2. It is an individual lot — thy lot. God is the true inherit- ance. Each man has his own portion of the common possession ; or, to put it into plainer words, in that perfect land each individual has precisely as much of God as he is capable of possessing. " Thou shalt stand in thy lot." And what determines the lot is how we wend our way till that other end, the end of life. " The end of the days " is a period far beyond the end of the life of Daniel. And as the course that terminated in repose has been, so the possession of " the portion of the inheritance of the saints in light" shall be, for which that course has made men
1 William George Ward and the Catholic Revival, 64.
DANIEL xii. 13 287
meet. Destiny is character worked out. A man will be where he is fit to be, and have what he is fit for. Time is the lackey of eternity. His life here settles how much of God a man shall be able to hold when he stands in his lot at the " end of the days." And his allotted portion, as it stretches around him, will be but the issue and the outcome of his life here on earth.
The faithful servant may have been disappointed with the results of his efforts in this life, but at the end of the days he shall find the work in which he bore a part perfected. In the wisdom of God the great result shall emerge fully achieved, bearing no trace of imperfection.
And he shall find his own labour in it. His works follow him. Every effort made in faith and humility has its recognized and honourable place. It was not thrown away ; it was not a failure after all. So, when God subjects His servants to that discipline which the most eminent of them, and those that have served most faithfully, have experienced, He is not sending them away as useless servants. Not so. Only the manifestation of the grace with which He gladdens them is delayed till all can rejoice together. They are lost to our view for a while. When they reappear, they come "bringing their sheaves with them." Yes, they come, not with sheaves only, as labourers whose work abides, but with wreaths also, as conquerors who have overcome, partakers in a victory that has become complete and eternal. " Go thou thy way till the end be : for thou shalt rest, and shalt stand in thy lot, at the end of the days."
Tf Geologists used to be divided into two schools, one of whom explained everything by invoking great convulsions, the other by appealing to the uniform action of laws. There are no convulsions in life. To-morrow is the child of to-day, and yesterday was the father of this day. What we are springs from what we have been, and settles what we shall be. The road leads some-whither, and we follow it step by step. As the old nursery rhyme has it —
One foot up and one foot down, That's the way to London Town.1
3. Of this lot no one can dispossess us. The term "stand" suggests the completeness and permanence of the new life. It is 1 Alexander Maclaren, The Beatitudes, 266.
288 A PROMISED INHERITANCE
no longer, " Go thy way " as a changing, dying creature ; no longer " Thou shalt rest," after labour, in some repeated friendly sleep, as of a new death, while other battles are fought, while earth and heaven go surging through another trial, and hell opens once more. " Thou shalt stand." Here at last is fixity of tenure. Here is possession of the incorruptible and undefiled inheritance. Here is the life begun, which has only to develop, and blossom, and shine in the light of God for ever.
"Thou shalt stand," no one dislodging thee, no one evicting thee, no one threatening thee, through the endless ages of eternity. Of how many settlements here upon earth can the same thing be said ? We take our place in these settlements, and we speak of them as our lot, saying, " Soul, take thine ease and be satisfied." But the settlement becomes unsettled. The lot is broken up. Here have we no continuing city. Our homes, our estates, they abide not. They abide not because of change. They abide not because of death. And the wind whistles, and the rain drips, and the icicles hang in many a pleasant bower where once the roses bloomed, and once the sweet birds sang. And wilt thou set thy heart upon that which fades ? " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." For " the world passeth away and the lust thereof : but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." May such be our attitude, may such be our position, as those whom no charge can impugn, no convulsion shake, no temptation overthrow, no vicissitude assail, but who stand in the end of the days — ay, and beyond the end — secure and irrevocable in their eternal lot.
TJ One day when Andrew Hichens sat beside him while he rested in his niche, they talked of Paradise Lost and its first small market value ; and Signor quoted a contemporary of Milton's who wrote, " The old blind school-master hath writ a book, which, if it hath not the merit of length, it hath none other," and added that now, perhaps, it was the second book of the world. " It shows," he went on, " that the most unreal, the spiritual portion of man, is the most real and lasting." Whatever doubts he may have had about the ultimate place his work should be given, of the dignity of his calling and of his aims he was absolutely certain. Professor Gilbert Murray's words, " There seems to be in human effort a part that is progressive and transient, and another that is stationary and eternal," are words he would have answered to with his whole being.