Paradise and Heaven. 207 the commencement of the Millennium, the body being restored to the soul, it lives and reigns with Christ, on the present earth, with greater glory still; and that, in the third place, having, at the expiration of the thousand years of triumph, been put upon its trial, and solemnly "judged out of the things written in the books," and ascertained to be "found written in the Book of Life," it enters upon its final and eternal condition. Thus are two intermediate states, possibly of many thousand years' duration, interposed between the present world, and that promised in the closing pages of the Divine revelation. The second of these supposed intermediate states it is thought will be preceded by a general conversion of the Jews, and the resurrection of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, and all the saints without exception, of whom those who are the seed of Abraham shall occupy the land of Israel, enjoying the visible presence and personal government of the Lord Jesus Christ. Persuaded that these anticipations will not be realized, the Bishop has endeavoured to show that all the Divine promises to Abraham and his seed shall be fulfilled in a heavenly Canaan, after the present heaven and earth have passed away. This interpretation of the prophecy he would now so far retract, as to admit that a conversion of the Jewish people to the Christian faith, and their consequent restoration to the land whence they have been banished, will precede the Millennium: a retraction, however, in no wise affecting the main positions, that "it is appointed unto men once to die; and after that-the judgment," and that not until the judgment can they, unless in rare and exceptional cases, "enter into the Life Eternal." PARADISE AND HEAVEN. Paradise," writes Dr. Hales, "is the region appropriated to good souls." The learned Parkhurst observes, that "Paradise is the blessed state of faithful souls between death and the resurrection. Such is the sense of Paradise in the New Testament.' Dr. Whitby remarks-"Our Saviour must have used the word Paradise in the same sense in which the Jews understood it, the place of happiness into which pious souls, when separated from the body, are immediately received." And Bishop Horsley says: "Of this place (Paradise,) we know little except to those who die in the Lord it is a place of comfort and rest; not a Paradise of eternal sleep and senselessness, but a place of happy rest and tranquil hope. "To him that overcometh," our Lord declareth by St. John, "I will give to eat of the tree of life that groweth in the midst of the Paradise of God." This, (says Bishop Courtenay,) is evidently come a promise of a reward after the General Resurrection,* when the redeemed shall be permitted to eat of the precious fruit mentioned in the last chapter of the Apocalypse. The same place of bliss was beheld in vision by St. Paul, who was "caught up into Paradise," and there heard unutterable words. Into the same place, the believing robbert was probably admitted as soon as Jesus himself entered it. But notwithstanding the weight due to the expression, "To-day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise," it may be questioned whether our Lord entered Paradise before his ascension, or at the earliest before his resurrection. For was He in the place to which St. Paul was caught up," in a region belonging to those new heavens which are eventually to down from God,"-at the very time of his descent into Hades? Was he,-was his human soul,-at once above earth and below it, of whom St. Paul says that "he who ascended first descended into the lower parts of the earth"? This seems improbable; and Bishop Courtenay considers, that if a strict interpretation of the expression "to-day" be contended for, there is no alternative but to place Paradise below, in Hades, into which our Lord's human soul most certainly descended. The Bishop admits the inconvenience of the alternative; and adds, "Paradise is probably above, and was entered by our Lord at his ascension. The question is certainly obscure; but whatever may be understood by Paradise, it can never be shown that Christians in general have a better claim to be admitted to the privilege of the robber,† than they have to be translated or transfigured with Enoch, Elijah, and Moses." That Paradise is not Heaven appears from this fact-that throughout the Scriptures, from the beautiful Prayer of Solomon, at the consecration of the Temple, "Hear Thou in Heaven, Thy dwelling-place:" to the prayer of our Saviour Himself, "Our Father, which art in Heaven;" heaven is pointed out as peculiarly God's throne. Further, we are informed that "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is now in heaven." (John iii. 13.) "David is not ascended into heaven." (Acts ii. 34.) Again, after our Saviour's resurrection, when He appeared unto Mary, His words were, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father," He had been in Paradise, but had not yet ascended to God. 66 * For the other rewards for those who overcome, are not immediately consequent on death. The departed saints have not yet received power over the nations,"-to break them in pieces at the end". nor attained that consummate glory of "sitting with Christ on his throne." Not thief, but robber, or bandit, such as carry on their wicked trade in Italy and Spain at the present day. The Soul's Immortality. 209 HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. In an able tract on Futurity, written by Mr. W. Merry, of Berkshire, (and which, fortunately for the spiritual interests of its readers, has had an extensive circulation,) the writer takes a view of the State of the Soul after Death, differing from that of Bishop ourtenay. To the inquiry of unspeakable interest-What becomes of man's spirit when no longer animating his mortal frame, the writer of the above tract replies: "The Spirit lives! Abraham and his descendants who had died and were buried, still lived; God was still their God, and so declared to be because He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Mr. Merry's view of Job's declaration altogether differs from that of Dr. Courtenay. "How emphatically," (says the former,) "does Job, 1500 years before our Saviour appeared on earth, express his faith not only in the immortality of his spirit, but in the resurrection of his body." The value of the words, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," et seq. is weighty indeed, when we read in an earlier chapter, (Job i. 8,) the character of Job in God's sight. "And the Lord said, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil." Dr. Hammond