268

THE HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN.

heart, no treachery pierce the soul with anguish. No parent will mourn over an apostate child, and no child over a profligate parent. No brothers, nor sisters, will be wrung with agony by the defection and corruption of those who, inexpressibly endeared to them in this world by the tender ties of nature, and the superior attachments of the gospel, have here walked with them side by side in the path of life, and have at length become their happy companions in the world of glory. Husbands and wives, also, here mutually and singularly beloved, will there be united, not indeed in their former earthly relation, but in a friendship far more delightful, and, wafted onward by the stream of ages without a sigh, without a fear, will become, in each other's eyes, more and more excellent, amiable, and endeared, forever.

As

To the eye of man the sun appears a pure light, a mass of unmingled glory. Were we to ascend with a continual flight towards this luminary, and could we, like the eagle, gaze directly on its lustre, we should in our progress behold its greatness continually enlarge, and its splendor become every moment more intense. we rose through the heavens, we should see a little orb changing, gradually, into a great world; and as we advanced nearer and nearer, should behold it expanding every way, until all that was before us became a universe of excessive and immeasurable glory. Thus the heavenly inhabitant will, at the commencement of his happy existence, see the divine system filled with magnificence and splendor, and arrayed in glory and beauty; and as he advances onward through the

successive periods of duration, will behold all things more and more luminous, transporting, and sunlike, forever.

HEAVEN.

BISHOP KEN.

THE saints in happy mansions rest,
Of all they can desire possessed;
No misery, want, or care,

No death, no darkness there,

No troubles, storms, sighs, groans, or tears,

No injury, pain, sickness, fears.

There saints no disappointments meet;

No vanities, the choice to cheat;

Nothing that can defile;

No hypocrite, no guile ;

No need of prayer, or what implies

Or absence or vacuities.

There no ill conscience gnaws the breast;

No tempters holy souls infest ;

No curse, no weeds, no toil;

No errors to embroil;

No lustful thoughts can enter in,
Or possibility of sin.

270

WHAT MUST IT BE TO BE THERE.

Saints' bodies there the sun outvie,
Tempered to feel the joys on high :
Bright body and pure mind
In rapture unconfined,
Capacities expand, till fit

Deluge of Godhead to admit.

With God's own Son they reign co-heirs ;
Each saint with him in glory shares :
Like Godhead, happy, pure,

Against all change secure,

In boundless joys they sabbatize,
Which love triune will eternize.

"WHAT MUST IT BE TO BE THERE!"

ANONYMOUS.

WE speak of the realms of the blest,
Of that country so bright and so fair,

And oft are its glories confessed;
But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its pathways of gold,

And its walls decked with jewels most rare,

Of its wonders and pleasures untold;
But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its freedom from sin,
From sorrow, temptation, and care,
From trials without and within;

But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its service of love,

Of the robes which the glorified wear,
Of the church of the first-born above;
But what must it be to be there!

Then let us, 'midst pleasure and woe,
Still for heaven our spirits prepare ;

And shortly we also shall know
And feel what it is to be there!

ETERNITY.

HERVEY.

O ETERNITY, eternity! how are our boldest, our strongest thoughts lost and overwhelmed in thee! Who can set landmarks to limit thy dimensions, or find plummets to fathom thy depths? Arithmeticians have figures to compute all the progressions of time; astronomers have instruments to calculate the distances of the planets; but what numbers can state, what lines can gauge, the lengths and breadths of eternity? "It is higher than heaven, what canst thou do? Deeper

272

THE SILENT LAND.

than hell, what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, broader than the sea."

Mysterious, mighty existence! a sum not to be lessened by the largest deductions! an extent not to be contracted by all possible diminutions! None can truly say, after the most prodigious waste of ages, "So much of eternity is gone;" for, when millions of centuries are elapsed, it is but just commencing; and when millions more have run their ample round, it will be no nearer ending. Yea, when ages numerous as the bloom of spring, increased by the herbage of summer, both augmented by the leaves of autumn, and all multiplied by the drops of rain which drown the winter, when these, and ten thousand times ten thousand more, more than can be represented by any similitude, or imagined by any conception, when all these are revolved and finished, eternity-vast, boundless, amazing eternity — will only be beginning!

THE SILENT LAND.

SALIS.

INTO the silent land.

Ah! who shall lead us thither?

Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand. Who leads us with a gentle hand

Thither, O, thither,

Into the silent land?