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be in all the compartments of that magnificent domain the same. Do we not find it so in this world? One flower differs from another flower in beauty, in fragrance, in preciousness; yet each lives in the same sunshine, and breathes the same air. One star differs from another star in magnificence and splendor; yet all the stars are moving in their appointed orbits for ever and ever. One woman differs from another in beauty; one man differs from another man in strength, in wisdom, in genius. In the bowels of the earth the granite and the gem are vastly different from each other; one crystal is superior to another crystal. In the head and in the heart, in the attainments of the one and the feelings of the other, what differences in different men! In the human countenance, what infinite and inexhaustible variety of expression! In social life itself we have the vast pyramid of society, the basis and the apex; the masses, descending in successive layers to the foundation, constituting the base of society. If God, then, has made degrees of dignity, of beauty, of excellence, throughout his material, his natural, and his social world; if God has made degrees of happiness, fitness for heaven, and enjoyment in all his regenerated church, is it not the just and legitimate inference that there will be degrees of happiness infinitely differing from each other in that world which is the complement, the blossom, and the perfection of the world that now is?

These things being so, let me remind you of the practical lesson for us, first to take care that you are resting on the only Savior. It is of no use for you to discuss the probability of degrees of glory, if you are a stranger to the right and title that enables you to cross the

threshold. Your first anxiety, therefore, must be, Have I felt my sins an intolerable load? have I felt that God is offended with me as a conscious transgressor of his law? have I heard the joyous tidings that a Savior descended to my grave, and died upon a cross for me, that my sins might be forgiven? have I accepted Him as all my title, all my righteousness, all my salvation; whose name I plead in prayer, whose name shall be my pass-word through the very universe itself; whose work for me is my only and exclusive ground of acceptance this day? Do I feel this? Do you feel this? Have you ever entertained it as a serious question? Is it a mere subject that you hear in sermons, but that you have never discussed in the silence and in the secrecy of your own individual heart? Till that question is settled, till that subject be entertained, pondered, and solved, all subsequent to it is but waste of words and loss of time.

If paralysis, now almost endemic; if apoplexy, the result of the excessive excitements of a world exhausted beyond its normal obligations; if fever, or sickness, overtake you; if the heart, weary with its march, stands still, there is not an end of you then. There is not even in death, let me remind you, a suspension of the continuity of conscious life. I believe that the moment when your relatives look upon your pallid face and cay, "He is gone!" at that very moment you will be in possession of a consciousness clearer, brighter, more real, than ever you were possessed of on earth. And what is that consciousness? To look upon the face of the Son of God at the judgment-seat. And, oh! blasting thought, if you should discover that this is He that was slain for

me, preached from the pulpit, pressed on my conscience, and we dismissed the subject from the mind, and went, one to his farm, another to his merchandize, another elsewhere ! "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" What a strange thing that men think everything real but religion! They seem to think everything intensely important but living religion. They seem to have a notion, too, that if they venture to touch religion, their happiness will wither and die. It is all the reverse. If you at this moment do feel, "That blessed Savior is mine;" if you do feel, "I can commit to Him my soul, with its inexhaustible prospects beyond the grave;" that come life, como death, it will be well with you, that sudden death will be sudden glory; then you must be happy. But are you to be satisfied with even this? No. I fear that many true Christians will discover that they make justification by faith alone in Christ's righteousness, so infinitely precious, a substitute for charity, for meekness, for liberality, for love, for duty. Pardon through Christ is not the end of religion, but the preface to religion. What are we doing in the world around us? what are we doing to help the cause of Christ, to promote the gospel, to add to the comfort of the destitute, the needy, and the poor? Is it nothing? Is it little? It ought not to be so. If I were a physician, I would try to be the very best in England; if I were a lawyer, I would try to be the ablest and the most eloquent pleader at the bar; if I swept a crossing, I would try to sweep it better than any other crossing in London. Whatever my profession, I would determine to excel in it. Let the ambition which shows itself in the things of time be sanctified and con

secrated to a nobler being; and when you leave this present world, let there be a train of beneficence behind you that will inspire many to pronounce your memories blessed. Let there be schools you have supported; let there be the ignorant you have taught; let there be the heathen you have enlightened; and, by thus making friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, when you enter into that everlasting rest, they will meet you and make you welcome there.

LECTURE XXXIV.

RECOGNITION IN THE AGE TO COME

"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." -REV. xx. 6.

LET us try to gather from the word of God what light is cast upon a belief that most of us entertain, but that some have doubts and many have difficulties about, whether in the state of the soul as separate from the body previous to the resurrection, or in the soul united to the body subsequent to the resurrection, we shall be able to recognize relative relative, friend friend, companion companion, with whom we walked and took sweet counsel together. My conviction is that we shall; my belief is that the soul of the saint now in its disembodied state holds communion with and recognizes souls of others separate from the body now in glory. And it is not improbable that our relatives in perfect joy are nearer to us than our relatives across the sea; we may not see them, but they may thoroughly see, and know, and understand us. The state of the blessed in glory is less a place, and more, as Dr. Chalmers called it, a condition; less a lo(216)

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