Here, too, enters the scientific law of continuity, giving strength to other evidences, and bearing conviction far beyond a mere possible existence hereafter. It lifts the whole question into the regions of probability. It necessitates a continuance in the unseen world, of that which is recognized, through all life, as existing in a decaying body. All this points with unmistakable distinctness, not to continuity alone, but to the existence of spirit, separate from its physical habiliments in the upper sphere.

It is the egression of spirit, then, not its extinguishment, which we call death. After its departure it still lives. It passes to the expanse of the "things not seen." Does it there exist in a place or a state? Whatever may be the immaterial essence of beings, or their abode hereafter, it is beyond all question that they must exist somewhere in the immense regions of space. But the main and most important and absorbing question is, What will be the condition of souls in the eternal Hereafter? Science, with its experimental appliances, cannot enter there, and cannot follow the ways of thought in its higher flight. All this is a region unexplored, on which theories divide and speculations are numerous and discordant.

So far as spirit and its manifestations are concerned, the great highway of knowledge has its termination in death. Then and there its sunlight fades, and its voices sink into a long, deep silence. But a softer and more beautiful radiance, and voices sweeter and more tender succeed. By the workings of Divinity in Humanity Faith is born, and becomes both a power and the portal for admission to the home of the departed. The light of science can never enter that unseen abode and be a guide for man. A Deity alone has power to lift the veil and lay open the future. To the Record, then, our whole attention must now be directed, and on it all our thoughts and hopes be concentrated. The few analogies that lie along the pathway of life may be gathered up to render aid in the work. From the known to the unknown we may reason. Dust returns to its own element: shall not spirit

also? But the deep, earnest thought of man is not satisfied with the mere suggestion of return. From the profoundest depths of desire proceeds the query, What and where is the spirit's home? Is it absorption- a return with utter loss of consciousness into the expanse of spirit a return into nothingness, a mere Nirvana? Such is not the received opinion not the theory unfolded in the word of God. The voices of prophecy, the announcements of Revelation, and the example of the Only Begotten point to a higher sphere and a better fate. Jesus died; the Anointed lives. After his death, where was the Son of God, and what his employment, until his resurrection? Did he live-live an unclothed or disembodied spirit?

The third day came. Jesus rose from the dead, and thus presented both the fact and the prophecy of a resurrection. Yet on this point few announcements were made by himself. He silenced the Sadducees by the assertion that "God is not the God of the dead but of the living." Was this a resurrection? It was at least a continued existence. He says again, "In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." An apostle, too, has said, "There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust." The same apostle in other places has given the subject a very elaborate revealment. Thus the announcement is made, the illustration given, and the witnesses have testified. But shadows still remain, and beneath them lie the What, the How, the Where-questions of absorbing interest which have furnished ground for discussion incalculable, and opinions in vast diversity. Will it be presumptuous, then, to enter into the great hall of conflict and take part in the common discussion?

"The spirit shall return unto God who gave it," but the mystery of that return still lies involved in profound obscurity. Is it left to mere conjecture? There are certainly many indications many little stars twinkling in the great vaulted expanse above, which tend to its enlightenment. The first stage of spirit in the grand Hereafter seems a disembodied

condition. On this point, however, opinions differ. It has been affirmed that there exists in every man, not only an immortal spirit, but the unformed embryonic rudiment of a spiritual body; and when death occurs, that rudimentary body, freed from its physical incumbrances, bursts into activity, assumes at once its full size, form and vigor, and becomes the future residence or vehicle of the spirit. But the Oracle above all other oracles seems to speak a different language. "God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased Him." The act of giving seems surely inconsistent with a previous possession. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," both spoken of as actually existing. "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven." The existing natural body is that of man; the spiritual body that of Jesus. Man in descent from the first man takes the image of the earthy; by the power of God through the resurrection, he takes the image of the heavenly. But in either case, it is the image only which is borne. It is a mere fancy that a complete oak exists in miniature in the small acorn. The vital element is there the living force which marvellously commands, aggregates and sets in order the different atoms of which the future oak is composed. Is this an emblem of the unseen world? Is it the mystery of fact, that human spirits, having passed from their physical tenement, receive from God the spirit-gift, which is borne into form and beauty for their future habitation?

Resurrection, then, is not the re-union of soul with an old physical body, but its entrance into a new home, or simply to "be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." But when is that new body given? Does it take a sudden leap from nothing into form and fulness at death, as some affirm, or at a far distant period in the future, when the whole world shall awake and be invested at once with the latent forces of immortality? There can scarcely be a question that Paul and some other apostles had an indistinct conception of a general resurrection which should take place suddenly at an unknown period in the future. Then all the world would

be raised at once. The event, too, was thought to be near, and was associated with a second coming of Christ on earth, when "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God." Then the dead should be raised, and the living should be changed. Some such conceptions seem to have found a lodgment in the Christian mind during the earlier years after the crucifixion.

But underneath the outward aspect there seems to run a counter-current, tending to some sort of gradual or progressive resurrection. To such a condition points the law of change in the whole scope of human knowledge. All nature is progressive. The processes of crystallization are always slow. Nothing in the animal or vegetable kingdom reaches its zenith of maturity in a moment of time. Even worldsas scientific observations render probable- with all their suns, stars, planets, and other bodies, are the work of time. All organic structures, from their inception to maturity, are absorbed in the perpetual process of growth. May it not be so with the evolution of spiritual bodies in the marvellous future? Illustrations drawn from the vegetable kingdom, showing analogies between the present and the future, point quite clearly to such a progressive work. When death occurs, spirit leaves its earthly house, a mere tented dwelling, and goes away. "God giveth it a body"-a body undeveloped, complete in its essence and its capabilities, but incipient, embryonic, requiring growth and maturity. Does not such a body follow in some measure the law of development in organic structures on the earth, from their beginning through all the stages of evolution to full maturity of being? Does spirit leap with a sudden bound from the Seen to the Unseen and pass in a moment into a new body as a completed house all swept and garnished for its reception?

Mental attainments in this world are always a growth, never rapid, never instantaneous. May not the spirit's future dwelling also be a growth? "If things eternal may be like these earthly," the law of development will stand as clear, and full

in its forces and activities in the great Unseen, as under the visible canopy of our present state of being. "Except a corn of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit"-" first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." Is there, then, a childhood of spiritual, as there is a childhood of physical bodies? Call it what we may, there seems at least to be a growth, which shall culminate at length in the full maturity of spiritual body.

Contemporaneous with the development and maturity of body, there is evidently another movement a great current of moral activities. No more shall it be said, as in "this mortal course 66 : Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry"! Entering, through the portals of the grave, upon a new and untried scene, all its surroundings of sensual life, "the world, the flesh, and the devil," are passed away. All behind it is full of memories, dark or bright, and all before it is amazement! Is it possible that such a change of surroundings, such an utter removal of physical enticements and all the allurements of flesh and sense, should not develop the beginnings of a new stage of progress, and a higher evolution of moral life - not a mere momentary new birth, but the first foot-prints and advancing steps of a real life of holiness. And is it possible that this moral evolution should not effect a permanent change of soul, gradual and effectual, in all its aptitudes and tendencies, becoming a sort of primary department in the great school of knowledge and holiness in the beautiful Hereafter?

It is a process, however, which no man can verify by scientific methods. It lies wholly out of the reach of experimentation, and within the exclusive domains of Faith. But here it becomes the subject of dissentient opinions. All faith may differ, like photographs, having the same general contour, but differing in the special lineaments of the persons represented. Yet all the probabilities which reach within the veil, point, as with an unerring finger, to a growth, a development, an unceasing progress in the great school of holiness beyond this