approach the shadowy barrier between two worlds, do breathe some airs from that which is beyond; have a solemn, joyous experience till then, in that degree, quite unknown; and perceive, as if within a curtain, the motions of forms, whose outlines and features they cannot discern." These experiences of dying saints are of course various in their degree; some are rapturous and ecstatic, while others are more calm and peaceful. Some have glimpses of Heaven, vouchsafed them, while they, departing, have still sufficient strength to express their feelings; while others, as in the cases mentioned, can only yet give a faint token that joy is breaking upon them through the gloom of death. In this respect too there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. Sure it is, that in one form or other, the Comforter is doing his work at the heart. Such a joyful, peaceful end is to be desired. Not only because it tends to take away gloom from the prospect of death, but also because of its unspeakable blessedness to the dying saint. In that hour when flesh and heart fail, what must be the joy of such a portion! It is desirable, too, on account of those who stand in tears around our dying bed. It will take away much of the bitterness of their sorrow and bereavement, to see that our death is full of peace and hope. Their farewell looks and words will lose much of their mournfulness when we see their countenances lighted up with an expression which seems to say, "I am going home!" Oh! the deepest of all sorrow is sorrow without hope. The sweetest of all consolation in the hour of bereavement, is the assu 651423 rance that the spirit of the departed rests-rests forever in the bosom of its God. Afterwards, too, it is the pleasantest of all the duties of love to drop the tears of affection upon the grave of one whose spirit we know to be in the Heavenly Home. CHAPTER VI. Degrees of Bappiness in Beaven. If loftier post superior state declare; If day's bright orb outshine the lamp of night, God's mount encircle. Glorious is the state The Sovereign throne his greater servants wait. MANT. THE question, whether there are degrees of happiness in Heaven, has been thought, by some, more curious than useful. This is a common mode, to which Christians of loose spiritual habit resort, for the purpose of putting aside those points of pious inquiry which lie a little beyond the range of the most com mon reflection. We cannot agree that this is a useless inquiry. If superior blessedness and glory are the reward, in Heaven, of the attainment of superior holiness and excellence on the earth, then it is a practical question, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Neither is this inquiry in the least presumptuous. If it is curiosity which incites us to the inquiry, it is a curiosity raised by strong hints, if not by direct declarations, of Scripture; and is therefore of the same kind which moves the minds of angels to bend over and pry into the mysteries of redemption. That is a blessed curiosity which prompts the spirit to holy earnestness and deep inquiry into the nature of eternal things which waits, in the attitude of earnest hope and desire, to catch each ray of light which God may please to let fall upon its future destiny. As the sleepless eye waits for the morning, and as the pious Israelite gazed upon the vanishing shadows of the old economy, in the hope of catching some faint gleam of the promised glory, so does the eye of Christian faith look forward through the "glass darkly," to know what it can of the things to come. The irrepressible energies of a soul animated with the hopes of an endless life beyond death, instinctively sends its voice of ardent inquiry through the darkness which hangs over the tomb, exclaiming, "Watchman, what of the night? - what of the night?" If revelation, or reason enlightened by revelation, returns but a faint answer of hope and promise, the spirit joyfully takes up the note and hums it for its comfort, as the pilgrim in a strange land sings softly the song of his childhood to while away the tedious hours, and shorten the dreary miles of absence. Let us now attend to a few considerations, from which it appears that there will be different degrees of happiness in Heaven. The future life, though different from this, will be a natural continuation of our present life. As the child, when born into this world, continues the same being it was before, and as each successive stage of its being, through infancy, childhood, manhood, and age, is but a continuation of its former life, only rising higher by regular development, so also at death, when it is unclothed of the mortal, and clothed upon with the immortal, it will still be the same being, advanced, it is true, wonderfully, but yet not violently; on the contrary, in silent, harmonious, natural, and strict accordance with the laws and process of its previous life. The future life will be but the onward flow of this. "When the soul leaves the body, it will retain the consciousness of whatever passed within it while here upon earth. It carries along with it, into the future world, the ideas, the knowledge, the habits, which it possessed here. And so it takes also good and evil from this life into the next, as its own property, and there receives the fruit of it."* Thus this and the future life are connected like cause and effect-like sowing and reaping-like the first-fruits and the harvest. The happiness or misery of the future world is always represented in the way of direct result and consequence of this life, the one standing in natural and necessary relation to the other. Hence it is evident * Knapp's Theology, 160, II. |