Recur to the tables of memory, where the images of the dear dead are enshrined; and think of some one very near and very dear to you, as self can be to self, and hear that one being dead yet speaking. Is it a mother that has left you? That mother being dead still speaks to you, and she says from her happy abode, “I find here a new home, under whose glorious roof-tree are your brothers and sisters that left us, a fireside that is never darkened, a family circle that never can be interrupted; and the babe that withered in my bosom, like a frost-stricken flower in winter, I find now no more a sufferer, but clad in redemption-robes, and lifted into a sublimer temple, a worshipper within the vail in a house not made with hands, a participant of joys unutterable and full of glory, which shall never fade away. I recognize the links that I lost on earth now restored, and I sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and those with whom I took sweet counsel, and with babes that lived on earth only to weep. Here all lost relationships are restored, all ties snapt asunder are re-knit; and I see those I knew upon the earth, and they see me and know me, and we know each other just as we are known of God himself. The glass through which I saw darkly is broken, and in the clear light of that transparent land, from which all shadow has fled, and all darkness is a stranger, I see and know even as I am known. I long for the day of your death, that you, too, may join this joyous group. Our true life is here. Come speedily, Lord Jesus, re-consecrate the earth, that we may descend as a bride adorned for the bridegroom, or bring mine on earth to me in glory! Do not grieve, dear children, below for us. We are lifted to a loftier spot; you are to be pitied, not we." Strange it is, when a Christian dies, we weep; but if any one should weep, he should for us, not we for him; for, if he dies in mid-age, he is spared the last half of his journey, and, instead of having to eat the bitter bread of this world's

inn, he is lifted unexpectedly to the presence of his God, and the hidden manna and living water. And, therefore, to those "The thunders and the

the one in their unspent

that weep for such, he now says, lightnings that you see we hear, echoes, and the other far down below. The trials and the sorrows that you feel we are now strangers to for ever and ever. Ages roll on, but our joys are ever new. You have night and day, but there is no night with us; all here is unfading brightness, perennial bliss: and, if sorrow should be felt by any, it is by us, that you have twenty or thirty years more to spend in the valley of tears below." Thus it should be joy on your part, that those you have lost have gone and anticipated all, and are now in the presence of God and of the Lamb, unspeakably and unchangeably happy.

The speaking dead say to us, "Come up hither; come now by faith, come upon the wings of prayer. The nearer you draw to Jesus, the nearer you approach to us. The more Christ-like you become, the nearer, the clearer, and more luminous, you shine to us. Anticipate in faith and hope that blessed day when you shall be with us, and we shall altogether be forever happy with the Lord. Did you know the full pitch of our joy, the rich glory into which we have entered, — did you see one glimpse of the bright Sun we see, or hear one note of the grand harmonies that roll around us, would say, 'O that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest forever!'"

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Another fact that the dead would tell us is, that things which agitate the world scarcely reach the realms of the happy; that many an event which the world sees not, or, if it sees, undervalues and despises, has its echo in heaven, and sweeps like the breath of God over the harps of the blessed. For instance, when thrones are tottering, and empires are falling, and presidential chairs are rocking on previous ruins, such facts are scarcely seen above; they certainly do not

interest the company of the blessed. But when the soul of some poor beggar by the wayside, or of some poor orphan in the great congregation, is touched by the grace and transformed by the Spirit of God, then there is joy in the presence of angels that such an event has happened; and the whole company of the redeemed thrill with new ecstasy at the spectacle of a new accession being made to their happy and their blessed band. In heaven, things on earth are looked at only in the light of heaven. We estimate events by their influence upon us; the blessed measure events on earth by their relation to eternity. Great events on earth are pressed into little bulk there; and what the world thinks insignificant occurrences are there the grand facts and impressive phenomena. Those who are there can distinguish substance from shadow, and facts from dreams.

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The dead, too, speak to those who neglect the great salvation, as well as to those who have loved it, and rejoice in the knowledge of it. They say, How can you escape, if you neglect so great a salvation?" If the dead could be heard by the thoughtless sinner who is living without God, and without Christ, and without hope in the world, those departed ones who have preceded you to glory, the father, the mother, the sister, the brother, who found their way to heaven through Christ, and showed they had gone there by the trail of beauty and of moral glory that they left behind them, if they could be audible by you, they would say, "How long will you sport with eternity? how long treasure up wrath against the day of wrath? What shall it profit you, if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul? Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die? Come to Jesus, weary and heavy-laden, and he will give you rest. The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.'"

Even the lost in hell in this matter send up an awful and a piercing voice. "Send Lazarus to my brethren that I left behind me, lest they also come into this place of torment." They, too, would lead you from a course that ends in perdition; the saved in glory would attract you to a career that will end in happiness. Two eternities address us; one eternity urging sinners not to come here, another eternity opening its bright bosom to receive them. Do not hesitate. Turn your back upon the one; lift your face and your heart to the other, and determine that, as for you and yours, you will henceforth serve the Lord Christ. And the sainted and happy dead speak to you and say, "If you will come to heaven, if will escape its antipodes, there is but one way, and that way unequivocally proclaimed in Palestine, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.' Abel took that way. It is the way in which Abraham walked, that prophets trod; it is no strange one. It is beaten smooth by the feet of multitudes who have traversed it. It is so broad, that the greatest sinner may walk in it and find room; and yet it is so holy, that that sinner must leave his sins on the threshold, and continue his career alone, and seek to be saved and sanctified alone."

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"My mother, my father, my son, my daughter, my sister, my brother, except you be born again you can never come here, you cannot see the kingdom of God." This is most true: we need not only a righteousness which is our title, but we need a fitness which is our only, but indispensable, preparation. Our eyes need to be anointed, that they may see heaven's glad scenes. Our hearts need to be sanctified, that they may beat in unison with the happy hearts that are there. Our tastes need to be repaired, in order that heaven may be heaven to us. All analogies, all experience, all induction, prove one great fact, that every man needs, not only a title which he forfeited in Adam, which is restored in Christ, but

that he needs also a fitness for that happy abode which the Holy Spirit alone can give him. If I were lifted just as I am, and with my existing physical organization, and placed in Saturn, Jupiter or Mars, I could not live there. Their gravity, their density, their whole structure, as astronomers can calculate, would render it absolutely impossible that, with my present physical organization, I could live at all, or, at all events, that I could live happily there. Every inhabitant must be fitted for the orb in which he dwells; and any one who knows this world, and what man is, notwithstanding the terrible degeneracy that has fallen upon both, can yet see that, physically, man was made for this earth, and that this earth was made for man. Now, the great law that we find in our experience extends into the better land: it is made for the holy, and the holy are made for it. There needs not only an adaptation of the place to the inhabitant, but an adaptation of the inhabitant to the place. And thus, without a complete revolution of nature, not a reformation only, without a complete transformation of intellect, and head, and heart, and taste, and sympathy, and preference, if we were placed in heaven, it would be agony, not oy; and to be projected from it and cast into the depths of ruin would be our inevitable desire, though it would be our certain and terrible destruction. It is, therefore, the immutable and everlasting law which God's word proclaims upon the earth, which the saints in glory echo from their happy mansions, that except a man be born again by the Spirit of God, he never can be fit to enter there.

All these the texts of the Bible, written on the sacred page, are not more obligatory or forcible because I have supposed them to be enunciated by the blessed in heaven being dead yet speaking. This only we may ask, that if a saved one were allowed to descend from the realms of glory, and to occupy the place where the minister of Christ stands, with