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leifure and opportunity, and favouring circumstances, all unite; much would be performed, perfectly performed, and with alacrity and cheerfulness.

Ir is not for mortality to know all the employments of the celeftial inhabitants. We read of worshipping Gon, of fongs of joy and transport, of warm affection. We are certain that their attempts to honour GOD, to cultivate friendship, and to impart happiness, will not be fruftrated, will be completely fuccessful: that they fhall be fully gratified. But, in what manner, and in what inftances, the love of GOD, and of the LORD JESUS, employs angels and archangels, cherubim and feraphim, and the spirits of just men made perfect, apart from worship; and in what manner the common friendship of faints and angels is manifested, we know not: we know affuredly that their work and duty, whatever it is, does not exhaust and enfeeble the fervants of the LORD. To do his commandments is their life on earth, their life in heaven.

Ir is perfectly evident that the defcrip

tions and reprefentations of the heavenly ftate, in Scripture, are not to be understood literally: many of them, however, are fuch as to lead us naturally to conceive of active fervice, at once worthy of their exalted condition, and attended with much delight. For example, our LORD faid to his disciples, "Verily

"I fay to you, that ye who have followed

me in the regeneration, when the Son of "Man fhall fit on the throne of his glory, ye "alfo fhall fit on twelve thrones, judging the "twelve tribes of Ifrael." Again, the faithful fervant he fhall exalt to be "ruler over all his goods." They are reprefented as kings and priests unto GOD.-Affuredly, inactivity and indolent repofe neither accord with our ideas of perfection and enjoyment, nor with these and fuch like reprefentations of the inhabitants of heaven. We know, alfo, that, after the refurrection, the happiness of the faints is defcribed as increafed and completed: "Our bodies fhall be fafhioned like unto his

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glorious body." Increased happiness, on the reunion of the foul and body, cannot eafily be conceived but as connected with, and refulting from, the activity and employment of the body, with its perfect

powers;

powers; no more a weak, debased, corrupt and mortal body, but ever enjoying the bloom of youth and health, and beauty; the fuccefsful and happy exertions and operations of maturity.

IV. THE enjoyments of the faints in heaven exceed those of the prefent state, as the pleasures of our best state on earth exceed thofe of infancy.

THAT the future felicity of the faints greatly exceeds the present has been seen, in all we have faid. Knowledge, love, exertion, are sources of enjoyment when the objects known employ our beft powers, are great, interesting and blissful; when affection is fixed on excellence and goodness, and meets with reciprocal regards; when employment is prompted by reason, improves the faculties, and fecures its worthy objects and purfuits. Thus it is on earth: thus it must be in heaven. The ingredients and materials of felicity, fo to speak, are fuperior and perfect, what then must be the enjoyment! So reafon and reflection, fo experience and obfervation exclaim. Of the un

folding

folding of our minds, with the attending pleasures of their improvement, we have an idea, by recollecting our progrefs from childhood to mature age: but the manner of their being enlarged, the means of higher improvement, the variety of the objects of contemplation and of delight in heaven; that better world muft explain. The heights to which we shall rife, the gradations through which we fhall pafs, all the works we shall perform, are not revealed. Nor are we informed of the mode of the communications and intercourfe of the fpirits of juft men made perfect, and of the angels of GOD with whom we shall be united, whom we shall refemble, and whofe works we fhall perform. "We know not as yet," fays St. John, "what we shall be." It is not neceffary: St. Paul indeed intimates that it is impoffible to know more than is revealed of the future ftate. What is proper, what is fufficient, is revealed: we know enough for duty, for confolation, for joy in knowing that, when he who is our life fhall appear, we shall be like him, like our God and Saviour, and fee him as he is.

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FROM what we know and experience in life, and especially in the exercifes and delights of devotion, we are prepared to receive the notices and representations of the happiness of heaven given us in the facred Scriptures: the declarations of Him who came forth from GOD, who died and rofe again, that is, of him who went into the invisible world, and returned from it; who faid, "In my Father's house are many manfions :-I "will receive you to myfelf, where I am there They fhall 66 fhall be alfo :" who faid, " you "come from the east and from the weft, and "fhall fit down with Abraham, Ifaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of Heaven :" who faid, Lay not up for yourselves treasures "on earth, where moth and ruft doth cor26 rupt, and where thieves break through and "steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures "in heaven, where neither moth nor ruft "doth corrupt, and where thieves do not "break through nor fteal."

THE Scriptures fpeak of reft: they fhall enter into reft: there remaineth a reft for the people of GOD. They speak of the gain of merchandize, of the poffeffion of heritage,

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