame of holy zeal, and every spirit is instinct with life-the life of charity. And it is a fact which peculiarly deserves attention, as placing the immediate subject before us in a truly interesting light, that our Saviour is represented to possess, in his present exalted state, the pure and unalloyed sympathies of our nature; and that exhortations are founded on this very circumstance to encourage our faith in the mercy and grace of heaven. On earth he

was truly man, and he ascended into the presence of his Father in the form and with the nature of glorified man. And he is the pattern to which every believer will, after his measure, be conformed in the fulness of time. But " we have not an high-priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

It is not presumptuous, then, to affirm, that none of the pure elements which enter now into the social principle which binds christians together, will be annihilated by the transforming process which the religion of Christ contemplates. But their affections will be more pure, their sensibilities more acute, the pleasures of communion more exquisite and thrilling, their grateful and beneficent emotions more intense and disinterested, and their complacencies incomparably richer than they are, or possibly can be, in the happiest moments of the believer's experience in the present life. "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him.” But "God is love;" and, therefore, the spirit of every holy affection will be retained-the essence of every relative virtue extracted-and the flame of christian charity, burning no longer in the damp and polluted atmosphere of earth, will every where diffuse around itself the warmth and radiance of heaven.

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