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 of labor, sorrow and joy, is to prepare and ripen us for heaven; and if it shall not do this, life will be a miserable failure. But how shall we prepare for it, unless we know what we are to prepare for? How can we travel, unless we know the point of the compass towards which we are steering?"

The Christian Scriptures are commonly regarded as a revclation from God. They are called, and are believed to be, the Word of God. And for what end was this revelation given? Was it not, primarily, that men might be conducted to heaven?—might become happy denizens of the kingdom of heaven, and thus realize the end for which they were created? If this be so,—if the attainment of heaven be a matter of supreme moment, the very end for which the Lord created us, and would therefore have us strive for unceasingly;—the end for which He came into the world, taught, suffered, died, rose from the sepulchre, and ascended to the Father; the end for which the church, the ministry, the institutions and ordinances of the Gospel were established; the end for which Christians erect houses of worship, and assemble there to hear preaching, unite in prayer and in songs of thanksgiving and praise;—if heaven, we say, be the great end of all this stupendous machinery and these sublime events, then a clear understanding and a well-grounded belief of what heaven is and where it is, would seem to be matters of supreme importance.

Christians have hitherto believed and taught that heaven is a place into which a person may be admitted by an act of immediate Divine mercy. Going to heaven,