at least as good as angels, all ready for heaven and passing on into heaven without need of dying, or making a sea voyage. All this, he said, was God's plan, and the true theology, because, the first man having been a mere animal, God would certainly, in mere justice, not to say compassion, make all his descendants better than himself.

Our simple-minded seamen were astonished beyond measure at this man's preaching, so wildly out of range with all that they had ever learned from the Bible. But the things that he uttered were so far beyond the depth of Peter and John, that they would have thought the man was crazy, if he had not told them that the letter of the Word was only as the shrouds of the ship, by which one could get to the mast-head.

This, and what he had said about Paradise and Moses, proved that he knew something about the Bible, and perhaps in his way, and according to his liking, could reason from it. So they answered him that though the mast-head aboard ship was indeed an excellent place occasionally for a look-out, yet nobody could live there, neither could any sailor make an ascension from it; and if the shrouds were taken away after once getting there, it would be pretty difficult and dangerous to get back to the deck; nor could. they sail the ship by the mast-head, but preferred the King's chart, with helm and compass.

CHAPTER V.

THEY GET BACK TO THE KING'S SHIP, BUT WITH MUCH DIFFICULTY.-MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANIES AND SLIPPERY

PLACES. A FEW WRONG STEPS MAKE A VERY

LONG FALSE WAY. -THEIR FIRST SIGHT
OF THEIR SHIP'S FLAG.

Ir was truly a relief to the troubled minds of these Pilgrims in a strange land, and a happy awakening to their own consciences, when they had thus delivered themselves of such a burden of conviction; for every word they uttered condemned their own folly for being found so far out of the way. And they had spoken with so much earnestness and sincerity, that they often afterwards remembered their own sermons with good effect, applying them to themselves. But as to their hearers, the man with the balloon, after staring at them as if they had just come from some insane asylum without their keeper, turned away with much contempt to his scientific experiment for navigation in the air, fully expecting a

time of aerial celestial glory, when there would be no more sea, but only waves of light, and sleeping cars of comfort.

Quite a number of hearers had gathered to listen to the speakers, and some of them looked downcast and anxious, and might have afterwards remembered with good results the things told them so impressively from the Bible; though at first they seemed to think Peter and John a couple of fanatics. just let loose out of their strait-jackets. So true it is, everywhere, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.1 Yet they might know them, for the Lord our God is gracious and merciful to give the Holy Spirit to all that ask him; and he giveth liberally, and upbraideth not.2

After all this, they proceeded on their way with. many misgivings. But they had not travelled far, when they came to a region where there were beautiful churches, or buildings which they took to be churches, and many other external signs of a religious people. Accordingly they did find there a people quite religious in their own way, but as Peter and John soon perceived, not according to the faith to be learned from God's word and the 1 1 Cor. ii. 13.

2 James i. 5; Matt. vii. 7-11; Luke xi 13.

gospel. To their astonishment they found some who denied that the King of the Celestial Country was that Divine Being who was in the beginning with God, and who is God, and who became flesh for us, taking upon himself our nature, that he might bear our sins upon the cross, and die for our salvation.

And whereas the system of religion in the cross and in the love of Christ begins with self-abasement, the scheme of this people seemed to begin with self-exaltation. And whereas they knew the religion of the cross in its power to be a death to self and sin, they found that with this people it was turned into the cultivation of natural life merely, the example of Christ being consulted as an admirable guide, indeed, and a very wise, merciful, heavenly and comforting thing, but of the necessity of his death for them, or of their new birth and life in him by the Holy Spirit, they either had no idea, or no belief in it. Many of them carefully cultivated all the social qualities, and were people of much refinement in literature, and exceedingly genteel in their morality. The high cultivation of their native qualities they presented in proof that they needed nothing but that for an entrance to heaven. They thought it impossible that a community of such sweet farms, gardens, and pretty cottages, could ever

be sent to any worse place in the spiritual world than heaven, and, indeed, most of them did never believe that there was any other place for souls but heaven.

Now when Peter and John told them what things they had heard from the King's messengers, and from the King himself, and how they were certainly true, and that the world and all that is therein will be burned up with the perdition of ungodly men,' they smiled and pitied their simplicity, and seemed no way disturbed in mind for anything that was to come.

As to the voyage or pilgrimage to the heavenly country, they said that such ideas were quite antiquated; and as to the burning of the world, they said that it only meant a transfiguration into a purer state, into which they themselves were already passing, so that every pound of guano which they put upon their fields and gardens to quicken vegetation, and every moral virtue which they cultivated, was a part of the flame of that threatened conflagration, and thus earth was to be transformed into heaven. They said, moreover, that a railroad was in process of construction, and had been carried already as far as the Delectable Mountains, and from thence to the Celestial City a joint-stock company had prepared a line of aerial steamers and balloons.

3 2 Pet. iii. 7.