has thus briefly expressed the sum of human knowledge upon this vital question: "The souls of the just are already in the hands of God, and it is certain that their bodies will be raised, and again united to them by his Almighty power." Although we owe to Revelation the reality of this solemn fact, it was believed in heathen philosophy before our Saviour's appearance on earth. Notwithstanding there exist no ancient writings approaching, even by many hundred years, the antiquity of the Bible, we know that 500 years previously, down almost to the commencement of the Christian era, that is, from the age of Socrates to that of Cicero, (omitting all uncertain mention of Pythagoras, a century earlier,) the immortality of the soul, and its happiness or misery after death, were reasoned upon and maintained. Socrates, when condemned to death by the thirty tyrants of Athens, for "not acknowledging the gods, which the state acknowledged," and for "introducing new divinities," passed his last moments in calm and confident argument with his friends, respecting the nature of the new and immortal existence about to open to him. "I should be inexcusable," he observed, "in despising death, if I were not persuaded that it will conduct me into the society of great and good men;" and, in reply to the question of his friend Crito, as to his burial, he says, "Is it not strange, that after all that I have said to convince you, that I am going to the society of the happy, that Crito still thinks that this P body, which will soon be a lifeless corpse, is Socrates? Let him dispose of my body as he pleases, but let him not mourn over it as if it were Socrates." So likewise, and in the same strain, does Cicero speak of death, as the glorious day when he shall go into the great assembly of spirits, and shall be gathered to the best and bravest of mankind who have gone before him. Mr. Merry adds: That the human mind should thus have arrived by philosophical deduction, assisted probably by tradition, however faint and remote, gathered from the Egyptians, and running back to Patriarchal origin, is not here brought forward as an evidence of truth; but as showing how gratefully sensible we should be, of the inestimable advantage enjoyed by the Christian over the Heathen world. That prospect of futurity, which was dimly perceived, and by the most learned only, the master-minds of the Grecian and Roman empires, is in our own day brought home with joyful certainty, to the cottage-door of the humblest and the poorest. Their philosophy which Plato, and after him, Cicero, define to be "Scientia rerum Divinarum et humanarum cum causis," was a wellconceived and pleasing hypothesis; but vouchsafes to us immutable truths, established on the sure evidence of the Bible, and which are open to all who have ears to hear, the unlearned and the learned. If we do not recognize this Platonic doctrine, what becomes of the dictum which our polished Essayist has put into the mouth of the noble Roman, in the classic play of Cato: It must be so-Plato, thou reason'st well Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass? If there's a Power above (And that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works) He must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy.-Addison. THAT MAN MUST BE IMMORTAL. Bishop Courtenay, in his able work on The Future States, considers, at some length, the opinion that Man must be immortal, drawn from the wonderful skill and care shown in his structure. He argues, that for all we know, these contrivances may be, in themselves, as important as the end-human existence and wel That Man must be Immortal. 211 fare; and that the importance of the end may depend on its being effected by means of such contrivances. Next, that if human existence were itself, and without reference to the means, the highest of all ends, the analogy of inferior nature shows that even the greatest things are perishable and further, that if man be destined, through the excellence of his nature, for perpetuity, the species, not all the individuals of the species, will continue: and while there are, moreover, considerable difficulties in the way of the supposition, that the species would attain a higher degree of perfection in a disembodied state than in the present world. And, finally, that nearly equal solicitude has been manifested by the Creator in providing for the welfare of the inferior creation; and this, notwithstanding that man is at the head of that creation, and is the sole creature capable of comprehending and admiring the words of God, and of recognizing the Maker with gratitude and veneration,-not with a view, solely or chiefly, to the gratification of the human race. The beautiful diversity of structures, and of other contrivances, which we find actually to prevail in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, is indeed calculated to excite pleasure and wonder in the minds of all, gratitude and veneration in those whose thoughts ascend to the First Cause; but it would be inconsistent with those very feelings so to limit the Creator's bounty and contract the dimensions of the scheme of nature;-as unreasonable as to suppose that the stars were set in heaven only to give light to our globe, or display to us the extent of creative power. If all, or the greater part of the arguments (continues the Bishop,) which have been here employed, in proof of the dependence and connexior of mind on organized matter, and on animal life, be correct, there arises, in the opinion of the writer, a very strong presumption that the death of the body will cause a cessation of all the activity of the mind, by way of natural consequence; to continue for ever, unless the Creator should interfere; and restore, by a fresh exertion of His power, either the soul alone, or the soul and body together. In the next Book-"Moral Evidence of a Future Life "-Dr. Courtenay argues that the light of the moral faculties of man, appearing to be more immediately derived from a celestial source than any other which the Father of Lights has conferred on us, seem peculiarly calculated to assist in the investigation of the more abstruse and mysterious parts of His designs; and may reveal to our hopes, though dimly and doubtfully at best, things beyond the reach of mere intellect; but which Revelation alone can fully disclose. When, by the aid of these faculties, we come to understand, in some degree, the true moral condition of man; and his relations to God, not as a Maker only, but as a Moral Governor, who interferes with all events, in the history both of nations and |