the happiness of Heaven must necessarily be composed of distinct ingredients from the happiness of Earth? God made it too. That something will yet remain to be superadded-something entirely new-in that future existence, I can well believe. Though God will be—can be-no nearer to us there than here yet as our perceptions of his presence will be clearer, and our insight into his nature incalculably deeper, it may be that at length,-when in the course of those endless gradations of progress through which our spiritual faculties will attain their full development, we shall have begun to know Him with something of the same cognizance with which we know our fellow-creatures here-we shall learn so to love Him, that that love will absorb into itself all the other constituents of the Beatific Life. But I can conceive of this only as the result of the most ultimate and Seraphic knowledge: to expect it soon-or to affect it here-seems to me equally irrational and insincere. It is unreasonable to expect so entire a change in the character of the Soul, by the mere event of death, as would entitle it, or enable it to enter at once on the enjoyment of supreme felicity. With the shuffling off this mortal coil, we may indeed hope to lay down at once and for ever all those temptations with which in this life the senses beset the soul, all that physical weakness which has clogged and bounded the exertions of the intellect, all that obscurity with which our material nature has too often clouded our moral vision. But that the Spirit which has been angry, narrow, or infirm here, should suddenly become large, strong, and placid there, is a miracle which the analogies of God's workings give us no ground to anticipate. We believe that according to the goal which each soul has reached on earth, will be its startingpoint in Heaven-that, through long ages of self-elaborating effort, it must win its way up nearer and nearer to the Throne of God-and that occupation can never fail, nor interest ever flag, even through everlasting being;-for, infinite as may be its duration, will it not be surpassed by the infinitude of the created universe? When we reflect that during a life of seventy years, the wisest of the sons of men, though aided by all the knowledge that preceding generations have bequeathed to them, can penetrate only an insignificant portion of the wonders of this little earth, we need not fear that Eter nity will exhaust the contemplations of him to whom will lie open, not only the systems and firmaments we read of and can dimly see, but that larger, remoter, more illimitable universe which we cannot even dream of here. "But the punishments of the next World?" we hear it asked. Well is our imagination so poor and barren that we can conceive of no adequate and ample ones, without having recourse to the figures of the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched? Must not a future world in itself the condition of "spiritual corporeity" alonebring with it dreadful retribution to the wicked, the selfish, and the weak? In the mere fact of their cleared perceptions in the realization of their low position-in seeing themselves at length as they really are-in feeling that all their work is yet to do-in beholding all those they loved. and venerated far before them-away from them-fading in the bright distance,-may lie, must lie, a torture, a purifying fire, in comparison with which the representations of Dante and Milton shrivel into tameness and inadequacy. To the base, the sensual, the hard, who have no notion of a mental torment, translate these, if you will, by the image of a quenchless flame and a sulphurous lake; but seek not to embody such coarse and earthly conceptions in the theology of better natures. THE END. Woodfall and Kinder, Printers, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London. NEW PUBLICATIONS. THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THEODORE PARKER, Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society at Boston, U.S.; Containing his Theological, Polemical, and Critical Writings; Sermons, Speeches, and Addresses; and Literary Miscellanies. Edited by FRANCES POWER COBBE. In 12 vols. cr. 8vo, cloth. 6s. each. "Theodore Parker was one of those men from whom we may learn more while differing from them, than from many with whom we agree;-a man whose writings are calculated, in more than one way, to be eminently useful amidst that uprooting of old religious prepossessions, so characteristic of our time. We hail, therefore, the publication of a collected edition of his works, of which the two first volumes have appeared."THE READER. TRACTATUS THEOLOGICO - POLITICUS: a Critical Enquiry into the History, Purpose, and Authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures; with the Right to Free Thought and Free Discussion asserted, and shown to be not only consistent but necessarily bound up with True Piety and Good Government. By BENEDICT DE SPINOSA. From the Latin. With an Introduction and Notes by the Editor. 8vo, pp. 368, cloth. Price 10s. 6d. LETTERS ON BIBLIOLATRY. By GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. Translated from the German by the late H. H. BERNARD, Ph. D. 8vo, pp. 184, cloth. Price 5s. Three generations of British Reviewers on LESSING. "The work before us is as genuine a sour-krout as ever perfumed a feast in Westphalia. -Edinburgh Review, April, 1806. "As a poet, as a critic, philosopher, or controversialist, his style will be found precisely such as we of England are accustomed to admire most. Brief, nervous, vivid; yet quiet, without glitter or antithesis; idiomatic, pure without purism; transparent, yet full of character and reflex hues of meaning-Edinburgh Review, October, 1827. "The first foreigner who had the glory of proclaiming Shakspeare to be the greatest dramatist the world had ever seen, was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing."-Edinburgh Review, July, 1849. THANKSGIVING. A CHAPTER OF RELIGIOUS DUTY. BY FRANCES POWER COBBE. 12mo, pp. 42. Price 1s. THE NEW THEOLOGY. By JOHN SMART. Edited by RIG-VEDA SANHITA: a Collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns, constituting the Fifth to Eighth Ashtakis, or Books of the RigVeda, the oldest Authority for the Religious and Social Institutions of the Hindus. Translated from the original Sanskrit by the late HORACE HAYMAN WILSON, M.A., F.R. S., etc. Edited by JAMES R. BALLANTYNE, LL.D., late Principal of the Government Sanskrit College of Benares. Volumes 4, 5, and 6. In the Press. WORKS BY THE LATE HORACE HAYMAN WILSON, 8vo, cloth. In the Religion of the Hindus. By HORACE H. WILSON, M.A., F.R.S., late Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford. Collected and Edited by Dr. REINHOLD ROST. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 398 and 416, cloth. Price 21s. AN ESSAY ON THE AGE AND ANTIQUITY OF THE BOOK OF NABATHÆAN AGRICULTURE. To which is added an Inaugural Lecture on the Position of the Shemitic Nations in the History of Civilization. By M. ERNEST RENAN, Membre de l'Institut. In 1 vol. crown 8vo, pp. xvi. 148, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. TITAN. By JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTer. into English, for the first time, by CHARLES T. BROOKS. cloth. 18s. 46 Translated 2 vols. 8vo., 'Hesperus' and 'Titan' themselves, though in form nothing more than 'novels of real life,' as the Minerva Press would say, have solid metal enough in them to furnish whole circulating libraries, were it beaten into the usual filigree; and much which, attenuate it as we might, no quarterly subscriber could well carry with him. A poet, and among the highest of his time, we must reckon him, though he wrote no verses; a philosopher, though he promulgated no systems. Such a man we can safely recommend to universal study; and for those who, in the actual state of matters, may the most blame him, repeat the old maxim: What is extraordinary try to look at with your own eyes.'"-Thomas Carlyle's Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Vols. I. & II. TRÜBNER & CO., 60, Paternoster Row. |