I am sure a fitter occasion cannot soon come for expressing our estimate of great talents devoted to the cause of humanity and religion."

DEATH AND IMMORTALITY.

I.

In green luxuriance shoots the waving grain,
Whose blades from heaven gather nightly dew,
While spring with zephyrs fans the gladsome plain,
And sun and rain feed earth each day anew.
And now the bearded ear its graceful form

Does from the kindly fostering leaves unfold;
And growing tall and strong, the sunshine warm
With yellow rays soon tinges it with gold.
And tho' the bending stalk is dried with heat,
And the root dies, while in its cradle-tomb
The living embryo sleeps, it is not meet

That on the fainting plant we look in gloom:
Unless unto the earth returns the ripened grain,
It cannot with the spring in beauty rise again.

II.

And tho' from out the loved one's flushing cheek
Fair beauty's fresh, bright color dies away,—
As from the West, at twilight's footsteps meek,
So softly fades the rosy blush of day;

And limbs all buoyant once with youth and health
Move wearily, while, like the ripened grain,

Bends downward that dear form, o'er which by stealth
Creeps day by day-our ardent love in vain-

The chilling torpor of relentless death;

While from the fixed, dull eye and drowsy ear
The busy sense retires, and pants the breath
Impatient to be loosed :-shed not the tear!
The mortal form must fall all ripened to the tomb,

That the immortal germ in heaven's long spring may bloom.

DIVINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, FEB. 1843.

THE PROMISED REST.

A SERMON, BY REV. ANDREW BIGELOW.

HEBREWS iv. 10. He that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

IN discoursing from this passage, I propose to offer some thoughts on the nature of the Rest promised in Scripture as the reward of the righteous hereafter. The observations to be submitted will rather go to show what such rest is not; still they may help towards a better understanding of what it truly is, than perhaps is commonly entertained. Let me have your attention therefore, as I pass to the subject.

earth in the service of God

I begin with assuming that the future rest of the good, whatever else we may suppose it, can be no state of positive inaction-none of idle tranquillity, or indolent repose. Absurd it would be to imagine that the labors of a few years on shall be followed in heaven by perpetual rest,-taking the word in its strictest sense, as implying a complete cessation of all employ. ments, wise, useful or beneficent. Were this its character, then toilsome habits of virtue formed on earth, so far from being helps to future happiness, would prove hindrances and clogs in the way of its attainment. For no principle is more clear in the nature of things, than (if we are to exist hereafter at all,) that the bent and bias of our present courses, tastes and doings, in a moral point of view, will be struck into the soul to go with it into the future states and changes of its being. They will constitute a part of its identity. This mortal life is to the immortal, what childhood is to manhood,—a shaping, influencing and often determining age. A schoolboy wonders why he is tasked with exercises, why he is made to learn what he thinks-and sometimes justly thinks-can be of no direct, positive utility to him in after-life. But he forgets or knows not, that it is the learning, more than the matter learned, that it is the habit of thought, the habit of close application, the habit of patient, laborious, painstaking study, this it is which makes the chief advantage of the discipline he undergoes. Just so in

respect to Divine wisdom; the little acquaintance we here form and apply of God and truth and duty and virtue involves by the process of acquisition a species of soul-schooling, whereby we become inured to patient effort, and inspired with a holy zeal, in anticipation of the nobler work of God in heaven. There will be no bar then placed, but only an immeasurably ampler field opened, to the active energies of the soul, once dismissed from its earthly cell. As well might the lungs by a voluntary act of our own cease to breathe, as the active principles within us, the busy springs of our higher natures, hereafter sink to rest. As well might we hope to exist here by a suspension of the organic pulsation of our hearts, as to live in another state with the inborn activities of our souls then and there hushed to a condition of quiescence.

This, I will assume, must appear to you all-in theory at least, --as most reasonable. But Scripture phraseology in the letter seems, it may be said, adverse to such sentiment. How far this be so, it is proper to consider. Let us revert to the text: "He that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his." Now, two statements you observe, are here made. First, that the good man in his future state of rest ceases from his works; " secondly, it is such a rest as was that of God on the completion of certain works of His own.

