KNOWLEDGE OF ONE ANOTHER IN A FUTURE STATE. BY REV. JOHN EMERY ABBOT. [Born at Exeter, August 6, 1793. Died October 6, 1818.] THE thought of heaven is often uninteresting from considering it as a state of solemn uniformity, in which the perfected spirits are in continual rest, or employed only in casting their crowns of glory at the foot of the throne, and celebrating, in one unwearied song, the praises of God and the Lamb. It is true, we read of a rest which remains for the people of God; but is it not a rest alone from evil and anxiety, from temptation and sorrow, from pain and sin? Is it designed to exclude all active exercise of those noble powers, with which the Father of our being has blessed us? Are the capacities of exertion, of improvement, of benefiting others, which have been formed on earth with so much care, to be formed altogether in vain? Is not this world rather a scene of education, to fit us for accomplishing with more exalted powers the will of God, and acting as ministers of his mercy in higher regions of his universe? The cultivation of particular affections, of the affections arising from the parental, filial, and conjugal relations, is not only the dictate of nature, but the command of duty. And is the culture of this part of our character to be entirely useless hereafter? Are none of the feelings which nature and christianity have taught us to nourish, to remain? What is to destroy these affections, what to turn them to coldness and indifference? Not surely a mere passage through the grave; not our admission to the kingdom of joy and love. When corruption is turned to incorruption, is the heart to be laid waste? are the best and purest of our social affections to be lost? and, with the weaknesses of mortality, much which now ennobles and blesses our nature, to be annihilated for ever? We think of a future state as too different in its nature from the present. Exalted, glorious, and happy indeed it is, beyond conception; exempt from frailty, freed for ever from sorrow, from trial, and from sin; but the sources of its happiness must be adapted to our nature, and will be such in kind as those which the righteous find on earth. Death does not miraculously change our characters. It only changes the mode of our existence, and introduces us to a holier and happier world; and we enter it with the dispositions which we have nourished, and the capacities of enjoyment which our care has improved. And as God has created us social beings, as much of our highest and purest delight arises from the intercourses of friendship on earth, and as the culture of our social feelings is so important a part of our present duty and of our preparation for heaven; it is surely most reasonable to believe that an exalted communion with perfected spirits will be a source of happiness hereafter, and that the friends who have been dear to us on earth, will, if we and they are worthy, be again restored to our knowledge and affection. The idea is full of consolation, and of encouragement to duty. If we weep for the friends who have departed and who sleep in Jesus, we cannot sorrow without hope. They have only passed to their reward a little before us, and soon shall we meet them again. Though they have left us, we are not forgotten by them, nor is their interest in us destroyed. If, then, we have friends now in heaven; if our thoughts can recur to a parent on whom our infant eyes had hardly rested, or whose form has now faded from the remembrance of our youth; if there be a friend there, once dear to us as our own souls, and who left us widowed and desolate; if there be a child there, on whom all our earthly hopes had THE FUTURE STATE. 131 rested, whose steps to the grave we had watched with unutterable anguish, and whose departure bowed us to the dust; if we desire to meet them again, let us strive to imitate their virtues, and follow the bright path of glory by which they have ascended. Let us cherish the sacred remembrance. Let us feel that now there is a circle which connects us with a better world, and often meditate on what they are, and what we may hereafter be. PRAYER. BY NATHANIEL A. HAVEN. GREAT GOD! at midnight's solemn hour, I own thy goodness and thy power; But bending low before thy throne, I I pray not for myself alone. pray for her, my dearest friend, While dark and silent rolls the night, Let peaceful slumbers press her eyes, Let each succeeding morn impart Whate'er my swelling heart desires, When fervent prayer to Heaven aspires, Whate'er has warmed my fancy's glow, May she, with tenfold richness, know. O God! may she thy laws fulfil, THE MILITIA OF THE REVOLUTION. FROM A SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE. BY HENRY HUBBARD. I WOULD ask, on what ground shall those who served in the militia during the war of the revolution be excluded from the benefit of the pension system? Can any good reason be assigned for their exclusion, which will not apply with equal force to the Continental as well as to the State troops? No body of troops were more patriotic, no men were more ardent in the prosecution of the war of the revolution, no men in the public service endured more or suffered more, no men were clothed less, fed less or paid less than they were. In every point of view, they have as strong claims upon the justice and gratitude of the country, as any of the surviving soldiers of the revolution. It must be well known by every individual conversant with the history of the times, that great reliance was placed on the militia of the country, for defensive operations, for the sacred preservation of public freedom, for the maintenance of those rights and immunities dear to every true American. The men who composed the militia most richly merit the favor of the government. They were doomed to bear most emphatically their full share of the burdens of the war. They were owners as well as cultivators of the soil; they were tax payers of the republic. When their country called for physical means, they promptly obeyed that call. At the bidding of their government, they left the |