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pleasant baths, and that they shall bathe in each other's sight. That they shall swim like fishes; and sing as melodiously as nightingales, &c."-He affirms, in the forty-seventh chapter, "That the men and women shall delight themselves in masquerades, feasts, and ballads;"-and in the fifty-eighth, "That the angels shall put on women's habits, and appear to be saints in the dress of ladies, with curls and locks, waistcoats and fardingales, &c." See the "Moral practice of the Jesuits," by the doctors of Sorbonne ; it has been translated into English, and published in 1671. -Spence's Anecdotes. Supplement, 1757.

THE NEW HEAVENS AND EARTH.

Bishop Mant, in his volume on the Happiness of the Blessed, refers to several passages in St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, indicating the excellence of the future residence of the blessed. Thus, he figuratively speaks of it as "Mount Sion," "the joy of the whole earth” (Ps. xlviii. 2); and he further mentions it, by a different modification of the same figure, as "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." He elsewhere refers to the same celestial abode, in speaking of Abraham sojourning "in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." (Heb. xi. 10.) He then speaks of God having prepared a city for the descendants of Abraham who died in the faith; and of the descendants of Abraham after the Spirit, or the members of the Christian Church, the same Apostle says: "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.' (Heb. xiii. 14.)

All these passages point to the superior excellence and value of that celestial abode which is prepared for God's faithful servants in the world to come. But the book of Revelation of St. John supplies individual features of the magnificence, beauty, and enjoyment of "the holy city, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband," "having the glory of God."

"And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every gate was of one pearl; and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." "And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it; and the kings of the earth do bring into it their glory and honour." And it had " a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. And in the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

In whatever manner such portraits as these are to be understood;

whether it be that the most beautiful and splendid productions of the earth will be enjoyed in full perfection by the inhabitants of the heavenly state; agreeably to the idea ascribed to Raphael by our great poet,

What if earth

Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought;

Paradise Lost.

or that the representations of heavenly things are set before us in a figurative manner, as calculated to impress us with a more lively sense of their value and delightfulness, when shadowed forth under the images of those things which are esteemed on earth most precious and delightful; in either case they seem intended to place most expressively before our thoughts the beauty and magnificence of the future abode of the blessed,

-The pleasant garden, and the crystal stream,
The tree of life which bears on every bough,
Fruits fit for joy or healing; on the brow,
Of glorious gold a living diadem;

On thrones which blaze with many a radiant gem;
The branching palms; the raiment white as snow;
Are these the joys that heaven's abodes bestow?
Or may they rather earth-formed figures seem
Of heavenly bliss? To me it matters not,
If I but reach the mark, whate'er the prize
Of God's high calling. Be content that what
Is told, is told us by the only Wise:

And blest, supremely blest, must be the lot,

Which Christ hath purchased, and which God supplies.
Bishop Mant.

"We look (says St. Peter) for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." And it seems evident, that the proper abode of man will be not in the new heavens, but on the new earth. For St. John writes, " And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea."

By the new earth, and the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which St. John saw coming down from God, out of heaven, the future place of abode of the followers of Christ, of all who shall have attained unto immortality, we must not understand a merely spiritual world, or state, but literally a place of happiness, and (perhaps it may not be incorrect to say,) a substantial seat of bliss.

May we not (asks Bishop Courtenay) be permitted to conjecture that this great city shall become THE ABODE OF ALL LIVING BEINGS: not only of angelic creatures and of the redeemed from the present earth, but of all the rational and beatified inhabitants of all now existing worlds. And that its foundations shall extend, beyond the "flaming walls of the world" that now is, through spaces immeasurable by mortal man? For the New Jerusalem shall not, like the old, occupy a small part of the earth, but rather like the Christian church, as foreseen by Isaiah, when "the earth

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shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters that cover the depths of the sea,' "it shall be co-extensive with the plain on which it stands. All abominable and condemned things shall be not without Jerusalem, yet upon the earth, like the gehenna of the Jews, where the dead and the filth of the city were consumed with fire; but beyond both, far from the Divine presence. Yet shall the immense tracts of the new earth be traversed with ease by the gloriously embodied spirits that inhabit them, for "there shall be no more sea,"-nothing, it may be, to impede the interchange of happiness and intimate communion of saints; and they, wandering where they will, even to the uttermost parts, shall still be led by the hand of God, still bask in the full splendour of "uncreated rays," still be sitting with Christ in his throne, even as he also is set down with the Father in his throne.