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I. The good man, on entering into rest, ceases from his works." And what are they? There are many sorts of works,— of a character, moreover, right and proper, in our present conditions, which reason teaches us can find no place in heaven. Not only the works of flesh, the works of sin, the works of vanity, must be put away, or they will shut us out from that bright abode; but, (as just remarked,) many that are lawful-duties bearing on our temporal interests, and subsidiary to our comfort and welfare in the life that now is--these, too, must be cast aside. We have a compound nature,--one part corporeal, the other spiritual. These impose a twofold class of provisions. The one comprehends such as are "of the earth, earthy," and which go not with us into that kingdom which "flesh and blood" by no possibility can "inherit." And of others falling under the class spiritual-a no small part, very probably, of all that make up the "work of faith and labor of love" and exercises in godliness-of these, many

will be discarded as being of the nature of mere manual helps, or initiatory steps in the holy art of a piety begun on earth, to be perfected in heaven. And, as the Law was a school-master to bring us to Christ, so on our first entrance into the upper world, "leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ," with Christ, perhaps, still for our Teacher, the same pattern and guide, and with the glorious examples of the elders of immortality to incite and encourage us, we then shall "go on unto perfection." Nor will the goal be instantly won. For we shall launch forth on the field of infinitude, with the wonders and immensities of space and eternity around, and forever before us. Perfection therefore, philosophically speaking--defined as the utmost expansibility of our natures in capacity, attainments and conceptions,-perfection in such sense, we may safely predict, will never be completely grasped.

It is a wrong view, an absurdly wrong one, to take of the natures which God has given us, if we suppose that not merely are we to rest from all work and gain an effeminate, voluptuous repose, or (scarce better) a nothing-to-do life of impassioned bliss, in heaven; but further, that the springs of all truth and wisdom, in their utmost plenitude, will be then poured into our passive un. understandings. This, forsooth! would be to make our souls very "gods" at once, "knowing good and evil." And every saint in heaven, even the youngest born into the celestial hierarchy, would in that case become a rival in comprehension with the Supreme, All-perfect Mind. Albeit, God alone is truth. Intuition, the faculty of universal cognizance of all things at a glance, is the exclusive prerogative of his sovereign, unapproachable Intelligence. Whereas, tuition, in some shape or method,-instruction, we mean, by orderly gradations, step by step-however quickenedthis must still be the pioneer of the soul in every future advance of its percipient faculties.

In these positions we by no means impugn the doctrine of the text. Its language and our argument, duly weighed, perfectly harmonize. All that it affirms in the first clause is, that "he who has entered into rest, ceases from his works." This we admit. He ceases from his works,-not only, from the bad, but from much of the good,-from all the incipient probational duties of this mortal life. He quits them, yet for others; and them he leaves for a reason obvious ;—because

the primal stage of his moral being is passed; because his minority is outgrown; he enters heaven as a finished man in Christ Jesus. And whereas, when afore, as a child, he spake as a child, he thought as a child, he saw, felt, did, as a child, now, (no more a child, but) a man—a man of GOD, he puts away childish things. He starts on a new career, going forth as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber gloriously apparelled, or as a giant, refreshed from the bed of death, to run an immortal race through the heavens. His former employments he finds not to have been wasted. They have served as moral gymnastics; they have served for trials of exercise; they have served to draw forth the early latent springs of his soul. They have served to prove his powers, and stir his emulation as a destined immortal. Duty on earth he finds to have been all seasonable, as a preparative for service in heaven. Like David in gathering the stones and timber of the sanctuary, the saint on earth has his employment chiefly in laying in the materials of an immortal structure,-one commenced, not designed to be finished in the compass of man's brief generation. Enough to have laid the foundation, if " a sure foundation." Enough to have reared the staging and built the platform. The labor is then consigned to another age, to be resumed in the fu ture life, and carried on with happier auspices beneath the cope of heaven. Nothing is lost. All has its uses. Death intermitsit puts no period-to the business in hand. And time but be queathes that unfinished workmanship, as the glorious heirloom of eternity.

This is what is affirmed by the Scripture to be the fruit of the toils of "them who die in the Lord." 66 They rest from their la. -bors, and their works do follow them." This passage is conclusive, teaching us that employments analogous in kind, substantially the same in character and essence, will continue to form the business of the soul in the future life. Only, they will be prosecuted with inconceivably greater advantages, on a field all boundless, and with a grandeur of compass which no line can measure. The dead do rest from their labors-labors below, to rise to new ones where the same work shall follow. In accordance with this is the lesson in our text: "He that is entered into rest, hath ceased from his own works,"-meaning the imperfect duties performed on earth, amid