The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist."

How much even Christ Himself has left untold! At His incarnation, and
again at His resurrection, He came forth from that world into which we
all must pass; yet how few were His words concerning it, how little able
we still are to picture it! Nevertheless, if He has not told us all, He
has told us enough. Let us recall some of His words.

He spoke of "everlasting habitations"--"eternal tabernacles"--into which
men should be received. Here we are as pilgrims and sojourners, dwelling
in a land not our own.

"Earth's but a sorry tent,
Pitched but a few frail days;"

and the chances and changes of this mortal life often bear heavily upon
us. But there these things have no place. Moth and rust, change and
decay, sorrow and death cannot enter there.

"The day's aye fair
I' the land o' the leal."

Again, Christ said, "I go to prepare a place for you." Just as when a
little child is born into the world it comes to a place made ready for
it by the thousand little tendernesses of a mother's love, so does death
lead us, not into the bleak, inhospitable night, but into the "Father's
house," to a place which love has made ready for our coming. "Father,
into Thy hands I commend My spirit." _Into Thy hands_--thither Jesus
passed from the Cross and the cruel hands of men; thither have passed
the lost ones of our love; thither, too, we in our turn shall pass. Why,
then, if we believe in Jesus should we be afraid? "Having death for my
friend," says an unknown Greek writer, "I tremble not at shadows."
Having Jesus for our friend we tremble not at death.

Further, Christ taught us, the heavenly life is a life of service. Every
one knows how largely the idea of rest has entered into our common
conceptions of the future. It is indeed a pathetic commentary on the
weariness and restlessness of life that with so many rest should almost
have come to be a synonym for blessedness. But rest is far from being
the final word of Scripture concerning the life to come. Surely life,
with its thousandfold activities, is not meant as a preparation for a
Paradise of inaction. What can be the meaning and purpose of the life
which we are called to pass through here, if our hereafter is to be but
one prolonged act of adoration? We shall carry with us into the future
not character only but capacity; and can it be that