!go THE HTAI)E.,T LÍF'E OF Á CHRÍSTIekIV. C,SgRPr17G; of their °dwelling? er shall all those shining worlds be mansions of various residence, as than shalt lèad thy saints successively through the vast and numerous pro- vinces of thy boundless dominion r Sorrow, 'sin, and temptation, shall be named no more, unless to triumph over thein in immortal songs, The fairestrspirits of light, in their own heavenly forms, shall be the , companions. and attendants of the children of God. Jesus, the Lord of glory, is their king and head, the leader of their tri- umph, and the pattern of their exaltation. Jesus shall appear in his meridian lustre, as the Sun of Righteous- ness in the neon of heaven ; yet the beams of his influ- ence shall be gentle as the morning-star: There needs no other sun in that upper world ; the Lamb is the light thereof, Jesus, the ornament of paradise, and the de- light of God, shall be the eternal and beatific object of their senses, and their souls ; they must be where he is, to behold his glory. The blessed God shall dwell among: them, and lay out upon them the riches of his own ail sufficiency; riches of wisdom, grace, and power, all-surprizing, and all- infinite. Divine power shall then reveal all the glory that has been laid up for them, of old, in the purposes of God, or in the, promises of the book of life. But it' was fit it should be hidden there, while the timeof their Rrobation lasted ; it was fit they should live by faith, and tinder some degrees ofdarkness, while the ages of sin and temptation were rolling away : It was divinely pro- per that 'eternal life should not break forth, nor the splendors of the third heaven be made too conspicuous, till the six thousand years of mortality and death had finished their revolutions round the lower skies, and had answered the scheme of divine counsel andjudgment, oa a world where sin had entered. But life and heaven must not be hid for ever. The almightyword, in that day, shall hid the ancient decree bring forth, and the promise unfold itself in .public light. What newworlds of unseen felicity ! what scenes of de- Iight, and celestial blessings, never yet revealed to the race of Adam! When the rivers of pleasure, that had run under ground from the earth's foundation, shall break up in immortal fountains. Mercy and truth shall lavish out upon men with an
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