THE FAMILY ON EARTH AND IN

HEAVEN

Lo! at length the True Light, - light for every man born into the world; kindling the faces of them that receive it, till they become the sons of God.

No longer is the dwelling of Eternal Life too bright above, and the perishable world too dark below. Thou hast made one family, there and here; one living communion of seen and unseen. CANTICLES.

Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

JESUS.

I

THINK we do not begin to realize as we ought what ministries cluster round our life, to aid us in being what we may be, — angels, angels, every one, thick about us every day, bearing us in their hands, and lifting us up when we are fallen. Their faces gladden us when we do well, and grow very sad at us when we sin. Ay, and in some way

those that we think of and speak of as in heaven love us still with all the old love of earth and all the new love of heaven together. So, because they love us still, we are still one, our souls are in theirs and they in ours. We touch hands in spirit,

and the light that is not the light of the sun covers

and enfolds us all.

ROBERT COllyer.

MAN, in the great plan of Providence, is not

transferred from one sphere of being into another. Rather is he brought into conscious relations to a higher and yet higher sphere, by the successive development of his original powers. ... The spiritual world is not a realm far off in space, into which we shall be introduced by the event of death. Rather is it that order of being of which we are to have cognizance by the powers that already wait within us, and death will not so much remove us, as remove from us the obstructions that closed us in from its unseen illuminations. ... Was the spot where the patriarch slept indeed more holy than other places, and was the bush of Moses the only symbol of angelic ministrations? Or rather could we see as they saw, would not every spot be holy, and all nature seem aglow with those activities which run from the spiritual

world into the natural? Was the Saviour of men an example in temptation only, or was he not also our example in victory, revealing unto us those heavenly auxiliaries that work with us and strengthen us as we toil up the hill of Difficulty toward the regions of Peace? And on the mount of transfiguration, was the change in him, so that he appeared as never before, or was it in his disciples, so that they saw him as he always had been, living in two worlds, walking on the earth, and yet "the son of man who is in heaven," talking with men, yet holding converse with the skies?

Man could not be the subject of such revelations unless already he lived within the precincts of the mystic world, and had a faculty within him to be acted upon by its essential laws. These concealments of matter which engird us are therefore but frail walls that shut us in, which, falling down, give us sight of those higher skies that arch over us, and those brighter fields that lie around us trodden by the feet of angels, and over which breathe the airs of celestial love.

EDMUND H. SEARS.

THERE
HERE are many sayings of Jesus, and inci-

dents in his life, which imply the intimate communion of the dead with the living. One of the most striking features of his life is the fre

quency and nearness of his converse with the spiritual world. He never speaks of angels and just men made perfect as if there were a weary distance to be crossed from them to us or from us to them. They are often with him, at his birth, in his temptation, and in his agony; they come uncalled, they watch by his sepulchre, and wait on his ascension. The spirits of the long-dead talk with him on the mountain. His voice to the widow's son, his powerful word at the tomb of Lazarus, seem addressed to souls not afar off, but within call, near the scenes from which they had gone, and among the friends who thought them lost forever. He promises also his own spiritual presence with his followers, when he shall no longer be visible to the outward eye.

ANDREW P. PEABODY.

I

LOVE to look on the transfiguration, and on similar scenes in our Saviour's pilgrimage, as but revelations, manifestations of the spiritual life, which in numberless forms perpetually surrounds us. Heaven, I believe, is not afar off, but unspeakably near, compassing our homes, encircling our daily ways. There is no doubt constantly about us a cloud of unseen spirits, God encamp around our dwellings, strains of

the hosts of