64 THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 



But in the Paradise above, nothing of this seeming op- 

 position shall exist. Heaven, with its angelic bands, 

 and its glorious company of the just who have washed 

 their robes and made them white in the blood of the 

 Lamb, shall present no unharmonious feature ; it shall 

 receive within it nothing that defileth. The element 

 and the scene shall not be more pure, than the blessed 

 inhabitants that breathe its air and behold its beauty. 

 The beams of an eternal spring shall only serve to 

 burst the buds, and to unfold the blossoms of eternal 

 righteousness. 



In the contemplation of such a season, it cannot but 

 inspire a feeling of melancholy, that man should think 

 so little about this high and immortal destiny which 

 awaits the righteous hereafter. The same book of nature 

 which now displays the resurrection of a vegetable world 

 from the death-like sleep of winter, exhibits a striking 

 emblem, and a strong proof, drawn from analogy, of the 

 wonderfttl power by which God will finally raise the 

 bodies of all the seed of Adam that shall sleep in the dust, 

 when the Archangel's trump shall summon them to 

 judgment. It is the Gospel volume only, however, which 

 reveals the secret of man's indifference to that great event, 

 and proclaims him to be already ** dead in trespasses and 



