CHAPTER XIV. ACTIVITY IN HEAVEN. There shall He welcome thee, when thou shalt stand BRYANT. In the minds of many, future blessedness resolves itself into little else than escape from future punishment, and from the inconveniences of the present life. It is to them the consummation of ease; perpetual repose from labor and suffering; a quietism so complete as to admit of no effort; an Elysium, on whose hazy horizon and in whose balmy atmosphere no cloud ever rises; where everything is quiescent save the river of life, and that soon discharges itself into the Dead Sea; where, indeed, the negation is so complete as to admit not only of no trouble, but scarcely of anything else. Others, having more sentimental activity of mind, not satisfied with a scene monotonous and torpid, introduce more that is positive and life-like. Theirs is a paradise of spacious groves and lawns; of tasteful avenues and bowers; of soft breezes perfumed by perennial flowers; where society the most cultivated is always at hand, including companionable angels; where all are very beautiful and very graceful, and have the most exquisite sensibilities; where are no sighs, no farewells, no rudeness; where there is nothing in particular to do but to saunter over beds of violets, or muse in some sequestered spot, lulled by the softened notes of distant cherubim. True, when we reflect that toil and suffering are a part of the penalty under which our fallen race now labor; that bereavements are unavoidable; that disappointment comes from the failure of plans; heartaches from poverty, and ingratitude, and in general from the calculating selfishness of this world; it is not strange that the drying up of these sources of sorrow should sometimes seem the perfection of bliss; that the cessation of these sources of annoyance should seem all that is necessary to constitute heaven. Nor is it strange that even sanctified minds, and particularly the less reflecting, while longing to be free from sin, should also, in their desires for freedom from its present penal consequences, unduly magnify the negative elements of future blessedness. It is natural, and justifiable, too, that such of God's people as have suffered much from physical infirmities, yes, that all of them should look joyfully to the hour of death as the hour of release from fatigue and pain. We sympathize with prophets stoned and tormented; with primitive Christians in their baptism of blood; with the hunted Waldenses; with persecuted Protestants, who have come out from corrupt Christian organizations, and from Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Heathenism; we sympathize with them all, as they sigh for their abode, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest." Jesus! No chain, or scourge, or fagot, can touch you in the world whither ye are gone! Ye living and suffering witnesses for the truth, we give you apostolic greeting: "So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure. Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer. Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; Joy to you, ye martyrs of and to you, who are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels." And, ye sons and daughters of the Lord, now wasting with consumption, tortured by nervous derangement, or otherwise racked by pain, we congratulate you on your approach to that world, the inhabitant whereof shall never say, "I am sick." And ye spirits of just men made perfect, I hear a voice from heaven, saying, "Write, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." Ay, ye denizens of the New Jerusalem, ye authorized fugitives from the bondage of this nether region, we wish ourselves with you in that asylum of the free, whence none can ever reclaim you for fresh manacles and stripes! But a heaven of mere rest, in the literal sense of freedom from effort, we do not desire. No: "Give me a world where there is something to do," demands the believer who understands the nature and necessities of his soul. An abode of simple quietude and dreams is no Paradise to him. The Scripture use of the word rest, to denote future blessedness, is somewhat comprehensive and figurative. No doubt it denotes freedom from temp tation, perfect exemption from fatiguing efforts, from all disturbance from without, and all disquiet from within; but it is nowhere used to limit heavenly bliss to such a blank negation. True, it doth not yet appear what we shall be, or what we shall do; but free agency will be unimpaired; the resurrection-body will admit of strenuous activity, unattended with weariness; and the conditions of the heavenly state are such as demand positive and uninterrupted service of God. We are made for activity. Holy effort is the normal state of our being, while to be idle and inert is to be apostate. Before he fell, man was placed in the garden to dress it and to keep it; and the curse resting upon him since the fall does not consist in the work required, but in the weariness and discomfort which attend exertion. These, mingled with our required efforts, convert them into penal toil and drudgery. But the more noble and aspiring a mind is, the more joyfully and vigorously does it exert itself, and the more of luxury does it extract from effort. All great men, all useful men, those, too, who have accomplished great things for evil,-have been laborious men. Demosthenes, Cæsar, Newton, Franklin, Howard, Napoleon, worked hard. The Romans, in describing an extraordinary |