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there, as here, be the vision which makes happy ; and the vision which makes us happiest is never a vision of indolent con- templativeness, but a vision to which we lend all our powers and all our vitality. It is, in fact, a vision in which the will is as much alive as the intellect, the sympathies as the imagination ; in which the whole nature springs iuto a new vividness of activity as well as insight. The ordinary anticipation of the blessedness of the future is of a kind of happy trance. But a trance is not the fulness of life, rather, on the contrary, a kind of half-death, half- life, in which the mind catches a glimpse of something beyond the verge of its ordinary horizon. Heaven, we may be sure, pro- duces, not a trance but a steady growth in the knowledge of God ; and growth in the knowledge of Him whose very Sabbath of rest is glad work still, cannot be mere contemplation. " My Father worketh hitherto and I work," said our Lord, when justifying on the Sabbath the restoration of power to the paralytic. And the " beatific vision," however free it may be from the sense of ex- haustion, which really means the inadequacy of our powers to the work they have to do, can certainly never be free from the sense of growing life and strength and of that Divine energy which we call creative.^
^ The effort to prove that there is a life beyond the grave is sometimes spoken of as selfish, by the very men who declare themselves most eager to promote the terrestrial welfare of their fellows. It is hard to say why it should be philanthropic to desire the lesser boon for mankind, and selfish to desire the greater; unless, indeed, the genuine philanthropist is forbidden to aim at any common benefit in which he himself may expect to share. In reality, this confusion of mind has a deeper source ; it is a vestige of the old monkish belief that man's welfare in the next world was something in itself idle and personal, and was to be attained by means inconsistent with man's welfare in this. Whether Christianity ever authorized such a notion I do not now inquire. It is certain, at any rate, that Science will never authorize it. We are making as safe a deduction from world- wide analogy as man can ever make regarding things thus un- known when we assume that spiritual evolution will follow the same laws as physical evolution; that there will be no discon- tinuity between terrene and post-terrene bliss or virtue, and that the next life, like this, will "resemble wrestling rather than dancing," and will find its best delight in the possibility of progress, not attainable without effort so strenuous as may well resemble pain.
^ R. H. Hutton, Aspects of Eeligious and Scientific Thought, 4X3, EPH.-COL. — 19
290 ST. PAUL'S RULING PASSION
There will, no doubt, in such a quest, be an element of personal hope as well ; but man, after all, must desire something, and what better can he desire ? There is little danger, I think, that, with eyes fixed on so great a prospect, he should sink into a self-absorption which forgets his kind. Kather, perhaps, the race of man itself may sometimes seem to him but a little thing in comparison with the majesty of that spiritual universe into whose intimate structure it may thus, and thus only, be possible to project one penetrating ray. Yet we ourselves are a part, not only of the race, but of the universe. It is conceivable that our share in its fortunes may be more abiding than we know ; that our evolution may be not planetary but cosmical, and our destiny without an end. "Major agit deus, atque opera in majora remittit." i
5. If life be not Christ, death is loss. For the worldly and selfish man has, no doubt, something here. The world has interests as well as Christ. The world's interests are many. There are almost as many interests in the world as men. One is interested in a book. Another's interest is in games. Then men are interested in politics, in merchandise, in science, in fashion, in work. There is hardly anything so small that it will not interest some one. Is this wrong? Far from it. It is right. How shall any one do well in anything unless he is interested in it ? He who teaches history well is the one who is interested in history. So far, so good ; but not enough. For all these things perish with the using. And when death comes, in an instant they are all gone to the dead. So, then, death is loss. The world as world has little of Christ in it. But there is worse still. If the world has little of Christ, hell has less. And, therefore, one well said of old, " This was the worst part of hell, no Christ."
^ Before Christ's coming the Tuscans made their tombs face the West, for death meant to them the close of life's day and the passing into eternal night. After Christ's coming the tombs face the East, for the Easter day had come with its radiant promise, bringing life and immortality to light. In this changed attitude is the secret of that overwhelming joy which Christianity brought into the world. It threw "a light upon the mountain-tops of death, which made them lovely." The same vivid contrast is to be found in the Catacombs. In one chamber, which dates back to the time of Julius Caesar, the tombs are marked with all the ^ F. W. H. Myers, Science and a Future Life.