It tation, he replied, "To be sure we shall; do you think we shall be greater fools there, than we are here?" is certainly far from wise to suppose, that it will be part of the perfection of our future state to lose that knowledge which we now have, so far as it involves no immorality. VII. The interest which heavenly beings feel in the affairs of saints on earth, furnishes us reasonable ground for the belief in heavenly recognition. There is no difficulty in believing that, on the part of saints in heaven, an acquaintance with us is kept up. We have lost them for a time, but they have not lost us. As they have gone higher, they have capacities and privileges which we, who are still beneath them, have not; and this may extend to a constant oversight and interest in us.* This sense is as natural as any other to the passage," Then shall I know even as also I am known." We are now known to them; but when we enter the state in which they now are, then shall we know them as they now know us. The Old Testament saints are represented as a cloud of witnesses around us, like the crowd which bent down from all sides upon the race-ground in the Olympic games. According to this allusion of the Apostle, they are around us, not merely as examples, but as interested spectators. That we are not conscious of this, does not prove its improbability; for the lower orders of nature that are beneath us are not aware of our perfect knowledge of them, neither do they know us, and yet we know them—their nature, habits, prospects, and destiny. In like manner, we have reason, and also intimations of Scripture, to confirm *See "Heaven; or, the Sainted Dead," third edition, p. 282, et seq. in us the belief that our sainted friends are bending an interested eye of love over us in all our earthly pilgrimage —that they keep up a tender and affectionate acquaintance with us, and stand ready, when we fail on earth, to receive us into the arms of holy and eternal love, at the very gates of the heavenly paradise. Or must we believe that they are less interested in us than the rich man in hell was for his five brethren! Even if the saints do not, and cannot behold and follow us with personal attention, they can still keep up an acquaintance with us, in our earthly history, through the angels. Angels are the constant companions of the blest in heaven; and they are also upon the earth, " ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation." In heaven they "do always behold the face" of our Father; and on earth they "encamp around our dwellings," and attend us, to "keep us in all our ways." As on Jacob's mystic ladder, they are constantly descending from heaven to earth, and ascending from earth to heaven; thus keeping alive the fellowship of love on both sides of the mysterious veil! Can we for a moment believe that, if the saints above are still interested in us, there are no inquiries of returning angels in regard to us, and that our sainted friends do not thus keep themselves informed as to our state and life? It is not only said that angels themselves are interested in saints on earth, but that " there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." Who are these that rejoice in the presence of the angels over a converted sinner? Are they not the sainted friends of the sinner? they who, while on earth, often prayed for his conversion, and in remembrance of whose faith, and in answer to whose prayers, God has now sent forth to him His converting grace? Our relation with the spirit-world and our participation in its sympathies, is most intimate and endearing; it is only the benumbing influence of dull sense that keeps us from feeling it. The very reverence which we feel towards the unseen spirits of the dead, proclaims the power of their influence over us. Though this feeling is dark and unintelligible to us, it is not so to them. We live in the midst, and under the constant power, of mysterious unseen influences, which strongly declare the fact, that we are in a sphere of existence influenced by a higher world, and under the attention of higher intelligences, who are ever drawing us to themselves; and, soon as the separation of soul and body-the natural and finite from the spiritual and infinite-shall take place in death, we shall discover at once how awfully and sweetly near we have always been to the dead, and how much we shared in their affectionate sympathies. It is only when the infant becomes a man, that it fully sees and knows what the mother's eyes, arms, and bosom, were to it, during its years of infantile helplessness. So, when our spirits once break through the thin veil of this imperfect earthly life, which hides the world of spirits, into the full stature of celestial manhood, they will only fully understand those influences, the good of which they have always felt. If such is the relation, and such the mutual sympathies between heaven and earth, it is in the highest degree reasonable, that the holy ties of earthly affections pass unbroken through the change of death, and revive with new strength and beauty in the upper kingdom of love. We take great pleasure in the conclusions to which these reflections bring us. We delight greatly in the hope that the ties which bind us to our sainted friends are not broken in death—that while we are loving them still they love us too; and while we long to find them again, they are watching with holy interest over us, and are alluring us, by sweet mysterious influences, into their holy society, and into a participation, with them, of celestial joys. Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, we are animated to lay aside every weight-even that of the body itself in death-that we may fly to their embraces, and be near them, as they are near the Lord. CHAPTER V. Beavenly Recognition among the Jews. Oh, wondrous times!-those palmy days of old ;- Of sainted friends in blessed pastimes move. They mourn'd, but still in hope, for those beyond; And, smiling through their tears, in meekness said, To them. We have discovered some beautiful glimmerings of this interesting doctrine of future recognition in the midst of Pagan gloom. We have seen that it is a universal belief, hope, and desire. We have also seen that it is in accordance with the dictates of enlightened reason. We come now to view it in the lovely religious twilight of Jewish hope. It is agreed upon, by all who have earnestly reflected upon the subject, that all religious ideas among Pagans may be traced back, through dim and misty tradition, to the Jews, to whom alone spiritual revelations were anciently made. The report of these revelations, though only in |