re? "The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance." That is heaven, and therefore the Apostle tells us that
he alone who "believeth that Jesus is the Christ," and only he, feels
that. What is it to believe that Jesus is the Christ?--That He is the
Anointed One, that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed
life, the blessed life divine for thirty years?--Yes, but if so, the
blessed Life still, continued throughout all eternity: unless you
believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ.

What is the blessedness that you expect?--to have the joys of earth
with the addition of the element of eternity? Men think that heaven is
to be a compensation for earthly loss: the saints are earthly-wretched
here, the children of this world are earthly-happy; but _that_, they
think, shall be all reversed--Lazarus, beyond the grave, shall have
the purple and the fine linen, and the splendour, and the houses, and
the lands which Dives had on earth: the one had them for time, the
other shall have them for eternity. That is the heaven that men
expect--this earth sacrificed _now_, in order that it may be
re-granted for _ever_.

Nor will this expectation be reversed except by a reversal of the
nature. None can anticipate such a heaven as God has revealed, except
they that are born of the Spirit; therefore to believe that Jesus is
the Christ, a man must be born of God. You will observe that no other
victory overcomes the world: for this is what St. John means by
saying, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth
that Jesus is the Christ?" For then it comes to pass that a man begins
to feel, that to do wrong is hell; and that to love God, to be like
God, to have the mind of Christ, is the only heaven. Until this
victory is gained, the world retains its stronghold in the heart.

Do you think that the temperate man has overcome the world, who,
instead of the short-lived rapture of intoxication, chooses regular
employment, health, and prosperity? Is it not the world in another
form, which has his homage? Or do you suppose that the so-called
religious man is really the world's conqueror by being content to give
up seventy years of enjoyment in order to win innumerable ages of the
very same species of enjoyment? Has he not only made earth a hell, in
order that earthly things may be his heaven for ever?

Thu