of the soul, which can only by this consciousness maintain in continuance during the state of interval its individual personality.' Stier quotes another writer, who says that the condition of those in the realm of the dead 'is indeed independent of the body; but all the organs of the bodyeyes, ears, tongue, have left behind them traces and operations in the soul;' and that the dead 'carry with them the fashioning of their former condition.' (Words of the Lord Jesus,' vol. iv. pp. 227, 228.)

"I have not quoted these passages to compel assent to the authority of any teacher. Stier must not lead us beyond what is written. But his weighty words only illustrate what we have before seen in Holy Scripture, and what we now find in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Again we find that the parable' tells us nothing new. 'We must necessarily suppose that some hidden development of nature precedes and prepares the way for the future corporeity or the resurrection of the flesh,' and 'entertain the idea of some sort of clothing of the soul in the realm of the dead. It only remains to add that the spirit and its 'form' may be seen contrasted with the body. The rich man' was buried;' Lazarus was buried, or not, but the angels carried him,' not his body, away. (See Stier's notes on the difference between Lazarus and his body, vol. iv. p. 217)."-Pollock, pp. 166-8.

In Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, he proposes the following quaint epitaph for himself, which has much beauty:

"The body of B. Franklin, printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms. Yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more, in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended

BY THE AUTHOR."

NOTE B.

ON THE MEANING OF THE DIVINE PRECEPTS, "LOVE NOT THE WORLD," AND, "SET YOUR AFFECTIONS ON THINGS ABOVE, NOT ON THINGS ON THE EARTH."

OBJECTIONS may probably be felt by many to the

belief for which I have pleaded in this book, that our present life, as a whole, and not in parts of it only, is intended to be the training and preparation for the future life, upon the ground of what is often said in Holy Scripture, as to the necessity of "renouncing the world," and of "withdrawing our affections from the things of earth." How, it may be asked, can such precepts be reconciled with a view of Christian morality which would teach us to look upon every part of our life on earth, and upon the active use of all the faculties of our nature, as a possible beginning of heaven? Would not this imply, not a renouncing, but a glorifying of this world in all its parts, and call upon us to make efforts not to withdraw our hearts from interest in and care for this world, but rather to find God and Heaven in every part of it?

This is a serious objection; but it proceeds, as I believe, upon a complete misinterpretation of the words of Holy Scripture upon this subject.

The expression "the world," in the passages referred to, though it is the translation of a Greek word (kosmos) which must have originally signified the material universe, in its

beauty and order, had, it is clear, in the days of St. John, acquired, by usage, quite a different sense. It signified, when used by him, not the material universe, but the heathen, or old Roman world, in that condition of manifold moral and spiritual corruption into which it had at that time fallen, as distinguished from the Church or kingdom and body of Christ on earth.

In some passages it must be manifest to all readers that this is the meaning in which he uses the word, as for instance, in 1 John v. 19, where he says, "We know that we are of God, but the whole world (kosmos) lieth in wickedness." And when he translates into Greek our Lord's words, spoken by Him, no doubt, in Aramaic, or some form of Hebrew, in which He tells His disciples not to marvel if the world hate them (St. John xv. 18, 19),—meaning thereby the Jewish or heathen world, so far as it was unchristian—it is again the same word (kosmos) which he

uses.

When, then, St. John says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, for if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John ii. 15), we must, in the light of these passages, suppose that he was warning the Christians of his day against sympathizing with the spirit of mind and habits of life which were characteristic of the heathen world of his time, not against the love of God's works in creation.

Accordingly, when he proceeds, as his manner is, to define the meaning of these abstract and general precepts by adding instances of the acts and habits they condemn, it is not the use of certain things, in itself, which he denounces, but the indulgence of a wrong spirit in using them, the spirit which was characteristic of the heathen of his times. Thus he says, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," (not "the flesh," nor "the eyes," nor "the life," in themselves), "is not of

I

the Father, but of the world; and the world passeth away. and the lust thereof" (1 John ii. 16, 17).

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These warnings, then, in St. John's writings, have no direct bearing whatever upon the love of, or earnest care for, those objects which God created "in the beginning," and pronounced 'very good." And amongst these we must reckon the whole fundamental order of human life, as seen in family, social, or national life. All these, it must be remembered, would have existed, even had sin never come in to mar the perfect work of God; they are part of God's original design; they must, then, be in themselves "very good." And not only so, but the whole of that development of them, which was necessarily latent and implied in them from the first, as the flower or fruit is latent in the bud or blossom, must also be in itself "very good," and deserving of the most reverent study, since it is an actual work of God. And if we bear distinctly in mind, as we are bound to do, the great fundamental truth of Christianity, often strangely forgotten by popular writers,* that our Lord was the Son of the Maker and Governor of the world, having one mind, character, and purpose with the Eternal Father, and that He shared in all the work of creation, since "without Him was not anything made that was made" (St. John i. 3), we shall see how impossible it is to believe that He came into the world with any purpose of interrupting or changing, and not rather of perfecting, and of manifesting the inherent glory and the possible and intended holiness of every part of it. The Evil Spirit had, it is true, as a 66 'strong man armed" at that time, as he has still in many respects, gained possession of much of God's perfect work, and turned it to his own use, and so made it evil. But the Stronger than he" did not, therefore, come to destroy

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* As notably by the author of "Modern Christianity a Civilised Heathenism."

any part of that which had been so perverted to evil uses, but to take it from him and to "divide," i.e. to re-claim for its proper Owner, and to re-distribute to God's true children, for all right uses, the whole of the spoil.

But if so, what, it may be asked, are we to understand the meaning of St. Paul to be when he says, 'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God' (Col. iii. 1-3)?

Solemn, doubtless, is the responsibility of interpreting such utterances of the Spirit of God. But surely when the Apostle speaks of " things above," it is not of material space that he is thinking; it is a moral, not a physical elevation to which he is referring. Holiness and nearness to God cannot be reached by departing, physically, from this or from any world which God has made, but by quite other means. When, similarly, St. Paul speaks of "Christ sitting at the right hand of God," none but a Mormon could suppose that he means a place. All these expressions must be metaphors taken from physical, to indicate and to figure," as best we may, spiritual verities. No doubt the Apostle, living as it was his lot to do, in that old Roman world, so deeply impregnated throughout with moral corruption, must have wished, as all good men in all time must often do, for a physical, as well as a moral separation from it. He must have longed for "wings like a dove," that he might literally "flee away and be at rest" with Christ and His saints. But that would imply no contempt or dislike for human life in itself in any of its parts, but only from its corruption. And that it is possible to live even a perfectly heavenly life while dwelling on earth, and making use of every part of it,