Their joys, too, are forever multiplying, for these increase with the increments of wisdom and of love.
What, now, is the practical bearing of this doctrine? What is its obvious and legitimate tendency? Clearly this: to make those who cordially accept it, humble and earnest seekers after heavenly goods and truths; never satisfied with present attainments; unwilling to think themselves already wise or good enough, but always reaching after a wisdom more exalted; always going on unto perfection, yet never imagining that they have attained to it. It naturally suggests such reflections or inquiries as these: Should a person be content with that particular phase of religious truth which was adapted to the world centuries ago? Should we refuse to believe in, or neglect to seek after, higher aspects of truth than such as were suited to their eyes? We, who know so very little comparatively—should we cease to be receivers or learners, when the angels are inquiring and learning forever? Should mortals imagine that they have fathomed all the arcana of the Divine Word and the human soul—that they have reached the end of God's last chapter on things divine and spiritual—and fancy themselves so wise that they can afford to sneer at further alleged disclosures, when those shining ones in the courts above so humbly confess that all they know is as nothing in comparison with what they do not know? Should men on earth indulge the conceit of having already attained perfection, or be satisfied with any standard already reached, when the angels of the highest heaven are forever advancing in wisdom and in all angelic graces?
