understood it, the place of happiness into which pious souls, when separated from the body, are immediately received." Hear also Bishop Horsley -"Of this place (Paradise) we know little, except that to those who die in the Lord it is a place of comfort and rest: not a Paradise of eternal sleep and senselessness, but a place of happy rest and tranquil hope."* That the humble and penitent

* It will not be thought a digression, nor irrelevant to the general argument of the subject before us, in which the love and mercy of God are called to mind as the leading inducements to present rectitude and future hope, rather than the fear of punishment; if one more lesson be remarked upon as belonging to our Saviour's reply to the penitent male factor. Those who are walking in the path and in the station in which it has pleased God to place them, and that station a happy one, with reference to the means of early instruction, and the habits and example of those around them, would find it difficult to imagine, without much observation and inquiry, the awful difference in the career of life, resulting from the circumstances of parentage, education, and companionship. Strange as it may seem in a Christian country, there are those who, from childhood to the close of their days, have known as little of their Saviour as the malefactor on the cross, and in whose ears the precepts of vice-not of virtue, have been the uniform instruction. Again, there are those, who, more fortunate in their means of knowledge, have made a most unfortunate use of those means; crime being equally the prominent feature in either case. Many have forfeited life or liberty for sinful actions, of which sinfulness they had no moral sense; and many, better taught, have sunk under temptation to which we ourselves might, possibly, have yielded, if similarly tried. While therefore "he who thinketh he standeth," may well "take heed, lest he fall," and retaining his abhorrence of sin, refrain from judging others whom God only

thief on the cross should at once commence his spiritual state of existence, depends not on this text alone, but is in perfect harmony, it will be recollected, with our Saviour's previous declaration as to the Patriarchs. (page 48.) Let us next turn to the Gospel of St. John, chap. v. 24, wherein it is thus written, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into comdemnation but is passed from death unto life." Again also in the eleventh chapter, we find the beautiful and affecting, and most instructive passage, of the death of Lazarus. "Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died." "Jesus saith unto her, thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto

can truly judge; we may draw from our Saviour's mercy to the malefactor this important truth, that neither ignorance nor guilt are doomed to despair, where penitence is real, at the same time remarking, that the example thus set before us, is given as a solitary case lest we should presume.

* I am aware that the words "passed from death unto life," especially taken in conjunction with 1 Ep. John iii. 14, are by some understood to mean, the being passed from the darkness of ignorance, to the light and knowledge of the gospel. To my own unassisted judgment, the passage has always appeared to signify that the soul of the Christian believer remains not a moment under the power and bondage of death, but passes at once from an earthly to a spiritual existence.

Him, I know that he shall rise again at the resurrection at the last day." Observe well these words, for herein is the whole question of immediate, or suspended consciousness of existence after death, brought before our Saviour Himself. Martha believed that her brother, after the long sleep of the grave, as she understood it, should rise "at the resurrection in the last day." And there seems even a tone of impatient grief, a refusing to be comforted," by consolation so remote in imagination. Our Saviour's mild and gracious reply is, "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

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An answer how full of intense interest and comfort, not less to us than to Martha. How decisive of the fact, that death hath no more dominion over us, than the momentary passage from mortality to immortality.

In the burial service of our church we say, "Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and

felicity; we give Thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world." Now if the sleep of death applied to the soul as well as the body; if we imagine, that those whose presence and companionship on earth had been most dear to us, were removed by death only into a state of unconsciousness, a long solemn trance, then if the brokenhearted mourner were called upon to say Amen, to such thanksgiving, would not that Amen proceed out of "feigned lips;" remembering our own bereavement, our own utter loss without immediate advantage or gain to the being beloved? Even as it is, with the knowledge distinctly before us of our Redeemer's mercy, with the blessed assurance presented to penitent and believing man, "To day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise;" too often do we sorrow as those without hope; too intimately does self mingle unthinkingly with earthly affection; too engrossingly do we dwell upon our own deprivation, the blank in life's brief page of daily comfort, rather than raise our thoughts hopefully and trustingly, to the contemplation of the vast reward, the measure of happiness so infinitely beyond our power to have contributed, which has thus be

come the lot of one, whose loss we too inconsider ately lament. Thanks be to God we shall not in this matter, nor in others, be judged by one who cannot be "touched with the feeling of our infirmities:" Who does not recall, with swelling heart, the proof recorded on this point at the tomb of Lazarus,

"Jesus wept?" Those tears fell, as we now may easily comprehend, not for the limited cause supposed by the disciples, then uninstructed and uninspired men-"See how He loved him."

We should profit little from meditation on a Being so perfect, a passage so beautiful, if we saw only in those tears, regret for Lazarus whom He was about to restore to life, and who was so restored the next moment, at the divine command from His lips-“ Lazarus come forth." Far more profitably may we believe, that in the scene of distress around Him, our Saviour's pure and omniscient mind saw, at one view, the misery brought into the world by sin, and death its sad consequence! The vista of futurity was before that allseeing eye, and He knew that the despair of that family, was but one of the countless drops, that must form the ocean of human sorrow in all time to come. He knew that He could relieve affliction