when He shall appear, we shall be like Him-for we shall see Him as He is."

From this we at least gather, that we shall have a direct perception of God. You know how much it is otherwise now-how, though He is not far from any one of us, He is as hidden from all observation as if removed to the distance of infinity away from us-how, though locally He is in us and around us, yet to every purpose of direct and personal fellowship we are as exiles from His presence-how all that is created, though it bear upon it the impress of the Creator's hand, instead of serving to us as a reflection of the Deity, serves as a screen to intercept our discernment of Him. It is not true, that the visible structure of the universe, leads man at least, to trace the image, and to realize the power and operation of that Divinity who reared it. It is not true, that he is conducted upwards, from the agents and the secondary causes that are on every side of him, to that unseen and primary Cause who framed at first the whole of this wondrous mechanism, and still continues to guide by His unerring wisdom all the movements of it. The world, in fact, is our all; and we do not penetrate beyond it to its animating Spirit; and we do not pierce the canopy that is stretched above it, to the glories of His upper sanctuary. The mind may stir itself up to lay hold of God; but, like a thin and shadowy abstraction, He eludes the grasp of the mind-and the baffled overdone creature is left, without an adequate feeling of that

mysterious Being who made and who upholds him. To every unconverted man, creation, instead of illustrating the Deity, has thrown a shroud of obscurity over Him; and even to the eye of a believer, is He seen in dimness and disguise, so that almost all he can do is to long after Him in the world; and, as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so does his soul thirst after the living God. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth, under the sentence of its banishment from Him who gave it birth; and even they who have received the first fruits of the Spirit, do groan within themselves, under the heavy incumbrance that weighs down their souls as they follow hard after the yet unseen Father of them. All they can reach in this nether pilgrimage, is but a glimpse and a foretaste of the coming revelation; and as to that glory, which, while in the body, they shall never behold with the eye of vision, they can now only rejoice in the hope of its full and abundant disclosure in the days that are to come.

It were presumptuous, perhaps, to attempt any conception of such a disclosure-when God shall show Himself personally to man-when the mighty barrier of interception, that is now so opake and impenetrable, shall at length be moved awaywhen the great and primitive Father of all, shall at length stand revealed to the eye of creatures rejoicing before Him-when all that design and beauty by which this universe is enriched, shall beam in a direct flood of radiance from the origi

nal mind that evolved it into being-when the sight of infinite majesty shall be so tempered by the sight of infinite mercy, that the awe which else would overpower will be sweetened by love into a most calm and solemn and confiding reverence— and the whole family of heaven shall find it to be enough of happiness for ever, that the graces of the Divinity are visibly expanded to their view, and they are admitted into the high delights of ecstatic and ineffable communion with the living God. But it will be the glory of His moral perfections, that will minister the most of high rapture and reward to these children of immortality. It will be the holiness that recoils from every taint of impurity. It will be the cloudless lusture of justice unbroken, and truth unchanged and unchangeable. It will be the unspotted worth and virtue of the Godhead -yet all so blended with a compassion that is infinite, and all so directed by a wisdom that is unsearchable, that by a way of access as wondrous as is the Being who devised it, sinners have entered within the threshold of this upper temple; and, without violation to the character of Him who presides there, have been transported from a region of sin to this region of unsullied sacredness. And there, seeing Him as He is, do they become altogether like unto Him; and there are they transformed into a character kindred to His own; and there that assimilating process is perfected, by which every creature who is in Paradise, has the image of glory, that shines upon him from the

throne, stamped upon his own person; and there each, according to the measure of his capacity, is filled with the worth and beneficence of the Godhead; and there the distinct reward held forth to the candidates for heaven upon earth, is, that they shall see God, and become like unto God-like Him in His hatred of all iniquity, like Him in the love and in the possession of all righteousness.

You will be at no loss now to understand, how it is that he who hath this hope in him, purifieth himself even as God is pure. It is by progress in holiness, in fact, that he is making ground on that alone way which leads and qualifies for heaven. There is no other heaven truly than a heaven of godliness; and by every wilful sin that is committed, does man lose so much of distance from the promised reward, and puts himself more hopelessly away from it. You will see by this that faith in the gospel and a deliberate following after sin, is a contradiction in terms. The very road to heaven is a road of conformity to the will, and of unceasing approximation to the resemblance of the Godhead. The great object of the dispensation we sit under, is to be restored to His forfeited image, and to be reinstated in all the graces of the character that we have lost. The atonement by Christ is nothing-justification by faith is nothing -the assumption of an orthodox phraseology is nothing unless they have formed a gate of introduction to that arena, on which the Christian must fight his way to a heavenly character, and so be

created anew in righteousness and true holiness. Every sin throws him aback on the ground that he is travelling; and often throws him aback so fearfully, that, if he feels as he ought, he will tremble lest he has been thrown off from the ground altogether -lest the sore retrogression that he has made from all holiness, has made him an outcast from all hope -lest by putting a good conscience away from him, he has made shipwreck of faith: And never will the irreconcilable variance between salvation and sin, come home to his experience in more sure and practical demonstration, than when sin has thrown him adrift from all the securities which held him; and, through a lengthened season of abandonment and distress, he can find no comfort in the word, and catch no smile from the upper sanctuary, and hear no whisper of mercy from God's returning Spirit, and feel no happiness and no hope in the Saviour.

The same doctrine receives a more pleasing illustration from the bright side of the picture. To ascertain the kind of happiness that is in heaven, the best way is to observe the happiness of a good man upon earth. You will find it to consist essentially in those pleasures of the heart, which the love and the service of God bring along with itin a sense of the divine favour, beaming upon him from above; and in the fresh and perpetual feast of an approving conscience within-in the possession of a sound and a well-poised mind, prepared for the attack of every temptation, and with all its