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testimony of the apostles, concerning this extraordinary and triumphant event, is not a cunningly devised fable; and "if we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even so them also that sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him." "Blessed," therefore, "be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away."

men would persevere for years in the joint attestation of a lie, to the great detriment of every individual of the conspiracy, and without any joint or separate advantage, when any of them had it in his power, by a discovery of the fraud, to advance his own fame and fortune by the sacrifice of nothing more dear to him than the reputation of the rest; and so long will it be incredible that the story of our Lord's resurrection was a fiction which the twelve men (to mention no greater number), with unparalleled fortitude and equal folly, conspired to support; so long, therefore, as the evangelical history shall be preserved entire—that is, so long as the historical books of the New Testament shall be extant in the world, so long the credibility of of the apostles' testimony will remain whole and unimpaired."

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SECTION II.

ON THE LOCAL AND COMMON DESTINATION OF THE
RIGHTEOUS.

In forming our conceptions of heaven, it must be of great importance to remember, that it is a state of perfect rectitude, and that the felicity of the redeemed will spring chiefly from their communion with God, for which they will be fitted by a conformity to his holy image. Whatever external magnificence might surround them in the celestial paradise, and whatever combinations of material beauty might rise up to their view, all would amount to no more than heartless pageantry, without that capacity of enjoyment, which is included in moral as well as physical perfection of nature. Inattention to this essential and main ingredient, appertaining to future blessedness, has been a fruitful source of error, and has given rise to opinions and descriptions, which would better apply to the Elysium of the pagans than to that pure and spiritual region, in which dwells the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, and whose name is Holy. But that heaven is, at the same time, a local and common mansion provided for the final residence of the just, is a fact which has

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always been admitted, with the exception of a few individuals, who have so attempted to refine their notions of future happiness, as to render them no less visionary and unintelligible, than repugnant to the evidence of reason and scripture.* What particular part of creation is assigned for this purpose is an inquiry which, as it is rather a matter of curiosity than of real importance, revelation does not attempt to satisfy. It is enough for us to know, that in some distant region of the

* It has, it is well known, been maintained by some individuals, that heaven, as it respects at least disembodied spirits, is nothing more than a state-a mode of being, respecting which it is impossible for us to form any distinct conception. Place, in the strict sense of the word, is, indeed, the relative attribute of matter, as it seems necessarily to imply extension and form, which cannot belong to that which possesses a purely spiritual nature. But supposing the soul of man after death to exist in a disembodied condition, it must still, we conceive, have to place the relation of power or consciousness, and must, in this view, be limited to some part of the material universe; unless we suppose it to have the property of omnipresence, which is one of the exclusive attributes of the Supreme Intelligence. Yet, after every thing that can be said, this is probably all we can know concerning the relation in which pure spirits stand to the material world, and we know absolutely nothing concerning the mode of their communion with it. These, however, are happily matters of mere curiosity and unprofitable speculation. It is sufficient for us to be assured, on the authority of revelation, that there is a local heaven, into which the righteons will all at last be brought, and placed beyond the reach of sin and sorrow.

universe there is a material heaven prepared for the faithful; and to assure us of this, we have a variety of clear and indubitable evidence. There must of necessity be a place which contains the bodies of Enoch and Elijah, and the glorified person of the Saviour, who ascended into heaven in visible grandeur. And though the bodies in which the souls of believers will be clothed on the morning of the resurrection, will be purified from every element of grossness, and seed of corruption, which may enter into the constitution of the mortal tabernacle, and will be so refined as to justify the figurative application of the epithet "spiritual," in the description given concerning them, yet they will still be material and organized structures, and will require some depositary or local habitation in which they may dwell. In accordance with this general argument are the representations of Scripture. The language which is employed to describe the final abode of the righteous, not only gives us the most exalted views of its beauty and grandeur, but conveys to our minds the notion of place in the strict sense of the word. Our Lord himself, in his last address to his disciples, assured them that he was going to prepare a place for them, and spoke of it in terms at once sublime and unspeakably endearing, when he called it his "Father's house," containing many or various mansions; and heaven is declared to be a paradise, a

city, the kingdom of God, and the holy place, in allusion to the inner sanctuary of the Jewish temple.

Into this abode of blessedness, all the members of the church universal will, in due time, be brought. The relation, indeed, which they bear to one another, and to the Saviour, who is the head and representative of the whole body, might have led us to presume that they would not be scattered over different regions of the universe, or blended promiscuously together with beings unqualified to hold fellowship with them. We are, accordingly, assured that heaven is the appointed place of rendezvous-the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Thither the disembodied spirits of the just are already gone, and to the same abode are all good men advancing, on the swift and certain wings of time. Born from above, their affections tend toward heaven as their native place, and they are journeying to it under the care of the same Almighty Friend, who conducted the Israelites of old to the land which shadowed forth the rest which remaineth for the people of God. This sublime doctrine was not unknown to holy men in the earliest times, and it gave them consolation in the prospect of their departure from the world. They lived as "strangers and pilgrims on the earth," and thus declared plainly that they desired a "better country," and "looked

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