GREAT INHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS. 349 often attendant upon our highest and best thoughts and feelings here. But we cannot particularize. Everything that can be desired is found in a sinless world. Lost harmony and order will be restored. The "Paradise regained" will be more than we can imagine; and who would not have such an inheritance as this? You whose daily song is that of the poor, "No foot of land do I possess, Or cottage in the wilderness," you may be rich you may enter in and take possession of the rich fields of Canaan -you may have a mansion in the City of God, where the streets are paved with gold, and the inhabitants live in the most delightful concord. Ye who are sad, and weary of the heavy woes of mortality, look upthere are no burdens to be borne among the saints in light. They left them all this side of the wall, and went in singing and light-hearted to their new possessions, and so may you. Those who are troubled at the seeming triumph of sin, of injustice and oppression, may take comfort in the thought of the "prepared world," from whence all these things are excluded. O, blessed is the inheritance of the saints - great the joy in reserve for the righteous. There must be beauty and joy, there must be peace and love, where there is no sin. There must be perfection-full, complete perfection. Then it is a perfect inheritance. Christian, it is thine-it is thine. Go joyfully forward to the goodly prospect. Go trustingly, yet carefully onward, for a world of sin lieth between thee and it. In all the way keep an eye fixed upon the far-off dome of the Celestial City. Life is a pilgrimage, death is the gateway, and full fruition awaiteth you beyond. Until the hour of pos 350 NEGATIVE BLISS. CHAPTER XXII. NEGATIVE BLISS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. Relations of Negation and Affirmation.— Bible Representations mainly negative. · Characteristics. - No Curse. No Death.-No Danger.-No Sorrow or Mourning. — Blessedness of those who enter. - Perfect Vision. The whole Being complete. we say "No sickness there, No weary wasting of the frame away, No fearful shrinking from the midnight air, "No hidden grief, No wild and cheerless vision of despair; No vain petition for a swift relief, No tearful eye, no broken heart, are there." — Anon. To know what a thing is not is to know what it is. The negation of one thing is the affirmation of another. Thus, if that a certain man is not prosperous, we are understood to mean that circumstances prove adverse to him, that he finds the reverse of prosperity. If we say that one is not happy, we mean that he is unhappy; and if one is not poor, that he has an independence. If we have negative consideraations of condition and character, the actual state may be predicated. Then, when we are told what heaven is not, we conclude what it is. The absence of one thing is the presence of another by actual law. If darkness prevail not, then it is light. In the moral world, if right does not exist, then wrong does; if there is not sorrow, then there is joy; if there is not love, then there is hate, or at least indifference. NEGATION AND AFFIRMATION. 351 In the spiritual world, if one does not discern its peculiar beauty, if he does not see the worth and appropriateness of objects, and thus loses their power for the elevation and development of his higher nature, we say of him that he is blind. He is morally blind, and there must be a change wrought before he can see. We form our opinions in great measure by negatives our opinions of places, men, and things. If it be said of one portion of the world that the climate is not cold, then we associate with it heat; if the soil is not fertile, then we suppose it sterile. If it be said that the inhabitants are not intelligent, and that the government is not stable, and not wanting in tyranny, it is equivalent to saying that it is a very miserable country, without the requisite elements of good order and society. The opposite may be likewise argued, if we may pronounce negatively upon all the evil principles which are the bane of prosperity, for the absence of all evil is the presence of all good. This is what made Eden so lovely before the fall. There was no evil there, and this was all comprehensive in affirmations as to what was there. So when the inspired writers tell us what is not in the New Jerusalem, we know very well what is there, for the theory of opposites is not wholly Socratic. The Bible representations of heaven are in great measure of a negative character; and in considering them the Christian will, at least, find his heart swelling with holy joy, that so much is not there which has been and still is the destroyer of his peace on earth. He will exult in the exclusion of every enemy of his soul, in the final extinction of every unhallowed passion, and that sin in every form has no more dominion over him. When he finds that it is said of his future home, that there is no sin there, his soul, so sick of sin, is ready to cry out, "It is enough. The absence of sin is the presence of everything my soul desires." Life and joy can never be wanting in a world where all is pure and holy. 352 HEAVEN REPRESENTED BY NEGATIVES. Tell me of a place where there are no unhappiness, and no cause for any, and do I not know that I should be supremely happy there, though the particular elements of that joy be unknown to me? Tell me of a world where are no deformity and no blight, where transparent light falls upon objects that have no sign of withering or decay, and do I not know that it must be a most attractive spot, the very consummation of beauty, although I cannot define a single characteristic of that all-embracing loveliness? Do we not feel that it is a very desirable place, when we are assured, "there shall be no more curse"? In this sindisordered world there must be law, and where law is there is penalty, and where this is there is fear; but all these things are done away in the land where there is no sin, and consequently "no curse," at least so far done away as to leave no room for fearful penalty. Doubtless there will be laws in heaven; but there will be no resistance to law, but saints themselves be its living fulfilment. Do we not feel that it would indeed be a blessed thing to have the curse removed we who feel so deeply its abiding and far-reaching power? It is "a rising up against, and an interfering with, the harmonious course of the originally established order." We know that our earth wears a different aspect since the introduction of the curse, and that man, physically, intellectually, and morally, is not what he would have been if he had never incurred the displeasure of the Almighty by his aggravated sin. It was no limited portion of earth, or mankind, that was visited; but everywhere, and upon everything, the darkening, degenerating influence is felt. What a transformation appeared in the vegetable kingdom! According to the original order, it was to yield its offerings to the gratification and welfare of man in rich spontaneousness. True, there were to be pruning and tillage, but they involved only the activity necessary for pleasing variety nothing like the sweat-inducing labor that was THE CURSE OF SIN. 353 afterward requisite to remove the "thorns and thistles" which threatened to choke what the human race really needed for their sustenance. With the curse there came the necessity for toil. It was forevermore to be associated with man's earthly history. The earth was no longer ready to yield her glad tribute, unasked and unsought, pouring it out at the feet of man, a continued and generous libation; but he was to labor, to wring it out, to have his bread moistened with sorrow, until he should find himself sinking, by very weariness and disappointment, into the earth from whence he was taken. There was no alternative. If man would live, he must conquer the means of living from soil that had suddenly become very grudging, even though it were at a painful cost of those resources he prized the most. Once the animal frame was a stranger to everything but vigor, freshness, and gladness; but after the curse, it knew weariness, languor, and depression, instead. There was to be unceasing demand for labor, and less сараcity to endure, for a long train of physical evils came with the others. The vast disturbance of forces in the universe doubtless affected the physical destiny of man; but in his own frame, so curiously wrought, so perfectly made, there was a sad, a serious disturbance when the curse came. Before, there were never such friction, such chafings and jarrings, in the intricate and delicate machinery as now. Then, too, the stream of life was but in one direction. Afterward there were currents and counter-currents, which would always make progress a doubtful and difficult matter. Oftentimes the body will not work with the mind, or the mind with the body. The mental forces cannot always be accounted on for steady and effectual action. In this, too, we deplore the effect of the curse. But who can measure the extent of these things? The derangement and disorder it has occasioned are past calculation. Here and there in the earth, at the sound of human footsteps, venomous serpents lift their heads and hiss, as if to taunt man with the |