HISTORY. 



77 



motions vigorous and nimble. Its sensitive organs 

 will be refined and improved, and the sphere of 

 their operation extended. Its auditory organs 

 will be tuned to receive the most delightful sen 

 sations from the harmonies of celestial music, 

 and its visual powers rendered capable of per 

 ceiving the minutest, objects, and penetrating into 

 tne most distant regions. New senses and facul 

 ties of perception, and new powers of motion, 

 fitted to transport it with rapidity from one por 

 tion of space to another, will, in all probability, 

 be superadded to the powers with which it is 

 now invested. And, surely, the contrivances and 

 adaptations which must enter into the structure 

 of such an organical frame, cannot be less curi 

 ous and exquisite, nor display less wisdom and 

 intelligence than those which we now perceive 

 in our mortal bodies. On the contrary, we must 

 necessarily suppose thousands of the most deli 

 cate contrivances and compensations, different 

 from every thing we can now conceive, to be es 

 sentially requisite in the construction of an or 

 ganized body intended for perpetual activity, and 

 destined to an IMMORTAL duration. To inves 

 tigate and to contemplate the contrivances of 

 divine wisdom, by which the elements of disease 

 and death are for ever prevented from entering 

 into this renovated frame, and by which it will 

 be preserved in undecaying youth and vigour 

 throughout the lapse of innumerable ages, we 

 must necessarily conclude, will form a part of 

 the studies of renovated man in the future world ; 

 nor can we help thinking, that the knowledge 

 of the wonders of the human frame we now 

 acquire, may be a preparatory qualification, for 

 enabling us to form an enlightened and com 

 prehensive conception of the powers, qualities, 

 and peculiar organization, of the bodies of the 

 saints after the period of the resurrection. 



HISTORY. 



Another branch of study in which the saints 

 in heaven will engage, is History. History 

 contains a record of past facts and events ; and 

 makes us acquainted with transactions which 

 happened hundreds or thousands of years before 

 we were brought into existence. When viewed 

 in its proper light, it may be considered as no 

 thing else than a detail of the operations of 

 Divine Providence in relation to the moral in 

 telligences of this world. It illustrates the cha 

 racter of the human race, and the deep and 

 universal depravity in which they are involved ; 

 and displays the rectitude of the character of 

 God, and the equity of his moral administra 

 tion. 



History, therefore, will form a prominent ob 

 ject of study among the celestial inhabitants, as 

 furnishing those materials which will illustrate 

 the ways of Providence and display the wisdom 

 ind righteousness of Jehovah in his government 



of the world. At present we can contemplate 

 only a few scattered fragments of the history of 

 mankind. Of the history of some nations we 

 are altogether ignorant ; and of the history of 

 others we have only a few unconnected details, 

 blended with fabulous narrations and extrava 

 gant fictions. Of no nation whatever have we 

 an entire history composed of authentic mate 

 rials ; and consequently, we perceive only some 

 broken and detached links in the chain of the 

 divine dispensations, and are unable to survey 

 the whole of God s procedure towards our race, 

 in one unbroken series, from the creation to the 

 present time. We know nothing decisively re 

 specting the period during which man remained 

 in a state of innocence, nor of the particular 

 transactions and events that happened previous 

 to his fall. And how little do we know of the 

 state of mankind, of the events which befell 

 them, and of the civil and religious arrangements 

 which existed, during the period of sixteen 

 hundred years which intervened between the 

 creation and the deluge, though the world was 

 then more fertile and populous than it has ever 

 since been ? How little do we know of the 

 state of mankind immediately previous to the 

 flood, of the scenes of consternation and terror 

 which must have been displayed over all the 

 earth, when the fountains of the great deep were 

 broken up, and the cataracts of heaven opened, 

 and of the dreadful concussion of the elements of 

 nature, when the solid strata of the earth were 

 rent asunder, when the foundations of the moun 

 tains were overturned, and the whole surface of 

 the globe transformed into one boundless ocean? 

 How little do we know of the circumstances 

 which attended the gradual rise of idolatry, and 

 of the origin of the great empires into which the 

 world has been divided ? How little do we know 

 even of the history of I he Jewish nation, posterior 

 to the period of the Babylonish captivity? 

 Whither were the ten tribes of Israel scattered 

 among the nations, what events have befallen 

 them, and in what countries are they now to be 

 found ? Of the history of all the nations in the 

 world (the Jews only excepted) from the time of 

 the deluge to the days of Hezekiah, a period of 

 nearly two thousand years, we remain in pro 

 found ignorance. And yet, during that long 

 period, God had not forsaken the earth ; his dis 

 pensations towards his rational offspring were 

 still going forward, empires were rising and de 

 clining, one generation passing away, and another 

 generation coming, and thousands of millions of 

 mankind ushered into the eternal world. Those 

 chasms in the history of mankind, which hide 

 from our view the greater portidh of God s moral 

 dispensations, will, doubtless, be filled up in the 

 eternal state, so that we shall be enabled to take 

 a full and comprehensive view of the whole of the 

 divine procedure, in all its connections and 

 bearings towards every nation upon earth 



