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I ask again, wherein dost thou think the blessedness of heaven consists? is it in the holiness that is there, or in the freedom that is there from hell?
We have all got such a notion nowadays of the great good that the Gospel does in society and in the present, and some of us have been so frightened by the nonsense that has been talked about the 'other-worldliness' of Christianity as if that was a disgrace to it that it seems to me that the future of glory and blessedness has very largely faded away, as a motive for Christian men's energies, like the fresco off a neglected convent wall.
You can no more give your heart rest and blessedness by pitching worldly things into it, than they could fill up Chat Moss, when they made the first Liverpool and Manchester Railway, by throwing in cartloads of earth. The bog swallowed them and was none the nearer being filled.
Blessedness, for them, consisted in a complete vision of reality; and, since thought is the highest kind of vision, salvation was conceived of by them as the unbroken contemplation of the perfectly true, good, and beautiful. Hence arose the philosophy of 'concepts'; they idealised nature by considering it sub specie æternitatis.
The religious and educational part of the mission has been one of blessedness and promise. And in this, as in everything else, I have aimed to teach self-development. In connection with the gathering of the people in religious meetings, I proposed to commence Sabbath and week-day schools, with such teachers as I had at hand.
May we not see shining through this loving appeal a truth in reference to the heart of the great Father and Teacher, who, in the depths of His divine blessedness, has no greater joy than that His children should walk in the truth? God's heart is glad when man's is wise. The former is source, the latter stream. Only a pure fountain will send forth sweet waters.
In other cases no great suffering, or none at all, may be necessary. By some means, specially adapted to each case, every soul will be prepared to enter a state of blessedness. Even that final state may have lower grades, preparatory for the higher. It does not seem consistent with God's dealings with man to thrust a frail human spirit into the blinding glory of heaven.
'We love Him because He first loved us. That love will be the productive principle of all glad obedience, and you will keep His commandments, and here upon earth find, as the faithful servant found, that talents used increase; and yonder will receive the eulogium from His lips whom to please is blessedness, by whom to be praised is heaven's glory, 'Well done! good and faithful servant.
Poverty, hunger, sorrow, reproach, have no merit in themselves and issue in present and eternal blessedness only when accompanied by humility, trust, and patience, and when endured for the sake of Christ.
But the blessedness of that knowledge is the fact that if we suffer with Christ we are also to reign with Him glorified together not only workers and victors, but 'more than conquerors'. We are to sit down among that company who are able to say that they overcame by the Blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony.
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