Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/228

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the wasted cheek, the lustreless eye, and the furrowed brow of old age. The faces and forms of men and women at ninety—however pure and innocent the lives they have led—would rarely be thought beautiful. They seldom—never, indeed—at that age realize our highest conception of the human form. What, then, might we expect would be the appearance of those who have been in heaven thousands of years, if Time laid his palsying hand on the bodies of angels as it does on those of men? Why, they would be divested of every vestige of human comeliness. Their features and forms would hardly be recognized as human, so shriveled and wasted would they be. And if those who die at an advanced age and go to heaven, are forever to bear about them the same decrepid form and furrowed checks which marked their declining years on earth, then would it, indeed, be a calamity to live "to a good old age" on earth. Unless the aged saint is to lose in heaven his wrinkles and his decrepitude, and return to the vigor and freshness of his earlier years, who would wish to remain on earth beyond the age of twenty?

What has been said, therefore, of the beauty of the angels, if true, is conclusive evidence that they do not apparently grow old in heaven; and that the good who die at an advanced age, must there rejuvenate—must return to the beauty and buoyancy of their "golden prime."

Besides, in this world all the usual signs of old age, are so many signs of a decaying process—signs that corporeal dissolution has already commenced; for what is decay but a gradual dying? But there is no death in