These "truths that wake to perish never" remind us of Mr. Collyer's boyhood neighbor of Rydal Mount: O joy that in our embers Is something that doth live, The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast,— The song of thanks and praise, But for those obstinate questionings Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal nature These shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence, in a season of calm weather, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, William Wordsworth (Intimations of Immortality, ix.). The soul is never satisfied with any explanation of its future which, at any present moment, it can fully understand. We desire a future which can be fully comprehended only in that future. We must grow to the revelation. The moment it is all made plain, it becomes substantially like the present or the past, and all progress is precluded. We lose interest in what is to come. We wander ever after upon a level plain, with no mysterious heights to inspire us and lead us on.n.-J. Frederick Dutton. Consolation for the death of Louis Blanc must be sought in the belief of his immortality; for the law of heaven wills that such men shall live forever. If a light has spent itself, the source of that light is not quenched.— Victor Hugo. As to the comparative weight of the foregoing arguments, it has been said: The Platonic idea that the soul is an indivisible unit has played a distinguished part in the argument for immortality, as a ground for the belief. So, too, has the idea that the soul is immaterial and therefore indestructible. But the immortal hope has seldom taken counsel with either of these ideas. Men "beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies" have strengthened their belief by these considerations; but men and women who have seen the light of life go out in faces strong or fair have nourished their hopes upon a different diet. No indivisible unit was the man or woman or the little child whom we forever miss nay, but a unit infinitely divisible, having for us an infinite variety of gleaming lights and tender shadows. No immaterial subject was it that we loved and that we hope to. Communion in spirit? Forgive me, But I who am earthy and weak Would give all my incomes from dreamland Over against the philosopher's indivisible unit and his soul's immateriality, the_natural man has set such poems as that little one [by Adaline D. T. Whitney] which sings: God does not send us strange flowers every year; When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places, It all comes back,- the odor, grace, and hue, So after the death-winter it will be: God will not put strange sights in heavenly places; Veilchen, I shall have thee. John W. Chadwick (The Commonwealth, 1882). There is a great mistake in teaching children that they have souls. They ought to be taught that they have bodies, and that their bodies die, but they themselves live on. Weep not for death! 'Tis but a fever stilled, A pain suppressed, a fear at rest, The moonshine on the slumbering deep The fount of tears is sealed; One of the sweetest passages in the Bible is this one: "Underneath are the everlasting arms." It is not often preached from; perhaps because it is felt to be so much richer and more touching than anything we ministers can say about it. But what a vivid idea of infancy is resting in arms which maternal love never allows to become weary. Sick-room experiences confirm the impression when we have seen a feeble mother or sister lifted from the bed of pain by the stronger ones of the household. In the case of our heavenly Father, the arms are felt but not seen. The invisible secret support comes to the soul in its hours of weakness or trouble; for God knoweth our feebleness, he remembers that we are but dust.- Theodore L. Cuyler. Transported May! Thou couldst not stay; Who gave, took thee away. Come, child, and whisper peace to me. We know in part; the other part In points of glory on the heart Anon May Riley Smith. That moves toward him in Love's straight lines. Benjamin F. Larrabee (Zion's Herald, 1878) CHAPTER XLIV. EXALTATION. What Two Views as to Christ's Intendment concerning Heaven? (1) THE localizing theory. (2) The evolutional. The first-seeking to realize, materialize, or localize heaven -is expressed in the hymn said to be translated from a Latin one of the ninth century, first in 1616, and since variously,— a portion as follows: Jerusalem, my happy home, . O happy harbor of the saints, And soon my saintly friends below The first view interprets the simile of the shepherd and goats,* as indicating a second advent of Christ, a day of judgment, and a segregation of the righteous and the wicked; so also as to the declaration † that they who are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, etc. There is a suggestion in Dr. Thomas Young's Natural Philosophy that there may be a sphere of life, an order of existence, still material, as distinct from the purely spiritual, and yet possessed of some specific property, which distinguishes it from the matter of atomic constitution, of which our senses alone can take cognizance; there may be supersensible, yet not purely immaterial, existences. Certain phenomena of the visible universe suggest the supposition of an unseen universe, related to the present, yet of a different kind or order, out of which came the things which appear, and into which they shall be dissolved, enriching it as they pass into it,- the new heavens † John v., 29. *Matt. xxv. |