342 THE CITIZENS OF THE CITY
the Abbey just as the doors were locked, and they turned to retrace their steps with deep disappointment, which found expression. 'Our words and disappointed looks,' continued my friend, ' attracted the notice of a gentleman, who approached us and said, " You very much wish to see the inside of the Abbey, do you ? Well, can't you come to-morrow ? " " No, sir, we must be at Chester to-morrow, and if we don't see inside the Abbey to-day, it's not likely we ever shall." With this the gentleman invited us to go with him, and, taking the keys from the beadle, he entered with us into the Abbey, walking by our side, and pointing out to us the things most worth seeing. Presently he came to a marble monument erected to one of our soldiers, and, as we stood looking at it in admiration, the gentleman said, " You wear the uniform of Her Majesty, and I daresay would like to do some heroic deed^ worthy of a monument like this." We both said, yes, we should — when, laying his hand on each of us, he said : " My friends, you may both have a more enduring monument than this, for this will moulder into dust, and be forgotten ; but you, if your names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life, you will abide for ever." We neither of us understood what he meant — but we looked into his grave, earnest, loving face with queer feelings in our hearts, and moved on. Just as we were leaving the Abbey, our guide told us he was the Dean, and invited us to the Deanery to breakfast next morning. We did not forget to go, and after breakfast the Dean came to say good-bye. He gave us money enough to pay our fares to Chester, and once again, in earnest, loving tones, he told us to be sure and get our names written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and then, if we never met again on earth, we should meet in Heaven. And so we parted with the Dean ; and as we travelled home we talked about our visit to the Abbey, and puzzled much as to the meaning of th« Lamb's Book of Life.' "
It will be enough to say that those words proved the turning- point in the lives of those two men and their wives, and that as one of them said, " We trust that our names are written in the Book of Life, and that we may some day, in God's good time, meet Dean Stanley in heaven." ^
^ R. E. Prothero, The Life and Correspondence oj Arthur Fenrhyn Stanley, ii. 312.
The Perfect Life.
343
Literature.
Bright (W.), Morality in Doctrine^ 130.
Calthrop (G.), Pulpit Recollections ^ 273.
Colyer (J. E.), Sermons and Addresses, 19,
Cornaby (W. A.), In Touch with Reality, 180.
Dallas (H. A.), Gospel Records^ 283.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iv. 107.
Ealand (F.), The Spirit of Life, 62.
Harris (R.), The Atonement, 65.
Hicks (E.), The Life Hereafter, 82.
Lightfoot (J. B.), Leaders in the Northern Churchy 161.
Lockyer (T. F.), The Inspirations of the Common Life, 232.
Maclaren (A.), A Year's Ministry^ i. 126.
Matheson (G.), Messages of Rope, 245.
Miller (J. R.), Our New Edens, 103.
Moule (H. C. G.), Christ is All, 203.
„ „ From Sunday to Sunday, 296.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, ix. 305. Ritson (J.), Life, 49. Smith (D.), The Face of Jesus, 35.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xiv. (1868), No. 824. Stanford (C.), Central Truths, 216. Stevens (H.), Sermon Outlines, 106.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xiii. (1876), No. 993. Walpole (G. H. S.), Vital Religion, 79. Watts-Ditchfield (J. E.), Here and Hereafter, 236. Christian World, March 24, 1910 (R. F. Horton). Churchman's Pulpit : Septuagesima Sunday, iv. 300 (F. Ealand). Good Words, 1861, p. 698.
The Perfect Life.
His servants shall do him service ; and they shall see his face ; and his name shall be on their foreheads.— Rev. xxii. 3, 4.
This promise or prophecy is the last and the best in the Bible. It seems purposely reserved to be the crowning point. For, to be with God, to be near God, to see God, to know God, to enjoy God, to be like God — these blessings are all subordinate to the blessing of serving God.
It is a promise not merely for a far-off heaven, but for a present practical earth. Ever since Jesus stood in the carpenter's shop at Nazareth, the prosaic place of honest labour has become holy ground. Experience has taught us that there are certain fundamentals of character which cannot be learnt from pleasure or from pain, but only from work.
Often indeed it is as useful as it is delightful to look through such revelations upward; to use the Divine promise — not our mere aspirations, but the promise — as the means by which thought may reach toward the better world. Our vision will be but dim, at the clearest; but light from that pure eternity, even shed through clouds, can bring with it a strange reality of peace, and hope, and courage. So, when the two Pilgrims in the great Allegory looked from the Delectable Mountains through the perspective-glass of the Shepherds, " their hands indeed did shake, yet they thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of the glory of the place"; and they went forward singing on their way. But more often it is our duty and our safety not so much to gaze up into heaven as thoughtfully to remember that we " pass through nature to eternity." To us, we may be sure, if the path thitherward is not a reality, the brightness of the end is but a dream.