to his existence, went to his own place;' and Peter, upon his death, to his. Now, this is a refutation of that opinion which you mentioned as entertained by some, of a common receptacle provided alike for the souls of the just and unjust; for if this were the case, both Peter and Judas would have been consigned to the same, and not to different abodes."

"Surely," interrupted Matilda, "this, though evidently established by Scripture, carries a sort of inconsistency with it; for if we are to suppose that the good spirits enjoy felicity and the bad misery, upon their removal from the body, where is the need, or where the justice, of a final day of retribution? You have repeatedly told us that God does not always punish the guilty in this world, but permits evil to exist until the time of restitution, when all inequalities are to be adjusted; and why may not this argument be applied to the soul in its intermediate state between death and judgment ?"

"That question," said the Doctor, "is shrewdly put. I do not presume to unravel the secret counsels of God; for who can enter into his thoughts?-High as heaven, what

canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know? Such knowledge is too wonderful; you cannot attain unto it.' I dare not, therefore, charge any of his purposes with folly. I speak only of that which I find clearly revealed. I have already stated the grounds for the belief of the intermediate state being a state of felicity or woe in the cases of the penitent Thief, Dives and Lazarus, Peter and Judas; and I know that the Fathers of the Church not only believed, but maintained the same doctrine, that the souls of the wicked are tormented with forebodings of the just judgment of God, and with the fear that a more dreadful sentence awaits them; while those of the righteous, admitted to the participation of joy, live in expectation of more perfect happiness: for the misery of the one and the happiness of the other are augmented by the reflection which the effects of their wicked or good example have left behind; and beyond the grave we are assured our works shall follow us.' And on this supposition we may perhaps, not inconsistently, conjecture that the last great day of account will be one, also, of declaration; that is, the sentences that have already judicially

been effected, will, on that day, be publicly pronounced, and the Lord will gather all his people to himself, and be glorified in them;' whilst the Devil, his angels, and followers will be cast into the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.' You may then safely derive consolation, my dear friends, from the assurance that in the interval between death and the resurrection, they who have died in the fear and love of God live in holy communion with the Saints and Spirits of just men made perfect;' and consequently that he who has now been removed from us, we may confidently hope, is now in the number of this blessed society. Who, then, would be unwilling to exchange the sure possession of unsullied happiness for the participation of uncertain and imperfect joy?"

"It is this reflection," said Ellen, “which supports us under our present loss; but there is one other question, Doctor, I would fain ask you on this interesting topic whether there are grounds for believing that the departed spirits have any knowledge of each other in a separate state."

"This is a point," he replied, "which it is

impossible for me satisfactorily to determine. I can produce nothing upon which to require your belief, though I may offer something to show it to be more than probable. Knowing that the souls of faithful believers are at peace, and those of the wicked in misery, we have no reason for enquiring further to what degree of happiness or woe they can progressively or ultimately attain beyond what mortals can estimate; yet it is a pleasing recreation of the mind to draw natural inferences from the developement of revelation, particularly when they have the direct tendency to make us aspire after that blessed state to which we are invited by the promises of the Gospel. We find in the early part of the Bible, that a phrase generally prevails expressive of a notion, that departed spirits of the righteous go to the society of those objects of affection whom they loved and venerated. The phrase of being gathered unto their fathers,' signifying death, conveys something beyond the wish for the body to be consigned to the sepulchre of their forefathers. When Jacob lamented the loss of Joseph, who he was told had died in the wilderness, he said, I will go down to the grave of my son mourning;'- he could not mean that his

body should be deposited in the same tomb with his son, whom he thought the beasts of the field had devoured, but that he should go down through the grave, the gate of death, to the place where there should be this communion between them. Is there any one who, upon the loss of a relative, or one whom he regarded as his friend, has not engrafted on the feelings of his heart a hope that he himself shall one day be re-united to those who have engaged his love? It is a feeling inseparable from genuine affection; it is one inspired by Nature, one that seems implanted by God himself; for God is love.' If, then, an impression on the mind, made by Nature herself, be taken as a ground for believing a state of immortality as being an echo of that voice which the Almighty whispers to man; may not a similar impression from the same source be looked upon as affording reasonable grounds for believing, that the feeling for a re-union with those dear objects of our hearts, who have quitted our mortal society, is implanted in the breast by Him who has inspired such affection—by Him who has constituted the ties of tenderness, and the bonds of love? Reason, or perhaps something of a higher na