426 THE HAPPINESS OF SEPARATE SPIRITS. (DISC. II. mortality and sun-beams! When these spirits shall assume and animate their limbs again, exulting in new life and everlastingvigour ! Now can we suppose it possible that all this vast and amazing change shall be made by the conflagration of the earth and the lower heavens, by the awful and illustrious splendors and solemnities of the last judgment, by the bodies of millions ofsaints and sinners rising into a pain- ful or joyful immortality, and yet no new ideas hereby communicated to the happy spirits ; no increase of their knowledge, or improvement of their joys ? Sl}all the apostles and the prophets, the confessors and the martyrs stand at the right-hand of Christ, and be owned and acknowledged by him with divine applause in the sight of the whole creation, and yet have no new transports of pleasure running through their souls ? Shall they .be absolved and approved by the voice of God, with thousands of applauding angels, in the face of heaven, earth and hell, and all this without any advancement of their knowledge, or their blessedness ? Shall St. Paul meet the Thessalonian converts in the presence of his Lord Jesus, those souls who were once his 'labour and his hope, and shall they not at that day appear to be his glory and his joy ? Does not, he himself tell them so in his first epistle; chap. ver. 19,,2). And can we be- lieve that he or they shall be disappointed ? Shall that great apostle, see the immense fruits of his labours, the large harvest of souls which he gathered from many pro-. vinces of Europe and Asia, all appearing at once in their robes oflight andvictory, and shall he feel no new inward exultations of spirit at such á sight ? And doubtless many thousand souls, whom he never knew on earth, shall be made known to him at that day, and own their con- version to his sacred writings. And shall all this make no addition to hiss pleasures ? The very mention of so 'absurd a doctrine refutes and condemns itself. The saints at that day shall, as it were, be brought into n new world, and he that sits upon the throne shall make all things new; and as he crowns his happy followers with new and unknown blessings, so shall he receive the homage of new and unknown praises. This is a new heaven and a new earth indeed, beyond all our present apprehensions; and. tale magnificent language of pro,
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