"that ancient
river!") without dying. Even the Word beholds in him an earnest of his
own incarnation, resurrection, and ascension from Olivet. To-day, our
loved ones in heaven look upon him, and say, as Peter did at this
prophet's visit on Tabor, (when he spoke of tabernacles there--"one for
Elias,") "Master, it is good for us to be here." But we, like the "fifty
strong men," would find them and bring them back; and, like Peter,
would build tabernacles to retain them. The family circle is gathered
together at some birthday or festival, and, perhaps, we long for the
departed, and think that they long for us; and we would bring them back,
and place them in their deserted chairs. We are "strong men" in the
power of grief, and in our wishes; but the search for Elijah is the
counterpart of our vain desires and most unreasonable sorrow.

When our friends have gone to heaven, it is not apt to be heaven, so
much as earthly sorrow, which fills our minds. Happily, we have been
taught to believe, and we do generally believe, that the souls of the
righteous enter immediately into glory; that their happiness is perfect,
though not completed; they are as happy as disembodied spirits can be;
unspeakably happier than they were here, but still not in full
possession of those sources of pleasure which they will receive when
their bodies are raised, and their whole natures are made complete. But
"to die is gain;" it is "to depart and to be with Christ, which is far
better;" it is entering "into the joy of their Lord." That dreary
thought of sleeping after death till the day of judgment; the idea that
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, became insensible at death, and that the last
thing which Jacob, for example, knew, was Joseph's kiss, and the next
thing which he will know will be the archangel's trump, the interval of
many thousands of years being a perfect blank in his existence, is so
unlike the benevolent order of God's providence in nature and grace,
that it cannot gain much credence with believers in the simple
representations of the Bible. What a mockery Elijah's translation seems,
upon that theory! Whither was he translated? Did the chariots of fire,
and the horses of fire, convey him to a dreamless sleep of thousands of
years? Was that pomp, that emblazonry, all that fiery pageant, a
deception signifying nothing but that the greatest of prophets was to
begin a stupid slumber, which, this day, under a heaven with not one
redeemed soul in