and unveils, with distinctness and prominence, the realities of a brighter world, you will no longer weep, but rejoice. And it should give you great and unfeigned pleasure to reflect, that your tender and beloved offspring is far, very far removed from all the physical and moral evils with which you are daily and hourly beset. But think also of the positive enjoyment of those who inherit the heavenly kingdom. The happiness of spirits, separated from the bodies to which they were once united, is a subject, as all must admit, attended with difficulties. We know rather what it is not, than what it is. Contrasting our present with our future condition, the apostle says "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even also as I am known." While surrounded with the imperfections of mortality, we can only gain a few ideas of the heavenly world from the analogies furnished by the sacred writers; yet even these transient glimpses of celestial blessedness may serve to warm and animate the heart of the believer. In our Father's house above, the spirits of just men made perfect are as the angels of God; all their faculties are enlarged, all their affections refined. They behold the glory of the Redeemer, and are transformed into his moral likeness by the beatific vision. Every accession of knowledge will be an accession of joy; every exercise of love and grati 66 tude towards the Supreme Being, will kindle a seraphic glow of transport and delight. Nor will there be any need of those variations and changes which are now required. The glory of heaven will never fade, nor lose any of its attractive power. Hence," observes the venerable Howe, "no weariness ensues. What! a soul, in which the love of God is perfected, grow weary of beholding him! The sun will sooner grow weary of shining, the touched needle of turning itself to its wonted point; every thing will sooner grow weary of its centre, and the most fundamental laws of nature be sooner antiquated and made void for ever." Bereaved parents! meditate on the kingdom of Christ. It lies partly in the nether, and partly in the upper world. Within this visible diurnal sphere a few of his subjects are waging war with the powers of corruption, and the principalities of darkness ; but by far the largest and the brightest portion of his kingdom is situated beyond the dark valley and the cold stream of mortality. Carry your thoughts to those pure and ever blooming regions, where millions of souls, redeemed from the thraldom of sin and death, are feeding upon the hidden and heavenly manna, and are drinking of the water of life, which flows clear as crystal from the throne of God and of the Lamb. this the exalted and blissful abode to which your children are advanced? Are such signal happiness and honour Is |