down on a record like this? God, my friends, by his Son Jesus Christ lifts up even this burden. He lifts it up in the assurance that they are not dead, though their mortal frames are dissolved; that they are not silent, though by our dull ears their voices are unheard. They praise him still, though not in the faint tones of this our humble worship. Their virtues live and grow, still sacred in his care, though canonized in no human calendar. Nay, they are not only themselves immortal, but they keep alive, or create, the faith and sense of immortality in our hearts. They have made a path with their feet into the blessed land: they have filled up and bridged over with their hallowed dust the separating gulf from time into eternity. To the meditative and prayerful soul, they send back their appeal. Being dead in the body, they yet speak for truth and goodness with louder tone and more persuasive pathos than when their words fell on our outward hearing. gone, that they might awaken our virtue. gone, that they might chill and discourage our worldly lusts. They have gone, that, from their purer, spiritualized being they might sanctify our motives, and touch with a thrilling and arousing, though invisible, hand our better nature. Like the mysterious stars, though with a warmer attraction, they lift and beckon us up. The light still burns, the fountain flows, the music sounds for us.

They have

They have

Neither, then, is this final change and record in the providence of God the ground for lamentation and repining. It is rather the declaration of our native dignity as his children. It is the announcement of

our glorious destiny. It is a call to us to live worthy of that destiny, and not forfeit our heavenly birthright. It is a summons to us to gird up our loins, trim our lamps, watch, and be ready.

314

DISCOURSE XXVIII.

ETERNAL LIFE.

John vi. 54.- WHOSO EATETH MY FLESH, AND DRINKETH MY BLOOD, HATH ETERNAL LIFE.

1 John v. 13. THAT YE MAY KNOW THAT YE HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.

Ir has been said, that the single word eternity could not be justly pronounced in a congregation of persons, without its sensibly affecting them; the human soul having a native attraction to its vast and solemn significance. It first instantly lifts the mind to God, translates it from this fleeting scene to a calm and solid state beyond the waves of earthly tumult, shaken no more by human passions than the upper air and the silent stars are by the dust and turmoil of the earth. Yet eternal life is not in the Scriptures limited to God as an incommunicable attribute or essence, nor to the angels even as a possession shut up within the walls of heaven; but is spoken of as something that may be conveyed to and shared with men.

What, then, is this eternal life which we are called to "lay hold on"? To most persons, the chief meaning of eternal seems to be continuance without end, simply lasting through a limitless succes

But surely it is not be

sion of seasons and times. cause God has lived, or is to live, through such a succession; because he has passed over an immense series of ages, and sees other huge intervals stretching before him, that he is eternal. No such accumulation of years or centuries could make eternity. It is not made up of time. The very idea of time is suggested by what is material, changeful, and perishing. On precisely the opposite account, God is eternal, because his life is not measured by days or years, but "a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years." He lives in "the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity."

So, again, we believe that, to the blessed spirits before Him, there is no such change as our day and night, summer and winter. Our measures of existence do not hold with them. Heaven is an eternal morning; heaven is an unfading spring. Birth and death, outward growth and decay, waxing and waning moons, mark not that glorious life, nor break that peaceful, soul-felt progress. Should we reach that holy rest, we shall need no more the hands of the clock, or the shadows on the dial-plate, to mark the divisions and periods of our existence. shall live, not the life of mere time, but of eternity. What, then, the question again arises, is this life of eternity, if it be not simply a life ever extending in unlimited degrees? I answer that eternal life is the life of the spiritual nature, the life of sentiment and affection, of moral and religious principle. Indeed, in the New Testament, many phrases might equally well be translated either eternal or spiritual life;

We

as, for example, "No murderer hath eternal life,” hath spiritual, holy, religious, divine life, “abiding in him." No murderer hath the life of love, of God, of duty, abiding in him. This evidently is the meaning. It is remarkable how often eternal life is spoken of in the present tense.

Moreover, that eternal life is not simply enduring, or literally and only everlasting life, is plain, because we never speak of the devil and his angels as having eternal life, though it is supposed in our theology they have a life that endures through all the future, contemporaneously with that of Divinity and seraph. The bad surely do not live the eternal life, though they have before them the same unbounded prospect of existence with the good. Theirs is a state of eternal or spiritual death. When the good affections shall be waked up in them towards God and man, when a pure rectitude shall have become their law, and disinterested desires for purity and peace their inspiration, then only will they have that eternal life. No otherwise could they have it, though countless æons of duration should circle over their heads, till the sun's lamp were burned out, and every measure and instrument of time were broken. Eternal life in God is the life of absolute goodness, purity, rectitude, and truth. Eternal life in man is the life of justice and love, of fidelity in all his relations. It is a right, holy, and becoming life. There is thus deeper meaning than is commonly suspected in that ancient sentence of the Bible, "Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the gray hair to