the saint, on reaching heaven, find God’s angels to be, not strangers, but old friends who have known all about him from the day of his birth until the hour of his death.  It is true that these high and holy ones belong to a different order of beings from ourselves, and this, we might be disposed to think, must prevent the possibility of their sympathising with us.  But let us remember, that while in material forms there is no one common abiding type, by which, for example, the vegetable, beast, bird, or fish are formed; yet that it is quite otherwise with intellectual and moral beings, who are all necessarily made like God, and therefore like one another.  And, finally, though we might conjecture that beings possessed of such vast stores of knowledge, the accumulated wealth of ages, and of such high and glorious intellects, would necessarily repel our approaches by the awe they would inspire in a child of earth when with all his ignorance he enters heaven, yet let our confidence be restored by remembering the fact, that in them, as in the great Jehovah, all majesty and wisdom become attractive when combined with, and directed by love.  The love which enables us to cling to the Almighty and love Him as a Father, will enable us to meet the angels in peace, and to love them as brethren.  And thus I am persuaded that a saint on earth, compassed about as he is with his many infirmities, would even now feel more “at home,” so to speak, with angels, because of their perfect sympathising love, than with most of his fellow-men, because of their remaining pride and selfishness.

But “just men made perfect” also form apart of the society above.  Their number is daily increasing.  Day by day unbroken columns are passing through the golden gates of the city, and God’s elect are gathering from the four winds of heaven.  There are no dead saints; all are alive unto God, and “we live together with them.”

But I further remark in reference to all this glorious society, that there shall be perfect union among its members.  That union will not be one of sameness; for there can be no sameness either in the past history, or in the intellectual capacity of any of its members.  How vast must be the difference for ever between the history of Gabriel, the thief on the cross, the apostle Paul, and the child who died on its first birthday!  There is, moreover, every reason to believe that each person must retain his own individual features of mind and peculiarities of character, there as well as here.  All the stars will shine in brilliancy, and sweep in orbits more or less wide around the great centre, but “each star differeth from another star in glory.”  Yet this want of sameness is what will produce the deepest harmony, such as one sees in the blending of different colours, or hears in the mingling of different notes.  And I repeat it, the bond of this perfectness must be the same in heaven as on earth—­love.  For it is love which unites exalted rank to lowly place, knowledge to ignorance,