A FUTURE STATE. Where sin is, hell is.-LESSING. Wherefore burns In mortal bosoms this unquenched hope Our earthly vision is but dark and dim, There shall we see in the pure light of Him And doubt, distress, and hope delude no more.-Bowring. Be not deceived; God is not macked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. This is life eternal, that they might know Cher, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. My view of life is such, that if it were not for my faith and hope, I should care little what became of it. Let it be longer or shorter, it would but little matter, if all was to end when life ended; if all my hopes, and aspirations, and cherished joys were to be buried with me for ever in the tomb. Oh! that life of insect cares and pursuits, and of insect brevity! the mind that God has given me could only cast a sad and despairing look upon it, and then dismiss it, as not worthy a further thought. But no such sad and shocking incongruity is there, thanks be to God, in the well-ordered 'course of our being. The harmonies that are all around us, in all animal, in all vegetable life, in light and shade, in mountain and valley, in ocean and stream, in the linked train of the seasons, in the moving and dread array of all the heavenly hosts of worlds, the harmonies of universal nature, but above all the teachings of the Gospel, assure us that no such shocking incongruity and disorder are bound up in the frame of our nature. No; it is true: that which we so much need to support us is true: God doth look down upon our humble path, with the eye of paternal wisdom and love; this universe is full of spiritual influences to help us in the great conflict of life; there is a world beyond, in which we may assuredly trust. The heart full of weighty interests and cares, of swelling hopes and aspirations, of thoughts too big for utterance, is not given us merely that we may bear it to the grave, and bury it there. From that sleeping dust shall rise the freed spirit to endless life. Thanks-let us again say, and for ever say-thanks be to God who giveth us this victory of an assured hope, through our Lord Jesus Christ.-Dewey. GOD gives us a great argument to prove the resurrection, since to His saints and servants He assigns sorrow for their present portion. Sorrow cannot be the reward of virtue: it may be its instrument and handmaid, but not its reward; and therefore it may be intermedial to some great purpose; but they must look for their portion in the other life, for if in this life only we had hope, then we were of all men the most miserable.-Jeremy Taylor. EVERY man's future state, whether of reward or punishment, depends upon his tenor of behaviour in life, and the provision of causes influencing him to hold it. He cannot indeed foresee the issue with absolute certainty, because he cannot certainly know what trials he may be put to, nor examine all the recesses of his own heart, to see precisely what degrees of strength or weakness lie latent there; yet, so far as he can discern these, he may rise to a proportionable degree of assurance; and for what uncertainties remain, he may know that a constant application of his judgment, and vigilance, and industry, will diminish the hazard and add to his security. And what better could he augurate, or more effectual could he do, supposing God himself did not know what would become of him, or had made no appointment concerning him?— Tucker. SIN is the chief of evils. May I not say, that nothing else deserves the name? No other evil will follow us beyond the grave. Poverty, disease, the world's scorn, the pain of bereaved affection-these cease at the grave. The purified spirit lays down there every burden. One, and only one evil can be carried from this world to the next, and that is, the evil within us, moral evil, guilt, crime, ungoverned passion, the depraved mind, the memory of a wasted or ill-spent life, the character which has grown up under neglect of God's voice in the soul and in his word. This, this will go with us, to stamp itself on our future frames, to darken our future being, to separate us by an impassable gulf from our Creator, and from pure and happy beings, to be as a consuming fire and an undying worm. The Scriptures, in great wisdom, say nothing of happiness reserved for the guilty, after they shall have borne the penalty of their sins. If that happiness be intended for them, I should say that the present life is not the proper time for revealing it. Nothing decisively clear seems to me to be laid down in the Scriptures upon this subject. A solemn darkness hangs over the prison-house of the condemned. One thing alone is certain; that we shall suffer greatly hereafter, if we live here in neglect of God's known will, his providential aid, his revelation by Christ. In what way we shall suffer, or to what duration and extent, the Scriptures, it seems to me, have not precisely defined, and we need not to know: it is enough to have the impression that a great woe hangs over guilt, and that we can gain nothing, but may lose every thing, by persevering transgression. It is true, as many assert, that the word 'everlasting,' when applied to punishment, does not necessarily mean without end, and that it is often applied to denote limited duration; but still, that there will be a limit to future punishment, that it will operate to reform us, the Scriptures nowhere declare. God's mercy, if it shall be extended to the impenitent, is not yet revealed. The future is filled with awful gloom to those who are now living without God, and it is but kindness towards them to encourage no delusive hope. Such a hope forms no part of my message, for, in my view, it makes no part of revelation. The Scriptures show us the wicked banished into darkness. In that exile it leaves them. That darkness hides them from our sight. If mercy is to be extended, it is mercy to be revealed hereafter. It is not to be taken into our account now, in estimating the consequences of sin.-Channing. PURITY and holiness does not only fit us for heaven, so that without it we can have no entrance or admittance there, but it also fits us, that if it were possible for us to enter heaven void of it, heaven would be no place of happiness to us in that condition, but a place of terrible torment and vexation. As, for instance, it is impossible for a beggar in his rags to be admitted to the society and converse of princes and noblemen; but in case that he were, yet his beggarly condition would never suffer him to enjoy himself in that company in which he could be nothing but a mock and a derision. In like manner, heaven bears no suitableness to an impure, unsanctified person. For a sinful heart must have sinful delights and sinful company; and where it meets not with such in the very midst of comforts, it finds a solitude and a dissatis |