in the spiritual sense? let us examine it. The term, "heaven," in the spiritual sense, signifies the spiritual internal mind of man, wherein reside all heavenly thoughts and affections; "earth" signifies the external or natural mind; and "treasures" mean spiritual treasures, which are the knowledges of goodness and truth. The spiritual sense of this commandment then is, that we are to take care lest we suffer our doctrines, our knowledge of what is good and true, to remain merely in the external mind, in the memory,—on earth, instead of introducing them into the internal or spiritual mind, -heaven. But how is this done? Only in one way, and that is, by a life according to them-by living up to what we know. If we do not thus live up to the truths we know, and so make them spiritual, then will "thieves break through and steal" them, and "moth and rust corrupt" them; that is, in the other life, in the spiritual world, when our judgment-day comes, (for every man has his own day of judgment) and our real characters manifest themselves,- then will the evil passions and false principles, (signified by the "thieves," "moth, and rust,") which lie at the bottom of our hearts, break out through the external covering of sanctity, and take away and destroy all those truths which we fancied belonged to us, and we shall lose them altogether as it is written, "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have."* This will be the case with every truth we have in our memories, that is not practised in our lives.

Luke viii. 18.

Are not some of us, brethren, or all of us, in danger of this judgment? Are we striving to the utmost, to live according to the truths we know? Are we, day by day, and hour by hour, struggling against our natural and evil inclinations, our love of self, our love of the world? Do we feel the great truth, that this world and this life are comparatively nothing, and the spiritual world and the eternal life every thing? that, while in the one we are to stay, at most, but some sixty or seventy years, in the other we are to live for millions of years and forever:-and yet, that, according as this short life is, so will that long, long one be? Let us reflect on this: let us examine ourselves: and if we find that we are in the wrong way, let us hasten to change our course, and turn over a new leaf in the book of our life.

P

SERMON XIV.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD.

"He is not here; for he is risen, as he said."-MATTHEW Xxviii. 6.

THE resurrection of our Lord, has, in all ages, been regarded by the Christian Church as its great source of consolation and hope. It was considered as the crowning act of the whole great work which the Lord came into the world to perform. It seemed to present, in a visible shape, the one great truth which is the point to which all the other truths of Revelation look, namely, that man is an immortal being. What the Lord had all his life in the world been teaching in words, he now, after death, confirmed, by this great act of rising again. It was natural, therefore, that the Christian world should always look to this, as the representative of their whole religion, and the grand confirmation of its truth.

By a knowledge of, and belief in, the fact of the Lord's resurrection, the early Christians felt themselves distinguished from all the rest of the world, Jews and Pagans. It is true, indeed, that the Pagan

nations of that day,- -as is also the case now, with the numberless heathens, that are spread over half the earth,—had some vague and indistinct idea of a future life; a traditional remnant of a former revelation, which had come down from generation to generation, since the time of the Ancient Church. The idea, so pleasing to the mind of man, and therefore so readily received and easily preserved, that life, with all its enjoyments, was not to end after only a few years, but was to continue forever, was, in the mercy of Divine Providence, never suffered to be entirely lost to the world. Among civilized nations, the poets and men of genius took up this charming thought, and wove it into various beautiful forms and fancies, to please themselves and their countrymen. The "Elysian Fields" of the Greeks and Romans, with their pleasant sports and games,-and the Plutonian Regions, with their Stygian River, their darkness, and silence, and pain, and the thousand fables that were attached to them,-all these fancies may be looked upon with the eye of benevolence, and especially in the light of the New Church, as beautiful permissions of Divine Providence, for the sake of keeping before the minds of men, in a form suited to their state, the grand truth that there is another life after the close of this. Those mythological beliefs were not indeed genuine truths, but they were shadows of them ;-and a shadow, though it is not the substance, may yet give an idea of its form and outline.

The case is the same with the nations out of the

church, at the present day. The "Golden Land" of the Chinese, the sensual Paradise of the Mahometans, and the "happy hunting-grounds" of the savage,-all these, though not the real heavens, are yet faint images of them -distant resemblances, formed in

accommodation to the several states of these races of men. And it is delightful to contemplate all these systems of belief, as so many proofs of the tender mercy and universal love of our Heavenly Father, who is so careful to provide for all his children, in all their states, some image and idea of the heaven for which they were made, and into which he longs to gather them all; so careful to keep all his creatures in connection with himself, by some bond, some chain, by which they may be drawn up as near to him as they are willing to come.

Of all the nations on the face of the earth, the Jews, however, seem to have had the least idea of a future life. All their thoughts and affections seemed to rest in and close with this world. They were altogether "of the earth, earthy." Their eyes saw only the ground beneath them; their ears were open only to the noise, and tumult, and discordant sounds, of the world around them; their lives, to them, ended with the tomb. Hear the repeated declarations of their greatest and wisest man. "All things," says

he,

66 come alike to all there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth