The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.
Why should it be thought a thing incredible, that a material earth should constitute the abode of the glorified Church? Is there aught essentially sinful in materialism? Has it not existed in the closest alliance, not only with spotless purity, but with Divinity itself? What is there essentially in materialism why it should not again be the home of the redeemed and the kingdom of the Redeemer? I cannot for a moment believe that the Paradise of the blessed will be a paradise of state rather than of place—an aerial paradise floating in ether, suspended upon nothing, from which all warm, sensible, tangible attendants which inspire with life and pencil with beauteous tints our present abode, will be utterly excluded. Extirpate ungodliness from our present world, annihilate its taint, hush its groans, dry its tears; let there be no more sin and sorrow, disease and death, and I ask, Who would not be willing to reign with Christ upon this globe forever? It is a3beautiful world! There are spots of grandeur—there are landscapes of beauty, upon which, as one gazes, one finds it hard to believe the blight of the curse, the breath of sin, hath touched and tainted them. I have stood and wept amidst the glory and magnificence of Alpine scenery. The spot which transfixed me for a while in mute amazement brought before my eyes a range of landscape in which every object of beauty and sublimity, moulded into every form and tint of color, seemed crowded in one vast glorious panorama. And as I gazed upon that overpowering scene—the deep, wide vale stretching at my feet—on my right and left, mountains swelling to the skies, clad with green, purple, and lilac—before me the monarch of mountains encircled by his army of snow-clad companions, reminding one of the four-and-twenty elders around the great white throne—I felt that in all that glorious, that magnificent, that tender, that sublime scenery, there was one object, and one only, upon which the blight and taint of sin had fallen, and from which I turned with tears and loathing—that object was myself. The valley seemed vocal with God's praise; the glacier bathed in the light of the setting sun, seemed a reflection of the divine purity; the mountains, clad with dazzling snow, appeared like Tabor when the glory of the transfiguration rested upon it; every object seemed to please, “and only man was vile.” Let this earth of ours be purified as by fire, let its subterranean flames break forth and consume all that man has marred, and sin has tainted, and God has cursed; and then shall spring from its ashes, in more than phoenix-like splendor, a new material world with every form of material loveliness, bathed in every gleam of material splendor, redolent with holiness and vocal with song, and over and upon it Christ and his Church shall reign and abide for ever and ever!—London Monthly Review.