Live, and bathe, and dive, to a blessed eternity!
Sir,
My work on earth is almost done, glory be to God! A nobler work in heaven will soon come on. Now I would serve the Lord—but then I shall serve Him perfectly, incessantly, and eternally; serve Him without sin, interruption, weakness, and weariness—which attend our present services; serve Him under the full and immediate vision of His glorious face—to His perfect and endless praise—and to my ineffable and eternal bliss.Oh, dear Sir, what grace is this, that the Lord has formed and shaped our hearts for His service, else for the perfect and eternal service of God in Christ in future bliss we would have no taste; whereas to a soul that loves the Lord fervently, the perfect, endless service of God in Christ is esteemed by him an essential part of heaven's bliss; nor shall any one soul that is thus prepared by grace for divine service here, lack the ineffable bliss of perfect, endless service hereafter. Alas! what would an unholy soul do in heaven? Heaven would be no heaven to him—he has nothing in him suited to heaven's enjoyment and employment. A soul that cannot make a life out of God, or rather that cannot live joyfully in God as His life, and find his unspeakable bliss in an entire dedication to Jehovah's praise, is quite unfit for the glories of the heavenly state; as there is not the least agreeableness between the object and the subject, so there can be no enjoyment. What thanks then shall we give "unto the Father, who has made us (initially, and will make us perfectly) fit for the great inheritance of the saints in light"—in light without darkness; in the light of His immediate Presence, without the least darkness of distance; and in the light of perfect holiness, without the least spot of sin to darken our perfect, endless praises!
Oh, how great and vast is our Jehovah's infinite essence—who with the simple vision of His glorious face can satisfy and solace myriads of glorious angels, and an innumerable multitude of saved men, when most capacious—and excite in all thereby perfect, ceaseless, endless praises to His eternal glory and their eternal joy! Well may it be said, "Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, O God, besides You, what You have prepared for him who waits for You!" For no line short of an infinite understanding can search the immense glories of an infinite Being. None but the Lord Jehovah has seen, or can see, those immense glories which He has prepared in His infinite self as the boundless ocean of our soul-filling and eternal enjoyment!
We shall be cast, when all-enlarged, into the God of glory for an eternal fill of all felicity, and there live, and bathe, and dive, to a blessed eternity! And though the communications of divine glory will not be infinite, because of our incapacity, as we shall ever be but finite recipients, yet it is an infinite sea of glory we shall live, and swim, and play in—to a blessed eternity just as the God of nature has prepared an immense ocean of water for the fish of the sea to live, and dive, and sport in—although they can never comprehend that which comprehends them.
Thus, Sir, I humbly think, as the apostle says, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him;" and then adds, "but God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit;" and elsewhere says, "we know in part" that we are to understand the revelation of them which is now made unto spiritual men, to be that which is partial and suited to our present condition; and though to the knowledge had in the present state he opposes that knowledge we shall have in the future state, and says, "but then shall I know, even as also I am known;" yet we are to understand the difference to lie only in this—our present imperfect and our future perfect knowledge of God, according to our creature-measure; because, as creatures, we can never have an adequate knowledge of an infinite essence. And as that revelation of God and His things which is here made to spiritual men, is denied by the apostle to natural man, "But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them," and as, in the text which he refers to, it is said, "Eye has not seen, besides You, O God," I think, Sir, we may justly form these distinctions:
First, That no natural man has seen, nor can see, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him, because he lacks a spiritual capacity to discern the spiritual nature and kind of eternal glory.
Secondly, that spiritual men, in the revelation now made of spiritual things unto them, have seen them but partially, and will hereafter see them but finitely.
Thirdly, That none but God Himself has seen, nor can see them, infinitely; as the glories prepared for our enjoyment in His immense Being can be searched by no line short of His own infinite understanding.
Thus, Sir, all the texts will harmonize; and how vast, in Jehovah's infinite essence, is our prepared bliss!
That the Spirit of the Lord, in His sevenfold gifts and graces, may rest upon you, dear Sir, unto all assistance and success in divine service, and that you may at last be blessed with a massive crown of righteousness, is my earnest desire.
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