the present much more than is generally supposed', and a cry of "carnal notions" is immediately raised, and no very obscure intimations are given, that no "spiritual mind" can ever endure them. Spirituality and materiality, in short, are supposed by many to be altogether incompatible the one with the other. The old Manichæan notion with regard to matter would seem still to linger among us. It may be now giving way, and we rejoice to think that such is really the case; but that the notion, or at least something very nearly allied to it, was a prevailing one at a very late period, cannot, I think, be denied; nor that it is even still entertained by many. For these reasons, perhaps the greatest contribution ever made to the stock of human thought upon the subject of man's future inheritance, was Dr. Chalmers' discourse on "The New Heavens, and the New Earth." It does not reveal a 1 -" Though what if earth Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 2 While making this remark, I cannot but express regret at the title which he has given to another of his discourses: Heaven a Character, and not a Locality. I know not whether this, or the one on "The New Heavens and the New Earth," was first composed by him, but certain it is, that parts of the one are directly condemned by the other. The great design of the former, which is to show how much moral character has to do with the enjoyment of the future inheritance, new fact, it only enforces a new idea, and makes vigorous attacks upon an old one. But it served to break the charm, or influence, of that which had so long held the popular mind spell-bound, as it were, upon the subject. It did this with a power of language and a richness of illustration which Chalmers alone could command. Though it be so generally known, I shall be pardoned for making the following somewhat lengthy quotation from it: "It were venturing on the region of conjecture to affirm, whether, if Adam had not fallen, the earth that we now tread upon would have been the everlasting abode of him and his posterity. But certain it is, may be all very correct; but it was unnecessary, in order to show this, to do away with the idea of locality. Yet we find him repeating in the discourse what is said in its title-"Heaven is not so much a locality, as a character." One would not "make a man an offender for a word," but what can be more objectionable and misleading than such a statement? Character cannot exist apart from locality. It has itself no existence, except in connection with being or person of some kind, and that must be found somewhere. But the question is decided by the text of his other discourse: "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." (2 Pet. iii. 13.) The two discourses, taken together, however, serve to show that this truly great and good man, to whom we are under such great obligations upon this as upon other subjects, was only a pioneer in it. He helped to open the way into the new country, but he did not himself go far beyond its borders. Human knowledge is progressive and continuous. The discoveries of one age are not so much superseded or refuted by those of another, as taken up into and embodied with them. Chalmers "laboured, and we have entered into his labours." Other men will enter into ours, beginning where we stop. that man, at the first, had for his place this world, and at the same time, for his privilege, an unclouded fellowship with God; and for his prospect, an immortality which death was neither to intercept nor put an end to. He was terrestrial in respect of condition, and yet celestial in respect both of character and enjoyment. His eye looked outwardly on a landscape of earth, while his heart breathed upwardly in the love of heaven. And though he trod the solid platform of our world, and was compassed about with its horizon, still was he within the circle of God's favoured creation, and took his place among the freemen and the denizens of the great spiritual commonwealth. "This may serve to rectify an imagination, of which we think that all must be conscious, as if the grossness of materialism was only for those who had degenerated into the grossness of sin; and that, when a spiritualizing process had purged away all our corruptions, then by the stepping-stones of a death and a resurrection, we should be borne away to some ethereal region, where sense, and body, and all in the shape either of audible sound or of tangible substance were unknown. And hence that strangeness of impression which is felt by you, should the supposition be offered, that in the place of eternal blessedness there will be ground to walk upon, or scenes of luxuriance to delight the corporeal senses, or the kindly intercourse of friends talking familiarly and by articulate converse together; or, in short, any thing that has the least resemblance to a local territory, filled with various accommodations, and peopled over its whole extent by creatures formed like ourselves— having bodies such as we now wear, and faculties of perception, and thought, and mutual communication, such as we now exercise. The common imagination that we have of paradise on the other side of death, is, that of a lofty aërial region, where the inmates float in ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing; where all the warm and sensible accompaniments which give such an expression of strength, and life, and colouring to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imperceptible, and utterly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below; where every vestige of materialism is done away, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies, with which it is felt impossible to sympathize. The holders of this imagination forget all the while, that really there is no essential connection between materialism and sin; that the world which we now inhabit had all the amplitude and solidity of its present materialism before sin entered into it; that God, so far on that account from looking slightly upon it, after it had received the last touch of His creating hand, reviewed the earth, and the waters, and the firmament, and all the green herbage, with the living creatures, and the man whom He had raised in dominion over them, and He saw everything that he had made, and behold it was all very good. They forget that on the birth of materialism, when it stood out in the freshness of those glories which the great Architect of Nature had impressed upon it, that then "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." They forget the appeals that are made everywhere in the Bible to this material workmanship; and how from the face of these visible heavens, and the garniture of this earth that we tread upon, the greatness and the goodness of God are reflected on the view of his worshippers. No, my brethren, the object of the administration we sit under, is to extirpate sin, but it is not to sweep away materialism. By the convulsions of the last day, it may be shaken and broken |