Can we conceive of any doctrine more wholesome in its tendency, or more eminently practical, than this? It points us to a life of active, faithful, self-forgetting service, as the sure pathway to the realms of bliss; and tells us that all who hope to enter there, must begin on earth to tread this pathway,—begin here to become forms of use in the kingdom of God, as all the angels are. It adds new meaning and emphasis to the words of one of our poets:
"Work—and thou shalt bless the day
Ere the toil be done;—
They that work not cannot play.
Cannot feel the sun.
God is living, working still;
All things work and move;
Work, wouldst thou their beauty feel,
And thy Maker's love."
And affirms, as an absolute certainty, the reasonable conclusion of another, who sings so sweetly the truth which every gifted child of song cannot fail to see—
Surely there must be work to do in heaven.
Since work is the best thing on earth we know;
Life were but tasteless bread, without this leaven—
A draught from some dead river's overflow.
"Work is the holiest thing in earth or heaven:
To lift from souls the sorrow and the curse—
This dear employment must to us be given
While there is want in God's great universe.
"There must be work for us to do in heaven,
Else that were a less blessed place than this:
The worthiest impulse to our earth-life given,
Must still be felt amid celestial bliss."[1]
- ↑ Lucy Larcum in the Christian Union for Oct. 9, 1884.
