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SECT.
VIII.]
THE HAPPINESS
OF
SEPARATE SPIRITS.
457
Now
can we
suppose
two
such souls
to
have been
so
happily
intimate
on
earth, and
may we
not imagine they
found'
each other among
the
brighter
spirits
on
high
?
May
we not
indulge-ourselves
to
believe,
that
our late
honoured
friend
hath
been
congratulated
upon
his
arrival
by
that
holy
man
that
assisted
to
direct and
lead him
thi-
ther?
Nor
is it
improbable
that
he has found
other
happy
souls
there,
who
were
numbered among
his
pious
ac-
quaintance
on
earth.
Shall
I
mention
that excellent
man
Sir
Tuovtns
ABNFY,
who
was his
late
forerunner
to
hea-
ven,
and had
not
finished
two months there before Sir
J01IN
HARTOPP's arrival
?
Happy
spirits
!
May
I
con-
gratulate
your
meeting
in
the celestial regions
?
But
the
world and the
churches
mourn your absence
;
and
the
Protestant
Dissenters lament the
loss
of
two
of their
fairest
ornaments
and honours.
And
is
there
not the same reason
to
believe,
that
our
departed
friend bath
by
this
time
renewed
his
sacred
en-
dearments'with
those
kindred
spirits,
that were once re-
lated
to
him
in
some
of the nearest bonds
of
flesh
and
blood
?
There
they rejoice
together
in
unknown
satisfac-
tion, they
wait and
long
for
the
arrival
of
those
whom.
they
left
behind,
and
for
whose immortal
welfare
they
had
a
solicitous
concern
in
the state of their mortality.
This
thought
opens
my
way to
address the posterity,
the kindred,
and
the
friends of
the
deceased,
in
the
fifth
remark.
SECTION
VIII.
An Address
to
the
friends
and relatives
of
the
deceased.
REMARK
V.
If
the perfection of blessed
spirits
above
consists
in a
glorious increase of those
virtues
and graces
which were
begun
below,
let
us
see to
it
then, that those
graces and
those virtues
are
begun
in us
here,
or
they
will
never
be
perfected
in us
hereafter.
If
our spirits
have nothing
of that
divine righteousness
wrought
in
them
on
earth, we can never
be
admitted
into the com-
pany of the
spirits
of
the
righteous
made
perfect
in hea-
ven.
It
is an
old saying among divines,
but
it
is
a most ra-
tional and
a
certain
truth, that
grace
is
glory
begun,
and