SERMON V.

1 CORINTHIANS XIII. 10.

WHEN THAT WHICH IS PERFECT IS COME, THEN THAT WHICH IS IN PART SHALL BE DONE AWAY.

THE contemplation of the life to come is the frequent employment of every Christian whose faith in the gospel is firm and practical. The discipline of Christianity is rendered effectual by presenting to us motives drawn from another life, adapted to overcome the temptations, and to support the trials of the present.

A subject, then, which must naturally present itself so often to the minds of the Christian, ought to be as distinctly and justly comprehended as the information of Scripture, and the suggestions of reason, will allow. It was, no doubt, intended by the Author of our salvation, to leave his followers the most satisfactory assurance of a future life; but he has furnished us with no more definite ideas of the nature and mode of that life than are necessary for the practical influence of the general truth. Still, it is permitted us to put together the scattered intimations contained in Scripture, and compare them with the suggestions of reason and the analogies to which we can have access, and thus to form some faint notions of the future world. Though the remarks, which will now be offered to you, may fall short of the indistinct and exalted conceptions you may have formed

of the future state of existence, they will not, I hope, be thought contradictory to the most obvious meaning of the Scripture language, which is highly figurative, or to the suggestions of the soundest reason.

It is, indeed, impossible for us to conceive of a future life, except according to the ideas which we have derived from our present condition, or to express them in any other words than such as convey sensible images. My object in this discourse will be, not so much to give definite conceptions of scenes which we can know only after our departure from this life, as to guard against some erroneous imaginations which may render our belief in a future existence less efficacious than it ought to be.

In the first place, then, wherever we may exist hereafter, we shall not cease to be men. Our human nature will not be changed into the angelic, nor shall we constitute a different order of beings. It is true, our Lord has said, that they, who are "worthy to attain that world, neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God." This change, however, in our condition, results, as we may well suppose, from our freedom from these material bodies; and the language of our Savior is rather a precaution against the sensual fancies of those who would transfer to heaven the delights of a terrestrial paradise than any specific description of the future world. We shall not, however, be transformed into a superior order of spirits, as angels are imagined to be; for, if this were to be the case, there would be no propriety in saying that we should be like them.

What, then! are not all our imperfections to be removed? Are we to continue to be frail, limited, finite creatures? Must we still be men? I hope there is no presumption in

replying that we must. For is man, the work of God, the image of the supreme intellect, so poor and worthless a creature that his nature is not worthy of being continued? Let us learn to think more worthily of our destination. If man has been granted so exalted a place in the infinite works of the Creator, he is, no doubt, worthy of being continued in that exalted station. We find nothing, in what we are allowed to observe in the works of God, which indicates that any chasm is to be left in the scale of being, by the transformation of one rank into another. The plan of God appears to be the progressive improvement of the individuals of a species, not the gratification of that vain ambition by which "men would be angels, angels would be gods."

Not only may we conclude that our human nature will be preserved, but that every individual, also, will retain his own individual nature, or that which distinguishes him from every other person. Every man has his peculiar capacity, or disposition, which he brought with him into the world, or which he has acquired by diligent cultivation ; and we have no reason to imagine that these discriminating properties of his character are to be abolished by the dissolution of his body. In the future world, as in the present, a harmonious whole will, no doubt, be composed by every one's filling his proper place; by every description of mind finding its proper rank, employment, and happiness; but we have reason to expect a far more perfect state than the present, because composed of better spirits. There, no doubt, as well as here, the degrees of happiness will be as various as the diversities of attainments in knowledge and virtue. It will be enough to secure the perfection of that state, that every one may strive for higher degrees of virtue

and happiness without envy; enjoy what is peculiar to himself, and proceed towards the highest points of human perfection, without interruption from the cares, the passions, and the sorrows of this life.

But there will also be an intimate connexion between the future life and the present. The future will, in fact, be the continuation of the present. It will be the further evolution of the energies of this; the fruit of what is now sown; the maturity of what is now just appearing; the consummation of what is now imperfect.

It is of the utmost importance, that we should keep in view the close and indissoluble connexion of these two stages of our existence. It is this alone which gives any rational efficacy to the grand doctrine drawn from our immortality, that anything done here by us has a bearing upon futurity. It would be of no moral consequence to tell mankind that they would be hereafter newly created, to enter another course of being, which had no reference to the present, and was in no degree dependent on it. No! the solemnity, the unspeakable efficacy, of the doctrine of a future life, results from this, that the two existences are so intimately and inseparably joined, that the one determines the other. Death is but the lifting up of the curtain which divides them, and the most trifling action or neglect has the same influence upon the character and condition of man after death that it has in this life.

How truly interesting is this thought! If no man can enter hereafter on any joys for which he has no taste, or employments for which he is not here qualified; if the change, in fact, into another life, furnishes us with nothing which we do not carry out of this, gives us no merits which we do not now possess, and supplies none of our wilful

neglects or losses, but God strictly renders to every man according to his deeds, can I utter a truth more alarming to the slothful, the insensible, or the hardened sinner? And this it is, my friends, which gives such dignity and sublimity to the virtue of a Christian, that he is thinking and acting for eternity; not for a posthumous applause in the mouths of a perishable race of mortal men, but for the eternal existence on which he will personally enter, and for the approbation of that Being who is from everlasting to everlasting.

What has now been said of the intimate connexion of these two states of existence, and the fact, that it will be the same unaltered nature which is to exist here and hereafter, is illustrated and confirmed by the Christian doctrine of a resurrection. The language of Scripture leads us to expect that a spiritual body will succeed to the present animal structure. This, surely, would not be provided, if it were not absolutely essential to the nature and continued personality of man, that he should have some kind of organization. If so, then we may suppose that hereafter we shall continue to receive ideas, to exercise memory, and to perform other mental acts, by some organs to supply the place of the present, however more they may be refined, or more exquisitely developed, than the present.

I should not venture to introduce such remarks as these, so evidently beyond a living man's observation, if we were not, in some measure, countenanced by the language of St. Paul, in that remarkable chapter of Corinthians, where the apostle has so repeatedly spoken of the spiritual body which is to succeed this corruptible frame, and even illustrated it by a comparison which is full of significancy : "But some will say, How can the dead rise, and with what body