e as sinners. Fatigue and pain of body from
exertion may be so, but not exertion itself. Perfect and unfallen man,
as I have already reminded you, was placed in the garden of Eden "to
dress and to keep it." And this is what we would expect as the very
appointment for a creature made after the image of Him who is ever
working, and who has imbued every portion of the universe with the
spirit of activity. For nothing in the world of nature lives for
itself alone, but contributes its portion of good to the welfare of
the whole. And man, as he becomes more godlike, rejoices more and more
in the dispensation by which he is enabled to be a fellow-worker with
his Father, and is glad in being able to give expression by word or
deed to what he knows and admires.

And if all this holds true of man now, what reason have we for
doubting that it shall hold true of man for ever? Why should this
inherent love of action, and delightful source of enjoyment, so
refined and elevated, be annihilated? and what shadow even of
probability have we for supposing that the heaven revealed in
Scripture is a world the occupations of whose inhabitants must for
ever be confined to mere ecstatic contemplation?

This cannot be! Such a heaven has not been prepared for man. Arguing
from analogy, the presumption is that those mental and moral habits
which have been acquired with so much difficulty, and at so much
expense in this present world, will not be cast away as useless in the
next, but find there such scope for their exercise as cannot possibly
be afforded to them within their present limited sphere of action. But
this presumption is immensely strengthened by what we know of the life
of the angels, to which I have more than once alluded, as it bears so
much upon the several topics discussed by us. These angels "excel in
strength;" and they "do His commandments, and hearken to the voice of
His word." As "ministers of His," they "do His pleasure." They are
represented to us as ever actively employed as messengers of peace or
of woe. They have destroyed armies and cities; delivered captives;
comforted the disconsolate; and are represented as the future reapers
of the earth's harvest. All this proves, at least, that the sinless
perfection and happiness of heaven are not inconsistent with a life
of busy labour; and that though God can dispense with the services of
either men or angels, yet, as they cannot be happy without rendering
such services to Him