will be found to contain a direct and posi tive assertion of the doctrine we have laid down. "We must all appear," says the apostle, "before the judgment-seat of Christ." And this is the end for which all must appear before that awful tribunal, namely, "That every one may receive the things in the body, according to that he hath done, whether good or bad *;” that is to say, that every one may receive in his body such things as shall be analogous to the quality of his deeds, whether good or bad, good things in the body, if his

* Ta dia to owμalos, - not ill rendered by the Vulgate propria corporis. But this rendering, though the Latin words, rightly understood, convey the true sense of the Greek, has given occasion, through a misapprehension of the true force of the word propria, to those paraphrastic renderings which we find in our English Bible, and in many other modern translations; which entirely conceal the particular interest the body hath in this passage. To the same misapprehension of the true sense of the Vulgate, we owe, as I suspect, a various reading of the Greek text ιδια for τα δια, which appears in the Complutensian and some old editions; and is very injudiciously approved by Grotius, and by Mills, if I understand him right; though it has not the authority of a single Greek manuscript or the decided authority of any one of the Greek fathers to support it. The Syriac renders the true sense of the Greek, τα δια τε σωματοs, with precision and without ambiguity.

deeds have been good; bad things, if bad. Thus the end for which all are destined to appear before the judgment-seat of Christ is declared by the apostle to be this, — that every individual may be rewarded with corporal enjoyment, or punished with corporal pain, according as his behaviour in this life shall have been found to have been generally good or bad, upon an exact account taken of his good and evil deeds.

What those external enjoyments will be which will make a portion of our future bliss-in what particulars they will consist, we are not informed; probably for this reason, because our faculties, in their present imperfect and debased state, the sąd consequence of Adam's fall, are not capable of receiving the information. And yet we are not left destitute of some general knowledge, of no inconsiderable importance.

It is explicitly revealed to us, that these joys will be exquisite in a degree of which, in our present state, we have neither sense nor apprehension. «Eye hath not seen,

nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, such good things as God hath prepared for them that love him." Numberless and ravishing are the beauties which the mortal eye beholds in the various works of creation and of art! Elegant and of endless variety the entertainments which are provided for the ear,

whether it delight to listen to the sober narratives of history, or the wild fictions of romance, whether it hearken to the grave lessons of the moralist, to the abstruse demonstrations of science, the round periods of eloquence, the sprightly flourishes of rhetoric, the smooth numbers and bold flights of poetry, or catch the enchanting sounds of harmony-that poetry which sings in its inspired strains the wonders of creating power and redeeming love that harmony which fans the pure flame of devotion, and wafts our praises upon its swelling notes up to the eternal throne of God! Infinite is the multitude of pleasurable forms which Fancy's own creation can at will call forth: But in all this inexhaustible treasure of external gratifications with which this present world is stored,

amidst all the objects which move the senses with pleasure, and fill the admiring soul with rapture and delight,nothing is to be found which may convey to our present faculties so much as a remote conception of those transporting scenes which the better world in which they shall be placed. shall hereafter present to the children of God's love.

It is farther revealed to us, that these future enjoyments of the body will be widely different in kind from the pleasures which in our present state result even from the most innocent and lawful gratifications of the corporal appetites. "In the resurrection they neither marry," saith our Lord,

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nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels of God in heaven."

But this is not all: Another circum-' stance is revealed to us, which opens to our hope so high a prospect as must fill the pious soul no less with wonder than with love. It is plainly intimated, that the good things which the righteous will receive in their bodies will be the same in

kind,

far inferior, doubtless, in degree, —but the same they will be in kind, which are enjoyed by the human nature of our Lord, in its present state of exaltation at the right hand of God. It is revealed to us, that our capacity of receiving the good things prepared for us will be the effect of a change to be wrought in our bodies at Christ's second coming, by which they will be transformed into the likeness of the glorified body of our Lord. "The first man," saith St. Paul," was of the earth, moulded of the clay; the second man is the Lord from heaven." "And as we have borne the image of the man of clay, we shall also bear the image of the man in heaven." And in another place, "We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself." This change the same apostle in another place calls "the redemption of the body;" and he speaks of it as "the adoption" for which we wait. The apostle St. John, in the former part of the discourse from which my