1. What is the reward of heaven ? " Eternal life," people say. Yes ! " Blessedness." Yes ! But where does the life come from, and where does the blessedness come from ? They are both derived, they come from God in Christ ; and in the deepest sense, and in the only true sense, God is heaven, and God is the reward of heaven. "I am thy shield" so long as dangers need to be guarded against, and thereafter " thy exceeding great reward." It is the possession of God that makes all the heaven of heaven, the immortal life which His children receive, and the blessedness with which they are enraptured. We are heirs of immortality, we are 1 G. M. Meacham, in The Homiletic Review, xx. 527.
25o THE MINISTRY OF SMALL THINGS
heirs of life, we are heirs of blessedness, because, and in the measure in which, we become heirs of God.
TJ " You forgot to mention where heaven is," said the good lady to her pastor after a sermon on the better land. " On yonder hill-top stands a cottage, madam," replied the man of God; "a widow lives there in want ; she has no bread, no fuel, no medicine, and her child is at the point of death. If you will carry to her this afternoon some little cup of cold water in the name of Him who went about doing good, you will find the answer to your inquiry." *
2. In heaven as on earth men will get just as much of God as they can hold ; and in heaven as on earth capacity for receiving God is determined by character. The gift is one, the reward is one, and yet the reward is infinitely various. It is the same light which glows in all the stars, but " star differeth from star in glory." It is the same wine, the new wine of the Kingdom, that is poured into all the vessels, but the vessels are of divers magnitudes, though each be full to the brim.
3. The reward is both present and future.
(1) There is present compensation for doing good. It is im- possible to do good with a loving heart to Christ without growing good. Every act of kindness done in the name of a disciple, and every work engaged in and prosecuted for His sake, and every gift conscientiously made and bestowed for the advancement of His glory, expands the heart, enlarges the sympathies, and deepens the sources of its joy. There is no such pleasure to the heart as that which proceeds from a deed of Christian benevolence and kindness, done from love to the Saviour and His cause. Besides, the heart's true pleasure is increased in the proportion that it is opened by the expanding power of true Christian love through acts of Christian kindness done for the Saviour's sake. The deed reacts in blessing on the doer. Every lesson of Chris- tian truth which a Sabbath-school teacher imparts makes more precious to him the water of life as he fills up his cup with bless- ing for the souls of others. Every word we utter for Christ, every deed we perform, every gift we bestow, is even now in its reactive influence a present reward.
1 M. J. McLeod, Heavenly Harmonics for Earthly Living, 38.
ST. MATTHEW x. 42 251
TJ Expositors of sacred Scripture have spoken diversely con- cerning these rewards. For some say that all of them refer to the future bliss : as Ambrose, on Luke. But Augustine says that they pertain to the present life. Whereas Chrysostom says in his Homilies that some of them pertain to the future life, but some to the present. For the elucidation of which we are to con- sider that the hope of future bliss may exist in us in virtue of two things : first, in virtue of a certain preparation or qualification for future bliss, which comes through merit; and secondly, by virtue of a certain imperfect beginning of future bliss in holy men, even in this life. For the promise of fruit in a tree is there in one fashion when it throws out its green foliage ; but in another fashion when the first formation of the fruit begins to appear. And thus the merits spoken of in the Beatitudes are of the nature of preparations or qualifications for blessedness, whether perfect or incipient. Whereas the rewards set forth may be either the perfect bliss itself, in which case they pertain to the future life : or a certain beginning of bliss, as found in perfect men, and in that case they pertain to the present life. For as soon as a man begins to make progress in the acts appropriate to the virtues and (spiritual) gifts, there may be good hope of him that he shall come to the perfection alike of the pilgrimage [of earth] and of the fatherland [of heaven].1
TJ In helping others we benefit ourselves ; we heal our own wounds in binding up those of others.2
(2) The highest reward will come hereafter. The present life is only the seed-plot of eternity. "Nothing human ever dies." All our deeds drag after them inevitable consequences ; but if you will put your trust in Jesus Christ He will not deal with you according to your sins, nor reward you according to your in- iquities ; and the darkest features of the recompense of your evil will all be taken away by the forgiveness which we have in His blood. If you will trust yourselves to Him you will have that eternal life which is not wages, but a gift ; which is not reward, but a free bestowment of God's love. And then, built upon that foundation on which alone men can build their hopes, their thoughts, their characters, their lives, however feeble may be our efforts, however narrow may be our sphere, — though we be neither prophets nor sons of prophets, and though our righteousness may