speaks of it, indicates his intimate familiarity with the whole grand, and interesting scene. "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not șo, 1 would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.' How delightful to think of heaven as our home-our Father's house "Where our best friends, our kindred dwell, As the residence of our Father, it necessarily awakens those filial associations in the breast, which suppress that awfulness of apprehension we feel when anticipating an entrance into the eternal world, under any other form of description. Does a child dread going home-seeing the face of his Father-dwelling in his presence? Not if he has been dutiful-or if he have offended him not if he be reconciled. In this house, our Lord says, there are many mansions, or as the original word indicates, "quiet and enduring chambers," which no foe can enter, or lapse of time destroy. In this house, not made with hands, all the family of the redeemed will dwell for ever; while each one will occupy his distinct mansion.+ There will be a locality of *John xiv. 1, 2. The Author is utterly incapable of affixing any other meaning to the Saviour's promise, "I go to prepare a place for you," than that which he has given it. residence, while the utmost range of liberty is enjoyed; a retiring from the more sacred employments of the temple, and the more august adorations of the throne, to the tranquillity and felicity of meditation-an interchange of visits between one heir of glory and another, which will increase affection, by a more close intimacy of converse. The apostle, when speaking of those who had departed out of life, employs an expression, which takes off the terror of dying, and almost unconsciously produces in a devout mind, a complacency in anticipation of it. "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep.' 7* Them that sleep in Jesus. Thus the name of death, to quote the language of the pious Dr. Watts, is altered into sleep. Christ, who has subdued it, seems to have given it this new name, that it might not have a frightful sound in the ears of his beloved. Though it was sometimes called sleep in the Old Testament; yet that chiefly regarded the silence and darkness, and inactivity of that state whereas in the New Testament it is called sleep, to denote that there is an awaking time. The ancient Christians, on this account, called the churchyard where they buried their dead, a sleeping place. And though the grave may be termed the prison of death, yet death is not lord of * 1 Thess. iv. 13. the prison; he can detain the captive there but during the pleasure of Christ, for he who is alive for evermore, has the keys of death and of hell; that is, of the separate state. Now this is the true reason why Christians have spoken so many kind things of death, which is the king of terrors to the natural man. They call it a release from pain and sin; a Messenger of peace, the desired hour, and the happy moment. All this is spoken while they behold it with an eye of faith in the hands of Christ, who has subdued it to himself, and constrained it to serve the designs of his love to them. We are not to suppose, like some of our modern professors, that this expression gives any sanction to the belief, that the soul of a believer exists in an unconscious state of being, from the hour of his decease, till the morning of the resurrection. Such an opinion may have the sanction of a proud and vain philosophy, which has never bowed in submission to the authority of revelation, but against it, are directed the most plain and unequivocal assertions of the Scripture. Our Lord, when replying to the fervent prayer of the dying thief, says, "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." He does not say, that after the lapse of ages, in a state of unconscious repose, he shall be awakened by the sound of the archangel's trumpet, to a life of bliss and of glory, but that he shall spend the evening of the day in which he suffered, with him in paradise. The apostle says, "Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."* Here he says, that when we are absent from the body, we shall be immediately present with the Lord. When writing to the church at Philippi, he says, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ; which is far better." When he says for me to live is Christ, he declares, that the present life, is to him a source of enjoyment and of honour, but he says to depart, would be an augmentation of his glory and his bliss. But how so, if in his departure he was to exist in an unconscious state of being? Did he prefer unconscious existence, to the power of thought, of reflection, of anticipation? Did he prefer the inactivity of repose, to the pleasure of successful labours ? Did he desire to have his intimate and his holy fellowship with Christ, and with his Christian brethren, broken off, that he might go and lay down in silence amidst the corruptions of the grave? Would this state of uselessness and unconsciousness, have been far better than a lifeof unparalleled usefulness and enjoyment? Oh, no. It would have been felt by him, as a cold, chilling damp, which would have invested *2 Cor. v. 6, 8. † Phil. i. 21, 23. the grave with a gloom, too horrifying for him to have contemplated, but with terror and dismay; but knowing that he should be with Christ, as soon as he left the body, he exclaims with devout rapture, to die is gain. "It is indeed impossible," to quote the language of a good writer, "in the present life, to acquire adequate conceptions of the felicity and glory of heaven. Our faculties are too feeble for the investigation of a subject so sublime and exalted. Yet if we would apply ourselves closely to it, we might come at some juster and more animating ideas of the invisible world, than those with which we are too apt to content ourselves. "The mind of man is so framed, that we acquire our knowledge in the present state by the aid of our senses. In condescension therefore to our weakness, and to allure us to still farther inquiries, God has thought fit in his word to represent invisible things to our imagination, by sensible objects, with which we are continually con versant. Let us begin then with those descriptions of heaven, which are borrowed from sensible objects, and by these steps ascend to a more clear, spiritual, and enlivening view, of the blessedness of that state. And if we search the Bible, we shall there find a collection of the richest and most brilliant images that nature or art can supply; all of them held up to our view in such a manner, as |