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, come 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

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cality, and more a state. And if that be so, then the beautiful Beatitude, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted," may have a wider application to mourners on earth than we are disposed to think; they may be comforted with the hopes of reunion, and with the cheering additional hope, without which reunion would be comfortless, of recognition and restoration.

Some families in every sense have their home in the future and the brighter land; their fathers, their mothers, their sisters, their brothers, have all emigrated-no, not emigrated; for we are in a strange colony, they have gone home; you that remain, like solitary trees in a once crowded forest, after a few years will also be transplanted and gathered home. There are few families that have not a stake in eternity above us and before us; few families that have not relatives beyond the grave. Blessed thought it will be but a transient separation, the foretaste and the vestibule of an everlasting and unending communion. Some have said, If I could only be sure that those I have lost are amidst joys unspeakable and full of glory; if only some voice could whisper in some stilly night from the depths or the heights, "it is well with them;" or if they could only speak one word, and say it is well with us; you think you could be comforted. But this cannot be the waters of the Jordan that rush along the valley of the shadow of death make no audible music; there is at present a chasm between saints on earth and saints in glory impassable to either. We have what is equally good, a lamp that strikes its beams into the upper and the future, a sunshine that projects its shafts beyond the grave; and this book assures us, in words as certain

and clear as a voice from heaven, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them."

But is there a prospect not merely of reunion, but also of recognition? First, let me show the instructive feeling of the heathen on this subject, as evidences of nature feeling a want that yearns to be satisfied. Let me secondly show what traces there are of this truth in the Old Testament; next in the New, in the teaching of our Lord and that of the Apostles; and lastly, obviate some of the objections that occur to inquiring minds. Almost every wise and enlightened philosopher in ancient times cherished the belief that he would meet with those who had preceded him into the future. I admit they had no revelation; I do not quote what they felt as any authority; I simply quote what they said as evidence of nature's conscious want, yearning, and desire to meet and mingle with them that had preceded them to the other world. The first I will quote as an evidence of nature expressing its feeling is Socrates speaking in Plato, when he says very beautifully, "Who would not part with a great deal to have a meeting with Orpheus, Hesiod, and Homer, and again to converse with Ulysses!" Again, Homer, a great representative of the feelings of human nature, speaks of meeting in the future Ajax, and Patroclus, and Achilles. Cicero, the great Latin orator and philosopher, says, "I feel transported with ardent impatience to join the society of my two departed friends. I ardently wish also to visit those celebrated worthies of whose honorable conduct I have read, and to associate with the assembly of departed spirits and with my dear Cato." Virgil