Now, consider what ample resources heaven affords for the cultivation of the social affections among those of the highest intellect, taste, and moral worth in God's universe, "But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant." Here we have summed up the society in our future home. We shall there enjoy the society of the _angels_. We know about those holy beings, but we do not know themselves as yet. But how often does it happen to us in regard to our earthly friends, that those who are unknown to us in our early years even by name, become in our latter years indissolubly bound up with our history and our joy? And thus the angels, whom on earth we have never seen, will, nevertheless, when the manhood of our being is reached, become our intimate friends and dear companions for ever. Let us not forget, however, that the angels know each saint on earth more intimately than the saints themselves are known by their nearest friends. "For are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" But this fact suggests another analogy between our social relationships with men and angels,--viz., that as earthly friends who have been acquainted with ourselves and our family history during the forgotten days of infancy, are met by us, in after-years, not as strangers, but with feelings of sympathy and intimacy akin to those awakened by old kindred; even so will the saint, on reaching heaven, find God's angels to be, not strangers, but old friends who have known all about him from the day of his birth until the hour of his death. It is true that these high and holy ones belong to a different order of beings from ourselves, and this, we might be disposed to think, must prevent the possibility of their sympathising with us. But let us remember, that while in material forms there is no one common abiding type, by which, for example, the vegetable, beast, bird, or fish are formed; yet that it is quite otherwise with intellectual and moral beings, who are all necessarily made like God, and therefore like one another. And, finally, though we might conjecture that beings possessed of such vast stores of knowledge, the accumulated wealth of ages, and of such high and glorious intellects, would necessarily repel our approaches by the awe they would inspire in a child of earth when with all his ignorance he enters heaven, yet let our confidence be restored by remembering the fact, that in them, as in the great Jehovah, all majesty and wisdom become attractive when combined with, and directed by love. The love which enables us to cling to the Almighty and love Him as a Father, will enable us to meet the angels