an outward universe, progress, union with Christ,
resplendent purity of character, and you have almost all that we know of
the future; the rest is partly doubtful and is mostly symbolical or
negative, and in any case subordinate. Never mind about 'physical
theories of another life'; never mind about all the questions--to some
of us how torturing they sometimes are!--concerning that future life.
The more we keep ourselves within the broad limits of these promises
that are intertwined and folded up together in that one saying, 'They
shall walk with Me in white,' the better, I think, for the sanity and
the spirituality of our conception of a future life.

That being understood, the next thing clearly follows, that only those
who in the sense of the word as it is used here, are 'worthy,' can enter
upon the possession of such a heaven. From the nature of the gift it is
clear that there must be a moral and religious congruity between the
gift and the recipient, or, to put it into plainer words, you cannot get
heaven unless your nature is capable of receiving these great gifts
which constitute heaven. People talk about the future state as being 'a
state of retribution.' Well! that is not altogether a satisfactory form
of expression, for retribution may convey the idea, such as is
presented in earthly rewards and punishments, of there being no natural
correspondence between the crime and its punishment, or the virtue and
its reward. A bit of bronze shaped into the form of a cross may be the
retribution 'For Valour,' and a prison cell may be the retribution by
legal appointment for a certain crime. But that is not the way that God
deals out rewards and punishments in the life which is to come. It is
not a case of retribution, meaning thereby the arbitrary bestowment of a
certain fixed gift in response to certain virtues, but it is a case of
_outcome_, and the old metaphor of sowing and reaping is the true one.
We sow here and we reap yonder. We pass into that future, 'bringing our
sheaves with us,' and we have to grind the corn and make bread of it,
and we have to eat the work of our own hands. They drink as they have
brewed. 'Their works do follow them,' or they go before them and
'receive them into everlasting habitations.' Outcome, the necessary
result, and not a mere arbitrary retribution, is the relation which
heaven bears to earth.

That is plain, too, from our own nature. We carry ourselves with us
wherever we go. The p