, very little. For we at least believe
that we shall live again. That we shall live again in some state or
other, is as certain to our minds as it was to the minds of our
forefathers, even while they were heathens; as certain to us as it is
that we are alive now. But in that future state, what we shall be like,
we know not. St. John says that he did not know; and we certainly have
no more means of knowing than St. John.

Therefore let us not feed our fancies with pictures of what the next
world will be like,--pictures, I say, which are but waking dreams of men,
intruding into those things which they have not seen, vainly puffed up in
their fleshly minds--that is in their animal and mortal brain. Let us be
content with what St. John tells us, which is a matter not for our
brains, but for our hearts; not for our imaginations, but for our
conscience, which is indeed our highest reason. Whatever we do not know
about the next world, this, he says, we do know,--that when God in Christ
shall appear, we shall be like Him. Like God. No more: No: but no
less. To be like God, it appears, is the very end and aim of our being.
That we might be like God, God our Father sent us forth from His eternal
bosom, which is the ground of all life, in heaven and in earth. That we
might be like God, He clothed us in mortal flesh, and sent us into this
world of sense. That we might be like God, He called us, from our
infancy, into His Church. That we might be like God, He gave us the
divine sense of right and wrong; and more, by the inspiration of His holy
spirit, that inward witness, that Light of God, which lightens every man
that cometh into the world, He taught us to love the right and hate the
wrong. That we might be like God, God is educating us from our cradle to
our grave, by every event, even the smallest, which happens to us. That
we might be like God, it is in God that we live, and move, and have our
being; that as the raindrop which falls from heaven, rises again surely,
soon or late, to heaven again; so each soul of man, coming forth from God
at first, should return again to God, as many of them as have eternal
life, having become like to God from whom it came at first. And how
shall we become like God? or rather like Christ who is both God and man?
To become like God the Father,--that is impossible for finite and created
beings as we are. But to become somewhat, at least, like God