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In the anticipated vision of the Eternal, what do you expect to see T A shape ? Hues T You will never behold God. Eye hath not seen, and never shall see in finite form, the Infinite One, nor the Infinite of feeling, or of truth." (Rev. F. Robertson's Sermont, p. v.) With this suggestive passage may be compared Archbishop King's analytical SerrMn on PredetHnation, ed. Whately. 33—2 516 LIFE TO COME, CONCEIVED IDEALLY. and holiness, and duty, not with instruments of sensation so much as with a consciousness of the mind, which acts through faith. But though these truths are great and eternal, and worthy of being loved with all our liearts, they stand almost on one side of the mass of impressions which belong to our natural life. All our language, even of things unseen, is steeped in the imagery of the senses. Our thoughts, even when bom of the mind, must borrow subject-matter from observation, and cast themselves in the mould of sensible objects. We cannot take note of the world without applying to it classifications of space and time, such as we cannot conceive to fetter — even if they exist for — any high^ intelligence, to which there is no distance or nearness, or past or future, but an omnipresent knowledge. When then we pass into that region of thought which we divine rather than comprehend, the change may be as great as when a blind man receives sight, and the visible world is revealed to him. Then, although the things of faith cannot change, except into greater clearness, the things of our earthly definitions may pass away like dreams, and our expectations become as inappropriate as the blind man^s con- jecture, when he fancied a scarlet colour might be like the sound of a trumpet. It is also evident that the sacred writers were in this respect imder the same law of imperfectness as -we are our- selves ; for they admit it freely, and the stamp of tlieir language proves it. Tlieir metaphors, like our own, are of earth, and their associations are with what they have each known. Thus as their hope is ours, so their manner of shaping and expressing' it is kindred. Hence their words of the life to come should not be strained, so much as interpreted broadly. Now men who feel strongly, how any parables which now regulate our anticipations may be transcended hereafter, are apt to conceive of the life to come with almost the abstract subtlety of Hindii metaphysics, and call it life, and thought, and joy, or spiritual being, and a consciousness of the living presence of God, which may be called oneness with Him, rather than define or describe it according to what in the flesh seem realities, but what to spirits made perfect LIFE TO COME, CONCEIVED IDEALLY. 517 may become transitory images. But in this they greatly differ from you, that they are persuaded of the forecasting will and the unity of selfconsciousness which belong to eternal Deity, and in this they find a pledge for the individual life of every soul made in His likeness, as well as a reason for humility in not confounding the creature with the Creator, or even the child with the spiritual Father. K then you ask, what persuades them that so great a mystery as eternal life for each of our souls is possible, they answer that God is able to give it ; and if you ask of His willingness, they answer that He has implanted pro- mises of it in the better instincts and higher consciousness of the noblest teachers in all nations ; and as He is faithful to fulfil such forebodings, so He has exemplified their fulfilment in His Son Jesus, by lifting Him as the firstborn of the resurrec- tion from the grave ; and He strengthens the testimony of Jesus by the witness of His Spirit, which quickens in men the thoughts that go beyond extinction, and gives them through faith a firmer hold of the living God. But as to hour, or place, or fashion, whether now or then, or on earth, or in some distant star, or in a being as free from limits as that of the Eternal One who made the worlds, and needed them not to dwell in, and whether in the body, or out of the body, they cannot tell. They know, that He who clothes every grain of corn with the new blade and ear, is able, if He will, either out of the grave, or out of anything, or out of nothing, to give every soul whatever tenement*, either earthly or heavenly, is fittest for it. He is also able, if he think better, to preserve His own likeness in spirits made perfect, without aid or trammel of organisation, but with powers rather answering to His own. Yet though all Christians own that * flesh and blood will not inherit the king- dom,' they mostly find it difficult to conceive of human per- sonality as surviving without some tenement or instrumentality f, * 2 Corinthians v. i, 3, 5. t '' It itf a mistake of ultra-spiritualism, to connect degradation with the thought of a risen body ; or to suppose that a mind, unbound by the limitations of space, is 518 LIFE TO COME, IN GOD. however subtle, which may be called *a spiritual body:' and even if such language should be tinged by sensation, yet it may be provisionally useful in leading our thoughts to a higher truth ; and it may be justified perhaps in your eyes by its re- semblance to the S^nkhya doctrine* of * the subtle person,' as well as by the Vedantine tendency to embody the mind of Deity in the world. " But how can men be so in love, it may be asked, with a life of which they confess that they know so little? But they an- swer, not only that it is the rightful complement of the world's history, in whicli all abuses shall be rectified, and mysteries cleared up, and wickedness come to an end, and the kingdom of God prevail, but that it is the great desire with which our souls fcry out, and the will of the Father, that we should draw nigh to the Giver of life, from whom the creature seems unwillingly divided by vanity. Nothing could be told us of eternal life, equal to what we know, that it means being with God, or a greater nearness to Him than now, if not in place, yet in thought, and truth, and acquaintance with His Being. He who knows this has enough to strive for. The more he knows it, tlic more he rests in it. Nothing else could so satisfy him. Thus Bradwardine, a British archbishop in the dark ages, made this his prayer: " Thyself, my God, I love, for Thyself, above all things. Thyself; for Thyself, not for aught else, I always and in all things hitherto seek ; with my heart and whole strength, with groaning and weeping, with continual labour and grief What therefore wilt thou give me a more spiritual idea of a resurrection than the other. The opposite to splritualitr is not materialiRin, but sin. The form of matter does not degrade. For what is this world itself but the form of Deity, [?] whereby the manifoldness of His mind and beauty manifests, and wherein it clothes itself? Ji is idlt to sat/ thcU Mpirit exist apart from form. We do not know that it can" — F. Bobertson's SermKHU, p. 359- • See above, pp. 51, 167, 8. t Eomans viii. and Pascal's Thoughts. So I have heard a Welsh peasant sat, that nothing but God could satisfy "the deep desires of the heart of man" (dr/i dhifmuniadau calon styii). GOD ALL IN ALL. 519 as my final end 1 If thou givest me not Thyself, thou givest me nothing. If I find not Thyself I find nothing. Thou dost not then reward, but torture me. If thou deniest me Thyself, and that for ever, and not for a season, whatever else thou givest me, shall I not always languish with love, mourn with languishing, weep with griev- ing, because I remain ever void and empty] Shall I not mourn inconsolably ; complain unceasingly ; grieve interminably ? This is not thy wont, Grod of goodness, of clemency, and of love : it is in no wise fitting, in no point seemly. Grant therefore, O my gracious God that in the present life I may ever love Thyself, for Thyself, above all things j and in the future world may find Thee, and hold Thee for ever." " Such are the petitions which many Christians offer up at this day. What reason is there why you should not join us in them? "There is so much variety in the conceptions I have ex- pounded of the life to come, that the more spiritual might appear to the other side coldly abstract, and the more sensuous might by the others in turn be called carnal.