A pious, but needless jealousy, lest the honor due to him "who worketh all in all" should be in any degree compromised, has perhaps had influence in concealing from the eyes of Christians the importance attributed in the Scriptures to subordinate agency; and thus, by a natural consequence, has impoverished and enfeebled our ideas of the heavenly state. But assuredly it is only while encompassed by the dimness and errors of the present life that there can be any danger of attributing to the creature the glory due to the Creator. When once with open eye that "excellent glory" has been contemplated, then shall it be understood that the divine wisdom is incomparably more honored by the skilful and faithful performances, and by the cheerful toils of agents who have been fashioned and fitted for service, than it could be by the bare exertions of irresistible power: and then, when the absolute dependence of creatures is thoroughly felt, may the beautiful orders of the heavenly hierarchy—rising, and still rising towards perfection—be seen and admired without hazard of forgetting him who alone is absolutely perfect, and who is the only fountain and first cause of whatever is excellent. The Scriptures do indeed most explicitly declare, not only that virtue will be inamissible in heaven, but that its happiness will be unalloyed by fear, or pain, or want. But the mental associations formed in the present state make it so difficult to disjoin the idea of suffering and of sorrow from that of labor, and of arduous and difficult achievement, that we are prone to exclude action, as well as pain, from our idea of the future blessedness. Yet assuredly these notions may be separated; and if it be possible to imagine a perfect freedom from selfish solicitudes, a perfect acquiescence in the will, and a perfect confidence in the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, then also may we conceive of toils without sadness, of perplexities without perturbations, and of difficult or perilous service, without despondency or fear. The true felicity of beings furnished with moral sensibilities, must consist in the full play of the emotions of love, fixed on the centre of good; and this kind of happiness is unquestionably compatible with any external condition not positively painful: perhaps even another step might be taken; but our argument does not need it. Yet it should be remembered, that, in many signal and well-attested instances the fervor of the religious affections has almost or entirely obliterated the consciousness of physical suffering, and has proved its power to vanquish every inferior emotion, and to fill the heart with heaven, even amid the utmost intensities of pain. Much more, then, may these affections, when freed from every shackle, when invigorated by an assured possession of endless life, and when heightened by the immediate vision of the supreme excellence, yield a fulness of joy, consistently with many vicissitudes of external position.