terial and spiritual ; the full development and harmonious exer- cise of all our faculties, intellectual and moral, and in the unre- strained progress thereof to eternity, 1 Cor. xiii., 9-12 ; xv., 45-49 ; 1 John iii., 2. (2.) In the sight of our blessed Kedeemer, communion with his person, and fellowship in all his glory and blessedness, and through him with saints and angels, John xvii., 24 ; 1 John i., 3 ; Eev. iii., 21 ; xxi., 3, 4, 5. (3.) In that " beatific vision of God," which, consisting in the ever increasingly clear discovery of the divine excellence lovingly apprehended, transforms the soul into the same image, from glory unto glory, Matt, v., 8 ; 2 Cor. iii., 18.
In meditating upon what is revealed of the conditions of heavenly existence two errors are to be avoided : 1st, the ex- treme of regarding the mode of existence experienced by the saints in heaven as too nearly analogous to that of our earthly life ; 2d, the opposite extreme of regarding the conditions of the heavenly life as too widely distinguished from that of our present experience. The evil effect of the first extreme will, of course, be to degrade by unworthy associations our conceptions of heaven; while the evil effect of the opposite extreme will be in great measure to destroy the moral power which a hope of heaven should naturally exert over our hearts and lives, by rendering our conceptions of it vague, and our sympathy with its characteristics consequently distant and feeble. To avoid both of these ex- tremes, we should fix the limits within which our conceptions of the future existence of the saints must range, by distinguishing between those elements of man's nature, and of his relations to God and other men, which are essential and unchangeable, and those elements which must be changed in order to render his nature in his relations perfect. 1st. The following must be changed : (1.) all sin and its consequences must be removed ; (2.) " spiritual bodies" must take the place of our present flesh and blood ; (3.) the new heavens and the new earth must take the place of the present heavens and earth, as the scene of man's life ; (4.) the laws of social organization must be radically changed, since in heaven there will be no marriage, but a social order analogous to that of the " angels of God" introduced.
2d. The following elements are essential, and therefore un- changeable, (1.) Man will continue ever to exist, as compounded
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of two natures, spiritual and material. (2.) He is essentially in- tellectual, and must live by knowledge. (3.) He is essentially active, and must have work to do. (4.) Man can, as a finite creature, know God only mediately, i. e., through his works of creation and providence, the experience of his gracious work upon our hearts, and through his incarnate Son, who is the image of his person, and the fullness of the Godhead bodily. God will therefore in heaven continue to teach man through his works, and to act upon him by means of motives addressed to his will through his understanding. (5.) The memory of man never finally loses the slightest impression, and it will belong to the perfection of the heavenly state that every experience acquired in the past will always be within the perfect control of the will. (6.) Man is essentially a social being. This, taken in connection with the preceding point, indicates the conclusion that the asso- ciations, as well as the experience of our earthly life, will carry all of their natural consequences with them into the new mode of existence, except as far as they are necessarily modified (not lost) by the change. (7.) Man's life is essentially an eternal pro- gress toward infinite perfection. (8.) All the known analogies of God's works in creation, in his providence in the material and moral world, and in his dispensation of grace, (1 Cor. xii., 5-28,) indicate that in heaven saints will differ among themselves both as to inherent capacities and qualities, and as to relative rank and office. These differences will doubtless be determined a by con- stitutional differences of natural capacity, b by gracious rewards in heaven corresponding in kind and degree to the gracious fruit- fulness of the individual on earth, c by the absolute sovereignty of the Creator, Matt, xvi., 27 ; Rom. ii., 6 ; 1 Cor. xil, 4-28.
5. What are the principal terms, literal and figurative, which are applied in Scripture to the future condition of the reprobate?
As a place, it is sometimes literally designated by didyg. Hades, and sometimes by yeewa, both translated hell, Matt, v., 22, 29, 30 ; Luke xvi., 23. Also by the phrase, " place of torment," Luke xvi., 28. As a condition of suffering, it is literally desig- nated by the phrases, " wrath of God," Rom. ii., 5, and " second death/' Rev. xxi., 8.
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