here will be a speedy end of all thy griefs and sorrows; they will be presently swallowed up in an absolute plenitude and fulness of joy. There is already an end put to thy tormenting cares and fears, for what object can remain to thee of a rational fear, when once upon grounds, such as shake not under thee, thou art reconciled to death?

Oh! the transports of joy that do now most rationally result from this state of the case, when there is nothing left, lying between the dislodging soul and the glorious unseen world, but only the dark passage of death; and that so little formidable, considering who hath the keys of the one, and the other. How reasonable is it, upon the account of somewhat common herein to the Redeemer and the redeemed (although everything be not), to take up the following words, that so plainly belong to this very case: "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope: for thou wilt not leave my soul in sheol or hades"-thou wilt not forsake or abandon it in that wide world-"neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt shew me the path of life; the path that leads unto that presence of thine, where is fulness of joy, and to those pleasures which are at thy right hand, or in thy power, and which are for evermore, and shall never admit either of end or diminution" (Psalm xvi. 9-11).

Now, what do we mean to let our souls hang in doubt? why do we not drive things for them to an issue, and put them into those same safe hands that hold these keys; absolutely resign, devote, entrust, and subject them to Him, get them bound up in the bundle of life, so adjoin and unite them to Him (not doubting but as we give them up, He will, and doth, in that instant, take hold of them and receive them into union with Himself) as that we may assure our hearts, that because He lives, we shall live also? Thus the ground of our hope becomes sure, and of that joy which springs from such an hope.

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Our life, we may now say, is hid with Christ in God, even though we are in ourselves dead or dying creatures (Col. iii. 3). Yea, Christ is our life, and when He, who is our life, shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory. He hath assured us, that because He is the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in Him, though he were dead, shall yet live; and that whosoever lives, and believes in Him, hath thereby a life already begun in Him, in respect whereof he shall never die (John xi. 25, 26). What now can be surer than this? So far we are at a certainty, upon the included supposition, i. e., that we believe in Him.

What should now hinder our

And what now remains to be ascertained? What? Only our own intervening death. We must, it is true, be absent from these bodies, or we cannot, as we would, be present with the Lord. And is that all? Can anything now be more certain than that? O happy state of our case! How should our hearts spring and leap for joy, that our affairs are brought into this posture! that in order to our perfect blessedness, nothing is further wanting but to die! and that the certainty of death completes our assurance of it! breaking forth into the most joyful thanksgivings, that it is so little doubtful we shall die! that we are in no danger of a terrestrial immortality! and that the only thing that it remained we should be assured of, is so very sure! that we are sure it is not in the power of all this world to keep us always in it! that the most spiteful enemy we have in all the world cannot do us that spite-to keep us from dying! How gloriously may good men triumph over the impotent malice of their most mischievous enemies, viz., that the greatest mischief, even in their own account, that it can ever be in their power to do them, is to put it out of their own power ever to hurt them more, for they now go quite out of their reach! They can, being permitted, kill the body, and after that (Luke xii. 4) have no more that they can do. What a remarkable, signifi

cant "after that" is this! What a defiance doth it import of the utmost effort of human power and spite, that here it terminates; it is now come to its ne plus ultra!

A Plurality of Worlds.

[Fontenelle published his famous essay in 1686, and this discourse of Howe appeared in 1699. Whether the English divine was acquainted with the speculations of the French philosopher we do not know; but to those of our readers who have perused the recent discussions of Whewell, Brewster, and other distinguished astronomers, it will be interesting to find the germ of so many arguments in the page of one who derived his science from Boyle, and his religious convictions from the Bible.]

Let us further consider the inexpressible numerousness of the other world's inhabitants, with the excellencies wherein they shine, and the orders they are ranked into, and how unlikely is it that holy souls that go thither should want employment. Great concourse and multitudes of people make places of business in this world, and must much more do so where creatures of the most spiritual and active natures must be supposed to have their residence. Scripture speaks of "myriads" (which we read "an innumerable company") of angels, besides all "the spirits of just men" (Heb. xii.), who are sometimes said to be more than any one could number (Rev. vii.) And when we are told of many heavens, above all which our Lord Jesus is said to have ascended; are all those heavens only empty solitudes-uninhabited glorious deserts? When we find how full of vitality this base earth of ours is, how replenished with living creatures, not only on the surface, but within it; how unreasonable is it to suppose the nobler parts of the universe to be less peopled with inhabitants of proportionable spiritu

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ality, activity, liveliness, and vigour to the several regions, which, the remoter they are from dull earth, must be supposed still the finer, and apt to afford fit and suitable habitations to such creatures? Whether we suppose pure, unclothed spirits to be the natives in all those heavens, all comprehended under the one name of angels, or whether, as some think of all created spirits, that they have all vital union with some or other vehicles, etherial or celestial, more or less fine and pure, as the region is to which they belong, having gradually associated unto them the spirits of holy men gone from us, which are said to be loáyyeλo, angels' fellows (Luke xx. 36), it is indifferent to our purpose.

Let us only consider them all as intelligent spiritual beings, full of holy light, life, active power, and love to their common Lord, and one another. And can we imagine their state to be a state of torpid silence, idleness, and inactivity, or that they have not much higher and nobler work to do there, than they can have in such a world as this, or in such bodies as here they lug to and fro?

And the Scriptures are not altogether silent concerning the distinct orders of those glorious creatures that inhabit all the heavens, and which this upper hades must be understood to contain. Though it hath not provided to gratify any one's curiosity, so far as to give us particular accounts of their differences and distinctions; and though we are not warranted to believe such conjectures concerning them, as we find in the supposititious Dionysius's "Celestial Hierarchy," or much less the idler dreams of Valentinus and the Gnostics about their Eons, with divers more such fictions; yet we are not to neglect what God hath expressly told us, viz., that giving us some account of the creation, in the Hades, or the invisible part of it, there are thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, angels

and elsewhere archangels, authorities (Col. i. 16, with 1 Pet. iii. 21) which being terms that import order and govern

ment, can scarce allow us not to conceive that, of all those numberless multitudes of glorious creatures that replenish and people those spacious regions of light and bliss, there are none who belong not to some or other of those principalities and dominions.

Whence, therefore, nothing is more obvious than to conceive, that whosoever is adjoined to them, ascending out of our world, presently hath his station assigned him, is made to know his post, and how he is to be employed, in the service and adoration of the sovereign Lord of all, and in paying the most regular homage to the throne of God and the Lamb. It being still to be remembered, that God is not worshipped there, or here, as though He needed anything, since He "gives to all breath and being and all things" (Acts xvii.); but that the felicity of His most excellent creatures doth in great part consist in acting perpetually according to the dictate of a just and right mind, and that therefore they take highest pleasure in prostration, in casting down their crowns, in shrinking even into nothing, before the original, eternal, subsistent Being, that He may be owned as the All in All, because they follow herein a most satisfied judgment, and express it when they say, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Rev. iv. 11); and, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive riches, and wisdom, and strength," &c. (Rev. v. 12).

And they that rest not night nor day from such high and glorious employments, have they nothing to do? Or will we say or think, because we see not how the heavenly potentates lead on their bright legions, to present themselves before the throne, to tender their obeisance, or receive commands and despatches to this or that far remote dynasty, or, suppose, to such and such a mighty star-(whereof there are so numberless myriads; and why should we suppose them not replenished