desire for communion remains. Thus when a person whom we have befriended has treated us despitefully in a secret way, though we show no signs of hatred towards him, yet he will avoid us and separate himself from us.

Sin is still the same. The prodigal still loves a far country more than the tender endearments of his father's house. The farther he removes from God, the less communion will there be between them; the less he loves him, the less will he see his footsteps in the earth or hear his voice. So far from delighting in the presence of God, the wicked man would rather have rocks and mountains to fall upon him and hide him from his presence. Is it a wonder, then, that heaven and earth have taken such a sad farewell of each other? When heaven makes a gentle approach to seek fellowship with man, he closes his eyes, ears, and heart, falls upon the earth, hides his face in the dust from God, and cries, "Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways!"

That some men do not desire such an intimate fellowship between heaven and earth to exist, and that they do not seek after it and love it, is no evidence that it does not exist. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," and he reveals himself to them as he does not to the world. Neither is the fact that Christians themselves are so little conscious of it, an evidence that such communion is not possible: it is only an evidence that they do not live up to their privileges. We may live in the midst of a community in which the most excellent and refined society exists, and yet we may not share in its advantages; we may

not even be conscious of its existence. The reason simply is, that we have not been introduced into it; and the reason why we are not introduced into it, is either because we are not worthy of it, or because we have not sought it in the proper way. So here. We are surrounded with spiritual beings, they are not only ascending and descending from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, but they also encamp around us, attend us in all our ways with their holy ministrations: we are capable of feeling and enjoying their presence, and of being introduced into their mysterious companionship; but our affections are too gross, our conceptions too dull and earthly.

We saw in a previous chapter that heaven, as to its locality, is at a distance from the earth, so that the Saviour, in ascending to it, ascended far above all heavens. In space, therefore, and as a part of God's physical universe, heaven is removed from the earth. This distance in space, however, is no more a hinderance to the existence of social sympathies than it is to the existence of physical dependence. It is not improbable, as has been supposed, that heaven is located on the central orb of the universe ;-that all systems with their subordinate planets revolve around and are balanced by it, as our earth and the other planets of the solar system revolve around and are balanced by the sun. All the orbs in the universe, and our earth with them, must be united to that central orb by the laws of gravitation, and are kept in balance by centripetal and centrifugal force. Here is mutual relation, connexion, and dependence, as mysterious as any social sympathy would be at the

same distance. The existence of such physical dependence, on the supposition that heaven is such a central orb, is sure. Indeed, whatever place heaven may occupy in the physical universe, our globe, as part of the great whole, must be united to it by secret mysterious connecting laws. Why then should we doubt the existence of a medium through which the living beings which dwell on these orbs can communicate with each other? Even embodied spirits, as among men, are capable of annihilating space, as in the case of the magnetic telegraph, and of instituting almost momentary communion between the greatest distances. Suppose death should invade a family at one end of the magnetic line, a related family at the other end, thousands of miles off, could be invited to mingle their tears of sympathetic sorrow with those bereft at the dying moment, before the first gush of their grief had subsided!

If the physical world can furnish such astonishing media of communication, how shall a proper medium fail in the world of spiritual existence? The physical connexion which we know to exist by laws of attraction and gravitation between the different orbs in the universe, affords a strong presumptive proof that there is also a moral and social connexion. Or shall we make the strange and unnatural supposition, that these worlds are physically united and dependent on each other, but that no social sympathy is possible? It is much more reasonable to conclude, that God has created this physical universe, and connected it by laws of mutual dependence as a platform for a vast social economy, constituted by the intelligences of

these different worlds. If the introduction of sin into our world has so long hindered us from realizing this blessed fact, it is no evidence that this must always be the case. In and by the Church, our fallen world must again be restored into proper sympathy with the unfallen universe—especially with heaven. When we enter her mysterious and holy communion, then we are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant."

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It has been already remarked, that heaven is inhabited, so far as we know, by three orders of intelligences-divine, angelic, and human. We come now to inquire in what relation we stand to each of these, while we are here on earth, and what is the nature of their sympathies with us, and of ours with them. Have we any communion with them? and if we have, What is its nature? and in what way do we enjoy it? Are these beings present on the earth, and how? Reflections on these subjects cannot fail to bring us consciously near to the awful world of spirits; and will have a tendency to make us feel that heaven and earth are not so coldly related as cold and unreflecting hearts are ready to imagine.

SECTION I.

DIVINE SYMPATHY.

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen." -PAUL.

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"There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." These three communicate with earth. They are one in essence, but three in person; they are one in object, but diverse in their operations. Each one's presence on the earth, and each one's munion and sympathy with us, has something in it peculiarly his own. Hence says the apostle, when he assures the saints at Corinth of the sympathy of these divine persons, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." Let us see what is the nature of each one's presence on the earth, and what is the nature of each one's sympathy with us.

"Truly our fellowship is with the FATHER." God the Father dwells in heaven. Though he is everywhere present, yet the Bible conveys the idea that he is present in heaven in a peculiar way, in such a way as he is present nowhere else. He dwelt of old at Jerusalem in the awful cloud between the cherubim, as he did not in all the earth beside; so also he dwells in the holiest of all in heaven as he does not in any other part of the universe. Behold "heaven is his throne, the earth is his footstool." Heaven is the centre of his operations, and perhaps we might say