bereaved wife or husband to indulge the fond hope of meeting in the Hereafter the beloved companion gone before. It gives to all who are bound by the ties of natural consanguinity, the comforting assurance that when death snatches from their embrace some dearly loved one—a parent, child, brother, sister, husband, or wife—the separation will be but for a season;—that they may confidently rely on a blissful reunion in the spiritual realm. What solace there is in such assurance! What balm to bereaved affection! What support in seasons of deepest sorrow!
And while the doctrine deals so tenderly with the natural affections, while it ministers all the comfort which the heart is capable of receiving in times of sore bereavement, it at the same time discloses a more exalted and heavenly state of affection than the natural, and a higher and holier relationship than that between members of the same family on earth. It teaches that the truest and holiest brotherhood, that of which the natural is but a faint image, exists between those who have been "born from above"—"born of the Spirit"—and have become children of the Heavenly Father. It teaches that natural relationships cease in the spiritual realm, and are succeeded by higher and holier relationships; that natural kindred, when they come fully into the state of their interiors, will (if they are spiritually far asunder) no longer see or know each other, and will lose all remembrance of their earthly relationship. It thus furnishes a rational and philosophical solution of a problem that has hitherto embarrassed theologians, and been a trouble to many pious minds. For it shows us that
