"'We have known instances in which the change, the intellectual change, has been so conspicuous within a brief space of time, that an infidel observer must have forfeited all claim to be esteemed even a man of sense, if he would not acknowledge—This that you call Divine grace, whatever it may really be, is the strongest awakener of the faculties after all. And, to a devout man, it is a spectacle of most enchanting beauty, thus to see the immortal plant, which has been under a malignant blast while sixty or seventy years have passed over it, coming out at length in the bloom of life.'"

Mr. Lewellin.—"Yes, and we are all living witnesses of the amazing efficacy of Divine grace in effecting our spiritual transformation, which, like that of the apostle Paul, has been produced in us without any efforts of our own, or any anticipation of such an unlikely thing being done. That it is a reality we cannot doubt, because, in addition to the evidence arising from our consciousness, we have the evidence of our senses. Now, suppose by an action of our imagination we step back a few years in our moral history, and re-assume our original characters, what a contrast should we, in that case, exhibit to our present selves! You, Sir, and your brother would move amongst us as two haughty Tractarians, magnifying the form and ceremonies of Christianity, and depreciating its doctrines and precepts. Mrs. Roscoe would be a stereotyped formalist, sitting in her easy-chair, with her week's preparation before her on her card-table, looking forward with some undefined emotions of superstitious reverence to the sacrament Sunday. Miss Roscoe would be moving, the principal figure in a ball-room, exciting the envy or the jealousy of her gay associates. My uncle and aunt would be living at Fairmount, the chief priest and priestess in the temple of fashion; routs, and dances, and gala nights—coursing-matches, and the prosecution of poachers, and the gains and the losses of the turf, supplying the poor rustics with topics for their table-talk. And, as for myself, I should be prowling about the streets and resorts of London, with some profane sceptics or accomplished gamesters, humming, in an under-tone of grave or jocular levity—'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' This is a sketch of what we should have been at this moment if Divine grace had not come to impress on us another likeness, and infuse within us another spirit. These moral changes in us are not shams and delusions, but positive realities."

Mrs. Roscoe.—"I should not like to become my former self again, without religious thought, and without any religious emotions. I lived without reflection or anticipation; and when any particular circumstances compelled me to advert to the certainty of my death, I felt an awful recoiling of spirit against it."

Mr. Stevens.—"If our conversation were overheard by some of our fashionable Christians, how strange would it appear to them! They would imagine, if they did not know us, that we were a set of incurables; and if they actually knew us, they would speak of us as a group of fanatics."

Mr. Roscoe.—"This reminds me of an admirable discourse I heard my brother's Curate preach on the words of the apostle John: 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is' (1 John iii. 2). 'You are now living,' he said, when addressing the pious part of his audience, 'in a world of sin and sorrow; and you are living in disguise, and are not known to the persons amongst whom you live, and with whom you are engaged in the commerce of life. They may know your person, your name, your residence, your relative connections, and your distinctive religious denomination, but they have no knowledge, or even conception, of your elevated rank in relation to the wondrous beings of the great unknown world. This should neither astonish nor mortify you; for when Jesus Christ sojourned on earth, even though he was the brightness of his Father's glory—even though stormy winds and raging waves, disease, and death, and infernal spirits acknowledged the absolute supremacy of his dominion over them—yet the men of the world knew him not. They knew him as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the carpenter; they knew him as a madman, an impostor, and a blasphemer; but they knew him not as the Son of God in the human form, come to seek and to save them that are lost. If, then, they knew him not who presented such luminous signs of his celestial dignity and glory, how can you expect the world over to look on you as the sons of God, living through the period of your minority in disguise, soon to have your relative dignity chronicled in the records of immortality?'"

Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"That passage proves that our identity is preserved amidst all the changes we have undergone, or may yet undergo—identically the same persons after our conversion as we were before our conversion, though vastly different; and, in a glorified state, we shall be identically the same persons we are now, but then we shall be made exactly like the Son of God. Our Lord, when administering consolation to Martha of Bethany, said: 'And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?' (John xi. 26). There is nothing in this passage which requires its restriction to the singular occasion of its utterance; it announces an absolute fact, universally applicable to our Lord's disciples. There may be a momentary suspension of life, attended by a sudden yet momentary collapse of the self-conscious faculty, when the great spirit is in the act of removing from her material tabernacle, to enter the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens: but it is only the suspension, it is not the extinction of life; and the self-conscious faculty will soon awake, and bear an undisputed testimony to the personal identity of the soul. Yes, and there is to me a sublime and thrilling interest in the belief, that I shall be myself again when I awake in the Divine likeness, with my own intellect, with my own imagination, with my own heart, and with my own memory laden with its varied accumulations—identically the same person, yet transformed into a pure and spotless being—and that, after the lapse of millions of ages, I shall be identically the same being I am now; the same being I was in the days of childhood and of youth, of early and of later manhood; the same as I was when living amidst the attractions of home and the charms of more extended social intimacies; the same as when I was enduring the privations and sorrows of earth, encountering its conflicts and its trials; and the same as when I stood trembling on the narrow isthmus of time, fearing to slip the cable of life, and launch into eternity."

Mr. Roscoe.—"But while identity is preserved, we shall exist in some new form, as we shall then be disembodied; shall see ourselves and each other; and be endowed also with some new faculties to fit us for our high destiny, its felicities and employments."

Mr. Lewellin.—"We shall, undoubtedly, be as fitted to engage in all the exercises of the celestial world, and to intermingle, with graceful ease, in all its varied associations and enjoyments, as we should be if we had sprung up into being there, like the angels of God. But yet I do not think it necessarily follows that we shall have any new mental facilities communicated to us; the faculties which we shall then require may even now be lying dormant in the soul, waiting merely for the act of disembodiment to come forth in full development and activity."

Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"That's an idea I have long entertained, for experience proves that the spirit of man, even now, when it makes its escape from the control of the senses, as in dreaming, does occasionally give palpable indications of the possession of faculties far more active and vigorous than is ordinarily displayed when under their dominion; doing, in fact, when asleep, what cannot be done when awake. I know an intelligent man, on whose testimony I can place absolute dependence, who has told me more than once, that though unable, when awake, to construct a stanza, yet, after reading Milton, or Thomson, or Pope, he has when asleep composed poetical pieces with great ease and rapidity. And I am quite sure that many of the sermons I have preached when asleep have far surpassed anything I could produce when awake. These facts, and I could increase their number, are to me satisfactory indications that there are latent faculties in embryo, lying dormant in the wondrous spirit of man, which, when fully developed and brought into action (as they will be when the spirit is disembodied), will be found admirably adapted to the exercises of our future economy of existence. Without requiring any new mental creation, we shall feel as much at ease and at home in heaven as though we had never lived elsewhere."

Mr. Roscoe.—"Does the apostle, by this expression, 'When he shall appear,' refer to the appearance of Jesus Christ on the morning of the general resurrection, preparatory to the final judgment."