The philosopher may argue, upon principles merely physical, upon the blending of mind and matter, and the modifications of matter, which shall enter into the constitution of the glorified bodies, or of the earth which they shall inhabit. To such arguments Bishop Courtenay thus forcibly replies:

Yet, when we learn from Revelation, that a change shall be effected in the bodies of the saints at the last day, in which every thing that is of the earth and earthy,—the whole nature, as it would seem, of the first man, a creature of the dust-shall be rejected; and that on the same Great Day the elements shall be dissolved, the earth burned up, and the whole material heavens, including even light, apparently the purest, and most imperishable of material things, shall be utterly abolished, there is much ground for doubt whether any thing par taking of the nature of matter will be suffered to remain: if, indeed, we may not hold the abolition of all matter for certain, since "an things that are made" and "which can be shaken" will be removed at the Great Day. And perhaps nothing has been revealed concerning the future state of the blessed, which more strongly shows the spirituality of their condition, than this abolition of material light. The city sball inhabit, shall enjoy, without the aid of the solar heavens, a perpetual day:

Nor sun, nor moon they need, nor day nor night,
God is their temple, and the Lamb their light.

It is difficult to suppose that any thing resembling the emanation of material rays is intended, though such a notion is encouraged by the appearance of Christ at his transfiguration, when "his face did shine as the Sun, and his raiment was white as the light;" (Matt. c. xviii.) and without some supposition of the kind, the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem fades completely from before the eye of the imagination.

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The future existence of the blessed then will be, not in the present visible heavens;-for these, though they constitute the material throne of God, and are the stage and proper sphere of the agency of many

*So in Louth's translation.

angelic beings, are but symbols and figures of the true, and will at a destined period, pass away, and give place to new heavens; nor will it consist simply in a spiritual communion with the Father of Spirits, without any certain locality;-for men will still be embodied, and enjoying a certain corporeal proximity to Christ, after the likeness of whose glorious body they will be fashioned, having "spiritual bodies," and whether with any remnant of materiality we know not-but their future life will be ON THE NEW EARTH AND IN THE HOLY CITY.

One of the latest flights of scientific conjecture is the following, by Sir David Brewster, in his eloquent advocacy of the doctrine of "More Worlds than One," arguing for their peopling, as "the Abodes of the Blest: "

Man, in his future state of existence, is to consist, as at present, of a spiritual nature residing in a corporeal frame. He must live, therefore, upon a material planet, subject to all the laws of matter, and performing functions for which a material body is indispensable. We must consequently find for the race of Adam, if not races that may have preceded him, a material home upon which they may reside, or by which they may travel, by means unknown to us, to other localities in the universe. At the present hour, the inhabitants of the earth are nearly a thousand millions; and by whatever process we may compute the numbers that have existed before the present generation, and estimate those that are yet to inherit the earth, we shall obtain a population which the habitable parts of our globe could not possibly accommodate. If there is not room, then, on our earth for the millions of millions of beings who have lived and died upon its surface, and who may yet live and die during the period fixed for its occupation by man, we can scarcely doubt that their future abode must be on some of the primary or secondary planets of the solar system, whose inhabitants have ceased to exist like those on the earth, or upon planets in our own or in other systems which have been in a state of preparation, as our earth was, for the advent of intellectual life.

Adversaria.

* STUDY OF THE BIBLE.

How utterly impossible it would be in the manhood of the world, to imagine any other instructor of mankind—than the Bible. And for that reason, every day makes it more and more evident that the thorough study of the Bible, the investigation of what it teaches and what it does not teach, the determination of the limits of what we mean by its inspiration, the determination of the degree of authority to be ascribed to the different books, if any degrees are to be admitted, must take the lead of all other studies. He is guilty of high treason against the faith who fears the result of any investigation, whether philosophical, or scientific, or historical. And therefore nothing should be more welcome than the extension of knowledge of any and of every kind-for every increase in our accumulations of knowledge throws fresh light upon the real problems of the day. If geology proves to us that we must not interpret the first chapters of Genesis literally; if historical investigation shall show us that inspiration, however it may protect the doctrine, yet was not empowered to protect the narrative of the inspired writers from occasional inaccuracy; if careful criticism shall prove that there have been occasionally interpolations and forgeries in that Book, as in many others; the results should still be welcome. Even the mistakes of careful and reverent students are more valuable now than truth held in unthinking acquiescence. The substance of the teaching which we derive from the Bible will not really be affected by anything of this sort; while its hold upon the minds of believers, and its power to stir the depths of the spirit of man, however much weakened at first, must be immeasurably strengthened in the end, by clearing away blunders which may have been fastened on it by human interpretation.

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Though the study of the Bible must be for the present and for some time the centre of all studies, there is meanwhile no study of whatever kind which will not have its share in the general effect. At this time, in the maturity of mankind, as with man in the maturity of his powers, the great lever which moves the world is knowledge, the great force is the intellect. St. Paul has told * For these two extracts the editor is indebted to Essays and Reviews.