I have just cut the following paragraph out of a newspaper:  Is this the ridiculous tripping up the sublime?  I think otherwise:  it is honest to use plain terms.  I speak as unto wise men—­judge ye what I say.  With respect to the fact of information, it may or it may not be true; but even if untrue, the idea is substantially the same, and I cannot help supposing that with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven, such bodily saints as Enoch is, (and similar to him all risen, holy men will be,) meet for happy sabbaths in some glorious orb akin or superior to the following: 

“A CENTRAL SUN.—­Dr. Madier, the Professor of Astronomy at Dorpat, has published the results of the researches pursued by him uninterruptedly during the last sixty years, upon the movements of the so-called fixed stars.  These more particularly relate to the star Alcyone, (discovered by him,) the brightest of the seven bright stars of the group of the Pleiades.  This star he states to be the central sun of all the systems of stars known to us.  He gives its distance from the boundaries of our system at thirty-four million times the distance of the sun from our earth, a distance which it takes five hundred and thirty-seven years for light to traverse.  Our sun takes one hundred and eighty-two million years to accomplish its course round this central body, whose mass is one hundred and seventeen million times larger than the sun.”

One hundred and seventeen million times larger than the Sun! itself, for all its vastness, not more than half one million times bigger than this earth.  To some such globe we may let our fancies float, and anchor there our yearnings after heaven.  It is a glorious thought, such as imagination loves; and a probable thought, that commends itself to reason.  Behold the great eye of all our guessed creation, the focus of its brightness, and the fountain of its peace.

A topic far less pleasant, but alike of interest to us poor men, is the probable home of evil; and here I may be laughed at—­laugh, but listen, and if, listening, some reason meets thine ear, laugh at least no longer.

We know that, for spirit’s misery as for spirit’s happiness, there is no need of place:  “no matter where, for I am still the same,” said one most miserable being.  More—­in the case of mere spirits, there is no need for any apparatus of torments, or fires, or other fearful things.  But, when spirit is married to matter, the case is altered; needs must a place to prison the matter, and a corporal punishment to vex it.

Nothing is unlikely here; excepting—­will a man urge?—­the dread duration of such hell.  This is a parenthesis; but it shall not be avoided, for the import of that question is deep, and should be answered clearly.  A man, a body and soul inmixt, body risen incorruptible, and soul rested from its deeds, must exist for ever.  I touch not here the proofs—­assume it.  Now, if he lives for ever, and deliberately chooses