ness.

Now, some light is thrown on this inquiry by Holy Scripture, but it
must be confessed that it is very scanty. It is true that all our
meditations on and descriptions of heaven want balance, and are, so to
speak, pictures ill composed. We first build up our glorified human
nature by such hints as are furnished us in Scripture; we place it in
an abode worthy of it: and then, after all, we give it an unending
existence with nothing to do. It was not ill said by a great preacher,
that most people's idea of heaven was to sit on a cloud and sing
psalms. And others, again, strive to fill this out with the bliss of
recognising and holding intercourse with those from whom we have been
severed on earth. And beyond all doubt such recognition and
intercourse shall be, and shall constitute one of the most blessed
accessories of the heavenly employment; but it can no more be that
employment itself than similar intercourse on earth was the employment
of life itself here. To read some descriptions of heaven, one would
imagine that it were only an endless prolongation of some social
meeting; walking and talking in some blessed country with those whom
we love. It is clear that we have not thus provided the renewed
energies and enlarged powers of perfected man with food for eternity.
Nor, if we look in another direction, that of the absence of sickness
and care and sorrow, shall we find any more satisfactory answer to our
question. Nay, rather shall we find it made more difficult and beset
with more complication. For let us think how much of employment for
our present energies is occasioned by, and finds its very field of
action in, the anxieties and vicissitudes of life. They are, so to
speak, the winds which fill the sail and carry us onward. By their
action, hope and enthusiasm are excited. But suppose a state where
they are not, and life would become a dead calm; the sail would flap
idly, and the spirit would cease to look onward at all. So that,
unless we can supply something over and above the mere absence of
anxiety and pain, we have not attained to--nay, we are farther than
ever from--a sufficient employment for the life eternal. Now, before
we seek for it in another direction, let us think for a moment in this
way. Are we likely to know much of it? We have before in these sermons
adopted St. Paul's comparison by analogy, and have likened ourselves
here to children, and that blessed state to our full development as
men. No