simultaneously with the transformation of his saints, will, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, decompose, and transmute it into a crystal palace of magnificent dimensions—of unfading beauty and grandeur-the everlasting habitation of his ransomed people, and fling to an infinite distance, and into eternal darkness, the adversaries of his throne and government. So testifies the Holy Spirit.

As to its practicability, we need only ask, Who can limit the power of the Almighty? He that commanded darkness to bring forth light, and though himself all Spirit, willed matter into being, so that the material heavens and earth "were not made of things previously existing," or that do now appear, certainly can do all things he pleases, and will do all that he has promised. "I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and I create evil. I the Lord do all these things." Is. xlv. 7.

But we have already proved that there is a spiritual universe, and our present essay is not again to prove it, nor to contrast it with the material; nor aim we at the lineal demarkation or separation of the spiritual from the physical realms of creation. We find these most clearly defined in the human constitution.

"The flesh to worms and dust allied;

The soul immortal and divine."

Man is a miniature universe in himself. He has the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, faithfully represented in his body. In his inner man are found the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual, embodied and developed. Creator and creature are manifested in human nature; and hence, man is a species of creation more sui generis, more God-like, than any other known to revelation or human experience. He was made not "a little lower than the angels," but, for a little time, lower than they, and he will be crowned with glory and honor, through the incarnation and glorification of "the word that was in the beginning with God, and that was God;” for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Hence, while the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets of the olden time, he becomes the Holy Guest in the Spiritual temple-the church of the Lord Jesus. Thus, too, the word of God is but a specific embodiment of the Holy Spirit. It is veiled spirit, or limned grace; and hence, the Spirit works only through the word upon the understanding, the conscience, and the heart. It suggested to prophets, apostles, and the ancient evangelists, in human terms, or in visions and dreams, the mind and will of God to man.

We must either picture to the eye, or address to the ear, the ideas, the sentiments, or the volitions of the Holy Spirit. By the

machinery of language, presented either to the eye or the ear, we communicate our views and desires to God, and he communicates to us his mind and will by the word of his Spirit. We speak to God in words, and he speaks to us by his word. In this way the currency of our intercommunications, in all things supernatural and spiritual, is the wind, or its embodiment in signs or sounds, alike adapted to the outward and to the inward ear.

Indeed, all spiritual communications, by all celestial spirits communicated to man, are through the medium of human speech, or through signs tantamount to them. Thus the Spirit said to Philip the Evangelist, "join thyself to the chariot" of the Ethiopian grandee. Their conversation was upon words and with words, and by these was the officer illumined, converted, and united to the body of Christ.

Words are essentially wind, and formally they are but mere modifications of it. It is not, therefore, strange, that the word that denotes spirit, is, in the original tongues, the same as that which denotes wind. And beautifully apposite to this is the fact, that the Great Teacher explained to a Jewish ruler the doctrine of Spiritual regeneration by images taken from the wind. Literally he says, "The Spirit breathes where he pleases, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes. So is every one born of the Spirit."

The entrance of air into the human lungs, communicates animal life, or puts the animal machinery into motion. The entrance of the word-the breath of the Almighty into the human heart-imparts Spiritual life, and creates us anew, or puts into motion, Godward, the moral feelings of our nature. The Spirit of God, by his breath or word, is thus to the kingdom of grace, what the air is to the kingdom of nature.

Thus stand we upon one of the lines of the spiritual universe, which, in its earthly and temporal province, lays along the coasts of human speech; and though invisible, as the air to the eye, is, nevertheless, as real and as well defined to the eye of faith, as was the promised land, Horeb, or Zion, to the eye of sense.

Elihu has said, "The hand of the Lord has made me. The breath of the Almighty has given me life;" and as truly he has said, "The Spirit of God is in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding." If the Roman adage be true, and all Christendom admits it and re-enacts it-facit per alterum per se-he does himself what he does by his agent; or if a man does what the sword in his hand does, the Spirit of God does in us, with us, and by

us, whatever his word does. There is, in this department of the Spiritual Universe, no separation of these two. If the Holy Spirit, and the Spiritual Universe, cannot be seen by the natural eye, they can be realized and enjoyed by the ear or the eye of faith, which perceives and trembles at the voice or word of the Lord. They are as much realities as the sun, moon and stars-as the everlasting hills and mountains of earth. They are as palpable to the spiritual sense as matter, in its grossest forms, is to the eye or to the hand. Who ever saw heat in a sunbeam, or cold in an iceberg? Who ever heard sweetness in honey, or bitter in wormwood? Who ever tasted light by day, or darkness by night? But do they not exist? Is there no light, no darkness, no bitter, no sweet, no heat, no cold, because they are unrecognized by those destitute of these senses? So, without revelation and without the Word and Spirit of God, there is neither faith nor hope, there is neither peace nor joy in God, any more than if the aphorism of the fool was true-"There is no God."

Faith, like a telescope, reveals worlds above-suns and moons unseen, unknown without it. It sees Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. It also sees Dives in the flaming abyss, and hears him call on Abraham for a drop of water to cool his parched tongue.

