Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/141

 It is the peace which the Lord alone can give! It is a peace which passeth all understanding, and any attempt fully to describe it will fail. When heaven is thus formed within us, then, wherever we are, we carry our heaven with us; and when our Heavenly Father, in his goodness, shall call us out of this world, we can only enter into that eternal state which is in agreement with our heaven within.

Such is the nature of heaven. The divine love and wisdom must rule and govern in us, changing our affections from evil to good, and our mental darkness into light! or we never can enter the heavenly world, or participate in its delights. Be not deceived! Men tell us that heaven can be entered by an arbitrary act of divine mercy! It is a delusion of the grossest kind. Our Lord himself says, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." If he cannot even see it, how can he enter into it? Again: the Lord says, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God;" and, as though to prevent us from being carried away by any strange doctrine, he says, "Marvel not that I said, ye must be born again." The new birth is the regeneration of the soul—the effectual change of all the affections and thoughts from evil to good, and from falschood to truth, by which change the kingdom of God is formed within; and without this change we cannot, but by contradicting the Lord himself, hold out any hopes that heaven can be entered, or our happiness secured.

The man in whom heaven is formed, no sooner departs this life by bodily death, than he enters into the world of spirits! the heaven within him draws, by