^ Alfred Rowland.
382 CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN
and destroyed them. The girl wept for a while, and then put her hand into her bosom and drew out thence her certificate of home, exclaiming with joy, " Thank God ! the bears have not got this." In the sealing of God's Spirit we have the certificate of our heavenly home, and no one can take it from us — the freedom of heaven is ours for ever.^
4. Heavenly citizenship is a present possession and confers lasting benefit. The heaven of which St. Paul speaks must indeed belong most truly to the far distant future ; if it did not, what would be the meaning of the hopes of a better world which lie so deep in all our hearts ? But it must be a heaven which is not only above us, but with us now, all our lives through ; and it must be a heaven which can have no charm for those who are besotted with the things of eye and palate and touch. And, if so, God Himself, and nothing lower than God, must be the very heart and life of the true heaven, St. Paul's heaven. We could not more truly describe it than by saying that it is the presence of God. Where He is, there is heaven : and where He is not, there is hell. Our common thoughts of heaven are not too high or too happy ; on the contrary they are too poor and mean. " In thy presence is fulness of joy ; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."
^ The only proof of a future heaven is the present heaven constituted by the indwelling of Christ in a man's own soul. The citizen of heaven carries his credentials with him. His passport is God's writing upon his heart. The assurance that heaven shall be ours is not to be found in an other-worldliness which ignores the present, but in the effort to make the heaven within shed its light abroad and so transform the earth into its likeness.^
^ " If thou art a believer," said John Eliot, the apostle of the Indians in the seventeenth century, " thou art no stranger to heaven while thou livest ; and when thou diest, heaven will be no strange place to thee ; no, thou hast been there a thousand times before." " The soul of man," wrote Sir Thomas Browne, " may be in heaven anywhere, even within the limits of his own proper body ; and when it ceaseth to live in the body, it may remain in its own soul, that is its Creator." " Thy joys of heaven will begin," wrote Theodore Parker, " as soon as we attain the character of heaven, and do its duties ; that may begin to-day ; it is everlasting life to
' A. C. Price, Fifty Sermons, xi. 270. 2 A. H. Strong, Miscellanies, ii. 172.
PHILIPPIANS III. 20, 21 383
know God, to have His Spirit dwelling in you, yourself at one with Him." ^
5. We must live as becomes citizens of heaven. The secret of a heavenly life on earth is to do the common everyday works of ordinary men, but to do them in an uncommon spirit, to do them in a spirit of intense and continual devotion to God ; whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, to do all to the glory of God. Parents are to teach their children that they may be fitted to do what God shall call them to. Masters are to rule their households as if they were looking after souls put into their charge by God. Servants are to do their work heartily, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as unto the Lord. Men of business, merchants, tradesmen are to set themselves to gather wealth, that they may have more to spend for God. Kings and those in authority are to govern so as to encourage peace, order, and religion. Every power of body and mind, every advantage we possess, our rank and place, our name and station, our influence over others, the charm of winning manners, skill in any art (be it music, or painting, or any other), the gift of noble birth, or situations of authority, all these are to be rendered unto God, used earnestly, honestly, sincerely, in making Him more known, loved, and obeyed.
^ Dante, in his " Divine Comedy," caught the substance of the truth when he made the angels who in heaven are nearest to God to be engaged at the same time in lowly ministration to the needy on earth. Dante only interpreted Jesus' words : " See that ye despise not one of these little ones ; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." To be a citizen of heaven, therefore, implies active service to every good cause, the betterment of all social conditions, the sending of the gospel to the heathen nations, the effort to bring to the knowledge of the truth our families, our communities, and all mankind. To be a citizen of heaven is, like Christ, to realize heaven in our own souls, and then to establish it outside of us by going about and doing good.^