The Indian, in the far off wilderness, not enlightened by our science and our experience, could as soon, of himself, unaided and untaught by our science and learning, discover and reveal to his fellows the mysteries of a telegraphic dispatch, or the wonders of boiling water in a steamship on the Atlantic, as many of our well bred and finely polished Parisian or Bostonian cits could realize the objects of Christian faith and hope—the ineffable grandeur of eternal life, or the appalling horror of “an everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power."

Nor

Leviathan, huge monster as he is, at the bottom of the ocean could as soon discover a new comet in the milky way, or a burning mountain in one of the moons of Sirius, as many of our fellowcitizens could discover that there is a resurrection to eternal lifethe portion of them that fear God and keep his commandments, through the mediation and sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth. could all the thunders of Sinai, or the seven thunders of John in Patmos, awaken millions of our cotemporaries to the awful, fearful, glorious facts of Christ's gospel. But still, all this and much more being conceded, it no more disproves the fearful and glorious realities of a spiritual universe, or the faith and hope of the Christian, than does the blindness of a bat at noon, prove that there is no sun, SERIES IV.-VOL. I.

41*

or the deafness of a mute, that there is no thunder in heaven nor melody in the human voice.

It is in beautiful harmony with these awful utterances, that all the great powers of nature and of the universe, discernible either to sense or reason, are as simple, as recondite, and yet as appreciable, as those of the Christian faith and of the spiritual universe. What order, beauty, happiness, result from the antagonism of the two great tendencies of the worlds around us, called centrifugal and centripetal. Day and night, spring and autumn, summer and winter, with their countless influences and tendencies, flow as naturally, as simply, as the circulation of the blood through the contractions and dilations of the heart--the unavoidable consequences of this great radical, immutable, original organic law of God, impressed and engraven on all the atoms of all the worlds above, below, and around us, which he has launched into space, and poised upon nothing but his own awful, fearful, glorious FIAT!

Standing here on this holy mount, we see Moses, Elijah and Jesus, communing on the deep counsels of Jehovah. Here the mysteries of nature, of providence, and of redemption, stand in awful grandeur, and yet in beautiful symmetry and simplicity, before our minds. I never saw the questions of the schools about liberty and necessity, free agency and accountability, praise and blame, reward and punishment, so beautifully simplified and adjusted, as at this stand-point on the holy mount of heaven-illumined vision.

In one great enunciation God has made the freedom of the whole universe, material and spiritual, spring from an insuperable necessity. The spheres cannot but move, and yet they move freely-day and night, seed time and harvest, cannot but succeed, and yet they succeed without a jar, a discord, or an insubordinate tendency. Animated nature springs into life necessarily and cheerfully. It cannot but breathe and move, and yet it breathes and moves with pleasure, with choice, not as if by mere necessity.

But in mind and in spiritual ranks of intelligence, there is an intrinsic as well as an extrinsic motive power. Man has a will of his own, as angels have. This will is his great motive power. And it is the basis of all his moral beauty, grandeur and happiness. It is, however, during his minority, under the tutelage of his understanding. The eye cannot see without light, nor the will act but under the dictates of the understanding, be they true or false. But that dictate must have the semblance of good, of happiness, of truth, else it is not addressed to the reason or understanding of man, and the will, or the man must, of necessity, repudiate it. Deceiving

the understanding, therefore, on the part of an adversary, is the only means of seducing man to will or act against himself. And such is the history of the first temptation reported in the annals of man.

But as God constituted the universe that order, regularity, and happiness must follow-must be the result of its continuance under, or within the province and dominion of, that law-so has he constituted man. He, therefore, most benevolently placed man under a moral and religious law, combined in one precept. This was essen. tial to the idea of moral dignity, and of moral or spiritual happiness. Where there is no law, there can be no transgression; but there can be no obedience. And where there can be no obedience, there can be no proper sense of dignity, no rational self-respect, and no true human happiness. Human happiness is not breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, waking. This is animal happiness. Human happiness is communion with God. But communion is necessarily reciprocal. It cannot be on one side. There must be a law of intercourse with God, as of intercourse with man. That law is essential to the mutual enjoyment of the parties. The word mutual has much of heaven in it. All parties, in the relations of the uni verse, must, in order to dignity, honor, happiness, act in harmony with these relations. The terms of correspondence, intercommunication, fellowship, must be stipulated, understood, assented to, and kept sacred, in order to that high, holy and blissful intercourse and reciprocity. Hence originated law, or a rule of free, familiar, eternal intercourse and mutual enjoyment of all the parties. Hence, the first law was moral positive, and not merely moral natural. In the latter case, it could have been no condition, test or pledge of loyalty. It was morally natural to love, fear, revere, and adore God in all spiritual and moral intercourse. But a positive precept, based merely on sovereignty-a token of dependence-a guarantee of continued life and happiness--of free, full, and uninterrupted enjoyment of God, was necessary; not merely expedient, but essential alike to the glory of God and the glory of man. The reservation of one tree in Paradise, was the most simple, beautiful, and appropriate test of homage, gratitude and devotion that could, in infinite wisdom and goodness, have been devised. This reservation, regarded as not the octillionth part of a barleycorn in intrinsic worth, was the only rent which our Father Adam had to pay for the dominion of the whole earth and sea, with all their live stock and appurtenances, on a lease, renewable to himself and heirs, for ever and ever. And yet, it was made equivalent, in the benignity of God, to a rental commensurate