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This indeed is the only obstacle, and it is a great one; for Christ's deli- verance is not merely from external laws, but from evil in its spirit and in all its forms. If you would be delivered from evil, He will give you, if you pray for it, the free spirit of lioliness. Again, if that temper, which makes you throw so intense (though we think so mistaken) a feeling of religion into all your life, should desire means of realising to the senses spiritual truth, the prayers and sacraments of the Chm-ch would bring Christ before you, walking as it were in the midst of His people, and shewing them His wounds, and pleading with them by His passion that they would not be so in love with sin and with ruin, but rather follow the example of His patience, that they might be par- takers of His resurrection. There also you might see the same Jesus pleading the same passion for His people before God, and desiring that no human soul might be lost, for which He had paid as it were a price by passing through agony and shame. Or again, as you have pilgrimages in India, and you have spoken of the old ascetics who dwelt in solitudes, you might read in some Christian authors how the soul of man is in thiji world like a pilgrim, finding no rest which satisfies it, but seek- ing a heavenly city. Then it passes perhaps through struggles of doubt or darkness, as if through a slough of despond ; but when it calls upon Christ for help, it finds in Him an interpreter of all its difiiculties, and in gazing upon His cross it drops the burthen of its sins, and it prevails in contest with every ghostly enemy, and moves on in prayer until it has glimpses by faith oi an everlasting peace beyond the dark river of death, and so it is led on until it enters, as Christ entered, into glory. But if sucl BELATION OF CHRIST TO FUTURE PUNISHMENTS. 513 sayings have too mucli of parable for our very wise friends here, they may please, with our more rationalising doctors, to consider our earthly life as a state of trial, by which the heavenly Master proves us in order to see what are fit for, and intends to exemplify in us His own equity in the sight of other worlds, and spirits yet unseen, by rewarding every man for the works he has done in the flesh, whether they were good, or whether they were evil. But in any way, you see, we agree in pressing forward, as you do, with a great desire of things unseen and eternal, but with a better assurance of attain^ ing them. Men in almost all nations have had some instinct or dread of eternal punishments in death*; and however the human consciousness of an immortal soul, and of guiltiness, and of an eternal law, which seems involved in such a dread, may have been evoked, our Master Christ so far appeals to it, that he adopts the expressions of its instinctive fears, and leaves them as lurid possibilities which we may bring on ourselves, and as things which should outweigh the meaner fear of man who can but kill the bodyt; but yet the doctrine of Christ is chiefly good news, and His especial work is not to implant such fears, still less to increase them, but rather to deliver us from all such evil by making us partakers of His own Spirit, and fitting us for the kingdom of our heavenly Father. So far however as such ex- pressions of awe appear among the words of Christ, I dare not attempt to lessen their force ; I only say they are not the main burden of His mission from the Father ; yet perhaps those among us are not wrong who, believing the kingdom of God to be spiritual, think the flame that is not quenched is the flame of passion with shame, and the worm that dieth not, the infinite remorse of an undying soul. " It would be more Christian, and more wholesome, to consider how much is parable, or what is the meaning, in the words which Christ and His apostles have spoken of the infinite joy of the * '* jEtemat quoniAm poenas in morte timendum." — LuereHus. t St Matthew x. iS ; St Luke iv. i8 ; ix. 54 ; xii. 5. M. P. 33 614 HEAVEN, CONCEIVED AFTER SENSE. life to come. But yet it is more wholesome still to consider by what life and mind we may now become fit to partake of it. The fruit of the Spirit, says St Paul, is love, joy, peace, long-sufFering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such is no law of terror, or prevailing of any enemy. For such fruits do not wither, and if we have in us now the life which puts them forth, death will have no power over us. But consider, said a wise Gentile, whether eternal right must not forbid what is impure to lay hold on the pure. So the Christian must consider that he cannot see God without being pure of heart, or be where Christ is, without partaking of the Holy Spirit. There are persons of sensuous and affectionate mind, who lay hold chiefly on the promise that they shall see Him as He tSy and shall know as they are now knmon of Him. Many of them, such as maidens and simple people, imagine they shall behold Him, with the hair parted, and with the Divine smile but no longer of pitying sadness, such as they have seen Him in some picture, or as His resemblance was fashioned in their fancy by the scriptures which tell of His healing the sick and com- forting them that mourned ; and they believe that seven torches will throw light around Him, and an infinite company of singers will celebrate his victory over the last enemy, and bear palm- branches of triumph in their hands, yet rejoice in throwing the garlands before His throne, and ascribing glory and salvation to Him who was dead, and is alive for ever. Among this great company of just men made perfect they expect to meet again the familiar faces of earthly friends, and to see the mother whom they lost in childhood, and that dear person whose love they longed for. They think also of angels, with instruments of music, and the fluttering of golden wings. But others, that would be wise, think such sayings of Holy Writ are parables of bliss, but confess they know not what it shall be. We know in part, they say, and prophesy in part ; and we now see ima^rs of things spiritual cast with broken reflexion, as in a figure, on the imperfect mirror of our understanding ; but in the day when HEAVEN, CONCEIVED SPIRITUALLY. 616 the Lord, who is the eternal Spirit, shall be our light instead of sun or moon, we shall have clear vision as it were face to face. Then, they say, we shall see Christ because we shall be like Him in spirit, and be one with Him, as He is one with the Father; and then we shall read aright the mystery of the world's history, and * understand strange propositions,' and know the reasons of His death, when we know the power of His life. As to the company in that place of blessedness, they think it must be of saints, and martyrs, and of all who have witnessed a good confession for the right and the truth, and of persons like them by a fellowship of mind. But as to earthly aflFection, they know not if it will endure in that higher world, nor understand, if it did, how its many probable divorcements could consist with bliss. Our mother and sisters and brethren, they say, must then be like those of Christ, the persons who do the will of God. Others again speak, as if they would be thought to know more, by confessing that they know less. Eye hath not seen, they say, nor ear heard, what Ood hath prefpared for them that love Him. Or rather, perhaps, their knowledge is of a different kind, and more beyond speech, like those deep Ireathtngs of the mind, and its clear perceptions, which I spoke of before. For they say, the kingdom of heaven must begin upon earth ; and as it will be hereafter beyond sense, so is it now. The pure of heart see God now, though not with the eye, for He is spiritually discerned; and they will see Him hereafter in the same way*, though in a different degree. We apprehend an originative will, and the ideas of moral right, and truth, and wisdom, and love, * '' Never yet has eye seen the Truths of God, and never shall it see them. In Heaven this will be as true as now. Shape and colour give them not. God will never be visible, nor will His blessedness. He has no form. The pure in heart will see Him, but never with the eye ; only in the same way, but in a different degree, that they see Him now.