series, degrees and systems. It is a genuine world, a universe of itself, a cosmos, far more extensive, perfect and beautiful than this. It is perceived or recognized by the same senses which we here enjoy, only far more delightfully and thoroughly. The other life has not only its metaphysics and its theology, but its physics, its chemistry, its botany, its anatomy, its architecture, its art, its government, everything, indeed, which can be made a subject of intelligent study or of ennobling affection.
Those who expect to escape the life of the senses at death, and to rise disembodied into an ether of pure thought, are greatly astonished when they are raised from the natural body and find the other life a continuation of this.
How melancholy is it to converse with a professed Christian who has formed no definite idea of the bodily shape he is to wear in the better life! Who thinks of his deceased friends as disembodied spirits! formless and unsubstantial shadows! incessantly engaged in praising God and contemplating his divine perfections! And these dark, cold, cheerless abstractions, in the face of the living, beautiful, substantial revelations of the Scripture, even in the letter!
Ask this unthinking Christian who is startled
