Year: 1876

Heaven is not a solitude; it is q peopled
city "a city in which there are no strangers,
no homeless, no poor where one does not pass
another in the street without greeting, where
no one is envious of another's miustrelsv, or
of anothcr's more brilliant crown. When
God said in the ancient Eden 1T is not
good for man TO be alone, there was a deeper
Specification in the words than could be ex-
hausted or explained by the family tie. 1t
was the declaration of an essential want
which the Creator IN Ills highest wisdom
has impressed upon the noblest of His works.
That is not life-you don't call that life
where the hermit in some moorland glade
drags out a solitary existence, or where the
captive in some cell Of bondage frets and
pines unseenY That man does not under
stand solitude. Life, all kinds of life, tend
to compauionship, and rejoice in it, from the
fecund larvH and buzzing insect cloud up
to the kingly lion and the kingier man. It
is a social state into which we are 10 be in
troduced as well as a state of consciousness
Not only, therefore, does the Saviour pray
for His disciples Father, | will that those
whom thou hast given me be with me where
| am, that they may behold my glory " but
those who are in that heavenly recompense
are said to have come to the general as
sembly and church of the first-born written
in heaven" Ay, and better than that, aud
dearer TO some of us, to the spirits of just
men made perfect" This question of the
recognition of departed friends in heaven,
and special and intimate reunion with them,
Scripture and reason enable us to infer with
almost absolute certainty, 1t is implied in
the fact that the resurrection is a resurrec-
tion of individuals, that it is his mortal that
l. Ill. IL 4
the fact that heaven is vast and happy So
ciety and it is implied in the fact that there
is no unclothing of nature that we possess,
only the clothing upon it of the garments OF
a brighter and more glorious Immortality
Take comfort, then, those of you in whose
history the dearest charities of life have been
severed by the rude hand of death-those
whom you have thought about as lost are
not lost except TO present sight. Perhaps
even now there are angel watchers, screened
by a kindly Providence from everything
| about you that would give them pain but
| if you and they are alike in Jesus, and re
main faithful TO the end, doubt not that you
shall know them again. 1t were strange
don't you think, if amid the multtudes OF
heavenly hosts, the mdlttudes of earth,
| ransomed ones that we are to see in heaven


we should see all but those we most fondly
and feryently long TO see? Strange if, il
some of our walks along the garden streets


we never happen to light upon them


Strange if we did not hear some heaven


song, learned on earth, triiled by some clear
ringing voice that we have often heard be


fore And although in heaven they neither


marry nor are given in marriage, yet dearel


than all Others there will be the wife to tn,


husband, and the husband to the wife, ant


the friend TO the friend, who have toied anC


suffered on earth together. Oh, what hear


is not thrilled by the glorious prospect T.


Rec. w. W. Punsh0n, ID. ID.