"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act that each tomorrow
Finds us further than today."
"They rest not day and night."—Rev. 4:8.
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 everyday 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. 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. In heaven, there will be
a constant aspiration after increased knowledge, holiness, love, and
resemblance to God. All our present mental capacities will doubtless be
indefinitely expanded on our entrance into bliss; 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 chamber, and
rejoicing like a strong man to run his race;" ever climbing the skies, 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 "fit," 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 magnitude? "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 advances our senses and enlarges 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—where 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, until 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 1:17.) 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 improvement. While the others are sinking deeper and deeper
in the abyss of woe, or retreating into wider and more bizarre 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 realized 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 ardor to know more
of Him. Though Moses had seen more of His glory than others, his
prayer is, "I beseech you, show me your glory," (Exodus 33:18.)
David, whose thirst had been quenched more than most at the Fountain of
infinite love and excellence, is heard exclaiming, "My soul thirsts for
God," (Psalm 42:2.) Paul, who had soared to the third heaven, and who
"counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ,"
(Phil. 3:8,) still prays, like a lisping learner, "that I may know
Him," (Phil. 3:10)
Nor will it be one theme only that will engross and
engage the saints' 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, sanctified, and purified
from the dross of sin! In heaven, may we not 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, also, 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, under a beautiful impersonation,
has truthfully represented her 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
fulfillment. 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-call of battle is hushed—every
storm-cloud past—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!"