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Or,
"GOOD WORDS"
CONCERNING THE BETTER COUNTRY.
No. III.
"They rest not day and
night."—Rev. iv. 8.
"Not enjoyment, and not
sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act that each to-morrow
Finds us further than to-day."
We have already regarded
this description of the redeemed in Heaven—"They rest not"—as denoting a
condition of ceaseless employment in the service of God.
We may consider it now as
suggesting a state of continual progress.
If we have found activity
to be a law of our nature, we may assert the same, with equal truth, with
reference to progress. The mind is ever aspiring after advancement. "Not
as though I had already attained," is the utterance, not merely of the
renewed spiritual nature—it is the voice of man's restless spirit in all
the varied phases and ' conditions of humanity. It is exemplified in
every-. day life. Without the consciousness of advancement we have not a
perfect idea of happiness.
Who does not feel, for
example, a ceaseless and ever-increasing aspiration after more knowledge?
This is all the more remarkable, too, in the case of those who have made
the largest acquisitions in human learning. [See Whately's " Revelations
on a Future State."] The range of their acquirements, instead of
satisfying, seems rather to whet their appetite for more; so that the
noblest and most gifted of the human species,—our Lockes, and Bacons, and
Newtons,—are those who are alike most conscious of the limited range of
present knowledge, and most ardently desirous of adding to their
intellectual wealth.
Transfer this to Heaven.
There there will be a constant aspiration after increased knowledge, and
holiness, and love, and resemblance to God. All our present mental
capacities will doubtless be indefinitely expanded on our entrance into
glory; but this will be only a fresh starting-point for loftier
acquisitions. The soul and its glorified aspirations will be like the sun
" coming forth from his chambers, and rejoicing like a strong man to run
his race;" ever climbing the firmament, yet never reaching the meridian;
coming nearer and nearer "the excellent glory," and yet still speaking of
it as "light inaccessible!"
We have some pledge or
foretaste given us of this advancement, even in our present spiritual
state. The renewed man goes "from strength to strength;" he advances in
the divine life; he becomes more and more "meet," by the transforming
power of the Holy Spirit, for the heavenly inheritance. May we not
warrantably infer from analogy that this advancement will not be arrested,
but rather increased and carried on in a mightier ratio? "If grace," says
the author of the "Saint's Rest," "makes a Christian differ so much from
what he was, as to say, 'I am not the man I was;' how much more will glory
make us differ! Doubtless as God advanceth our senses and enlargeth our
capacity, so will He advance the happiness of those senses, and fill up
with Himself all that capacity."
Add to all this—this
element of progression will be in one direction. Not as on earth, where
there was also a law of perpetual progress, but it was often a downward
progress;—when the aphorism, "Knowledge is power," had, alas! too often
the fatal interpretation attached to it of a power for evil; not bringing
the heart nearer God, but assimilating it more with the fiend, enlarging
the intellect only for its degradation. But the advancement of the soul,
in all the future phases of its moral and spiritual being, will be
entirely God-wards.—It will be the eagle's flight, soaring ever upward,
nearer the sun, till lost in the blaze of " the excellent glory."
God is alone of all beings
unchangeable. He is as incapable of any addition to His essential glory
and happiness, as these are incapable of detraction. —"He is without
variableness or the least shadow of turning," (James i. 17.) The devils in
a lost state are subject to a continual and progressive change, but it is
a downward and progressive deterioration; with the sainted spirit it will
be entirely amelioration. While the others are sinking deeper and deeper
in the abyss of woe, or retreating into wider and more eccentric orbits
from the great central Sun of all light and happiness, the redeemed will
ever be narrowing their orbits, coming nearer and nearer the great central
throne.
Reader, you are lisping
here only the alphabet of knowledge; you know nothing as you are yet to
know. Heaven will be, in a nobler sense than ever was realised on earth, a
student life. The angels, we read, "desire to look into" the mysteries of
salvation. They " stoop over" (as the word literally means) this vast
volume in the archives of eternity. You will then unite with these
principalities and powers in tasking your immortal intellect with fresh
discoveries of "the manifold wisdom of God." We know that those saints on
earth who have attained most knowledge of God, are those who have longed
with greatest ardour to know more of Him. Though Moses had seen more of
His glory than others, his prayer is, "I beseech thee, shew me thy glory,"
(Exodus xxxiii. 18.) David, whose thirst had been quenched more than most
at the fountain of infinite love and excellence, is heard exclaiming, "My
soul thirsteth for God," (Ps. xlii. 2.) Paul, who had soared to the third
heaven, and who "counted all things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ," (Phil. iii. 8,) still prays, like a lisping learner,
"that I may know Him," (Phil. iii. 10.)
Nor will it be one theme
only that will engross and engage the saint's glorified powers and
activities. We must not think of Heaven as some startling and violent
revolution of present tastes, and studies, and occupations; as if we shall
then be no longer the beings we once were, and be able to find no traces
of personal identity. Our feelings, our tastes, our studies, may possibly
and will possibly continue the same as they were, only glorified, and
sanctified, and purified from the dross of sin ! May we not there possibly
delight still to unravel the mysteries of science, the laws which govern a
renovated creation; or to ponder the story of Providence past,—this, too,
not confined to one atom-world, but as unfolded in God's works and ways in
other provinces of His empire? The very feelings and affections, too, of
our present nature (the best, at least, and noblest of them) will not be
quenched or annihilated; they will, on the contrary, have vaster objects
and loftier spheres for their exercise. Take, for example, apparently the
most airy and visionary of all our present emotions, Hope. Hope will not
perish with the present preliminary state. Poetry has truthfully
represented her, under a beautiful impersonation, as "relighting her torch
at nature's funeral pile." It is, in one sense indeed, true, that Hope
will then be changed into fruition; all distracting fears and misgivings
will cease—the hope of eternal life, the hope full of immortality, the
hope of being with God and His Christ, which in our moments of depression
and faithlessness was clouded here, that hope will be "swallowed up" in
complete fulfilment. But many of the present joyous elements of hope will
still remain,—the hope of reaching higher degrees of perfection, the hope
of acquiring deeper and yet deeper views of the character and glory of Him
who is past finding out; the hope of becoming more and more assimilated to
His holy image, climbing higher and higher the altitudes of bliss, and
obtaining a wider and still wider sweep of the moral landscape that grows
upon our view with the widening horizon.
I love that beautiful
description of Heaven, as the "rest" of God's people; when the clarion of
battle is hushed, every storm-cloud passed, every weary night-watch at an
end, the spirit cradled in perfect peace—the Sabbath of eternity ! But
more elevating and glorious still seems the description of heaven as a
place of endless and ceaseless progression ; the spirit making giant
advances in all that is pure, and lovely, and godlike; ever adding to the
domain of knowledge; having new and more wondrous revelations of the
Divine character and attributes;—comprehending more and more the mysteries
and secrets of redeeming love, and yet these mysteries growing with every
fresh discovery; still speaking of its "heights and depths," its "lengths
and breadths," and these as "passing understanding!" |
