What here is faithfully begun Shall be completed, not undone.
The deepest rest and the highest activity coincide. They do so in God who " worketh hitherto " in undisturbed tranquillity ; they may do so in us. The wheel that goes round in swiftest rotation seems to be standing still. Work at its intensest, if it is pleasurable work, and level with the capacity of the doer, is the truest form of rest. In vacuity there are stings and torment ; it is only in joyous activity which is not pushed to the extent of strain and unwelcome effort that the true rest of man is to be found. And the two verses in the Book of Kevelation about this matter, which look at first sight to be opposed to each other, are like the two sides of a sphere, which unite and make the perfect whole. " They rest from their labours." " They rest not, day nor night."
^ Whatever may be the inability, in this present life, to mingle the full enjoyment of the Divine works with the full dis- charge of every practical duty, and confessedly in many cases this must be, let us not attribute the inconsistency to any indignity of the faculty of contemplation, but to the sin and the suffering of the fallen state, and the change of order from the keeping of the garden to the tilling of the ground. We cannot say how far it is right or agreeable with God's will, while men are perishing round about us ; while grief and pain, and wrath, and impiety, and death, and all the powers of the air, are working wildly and evermore, and tlie cry of blood going up to heaven, that any of us should take hand from the plough ; but this we know, that there will come a time when the service of God shall be the beholding of Him ; and though, in these stormy seas where we are now driven up and down. His Spirit is dimly seen on the face of the waters, and we are left to cast anchors out of the stern, and wish for the
REVELATION xxii. 3, 4 349
day, that day will come, when, with the evangelists on the crystal and stable sea, all the creatures of God shall be full of eyes within, and there shall be " no more curse, but His servants shall serve Him, and shall see His face." ^
3. This life is distinguished by variety. The blessed God delights in variety. In all His works, along with perfect order, there is eternal change. There is no mountain exactly like another mountain ; there are no two trees whose boughs bend into the same network of interlacing lines; no two leaves alike; no two clouds alike ; no two waves alike ; but the face of nature is infinitely diversified. So also is the Church. You see no two men with like endowments; no two spheres marked by exact similarity. Each one has his own peculiar gift for his own peculiar station ; some have to serve their Lord with the power of the pen, others with the power of the tongue; some by their poverty, others by their wealth; and each one has a distinct individuality of power and place and opportunity. We see Aaron with his eloquence, and Moses with his stammering speech. There is a Jeremiah to give the prophecy, and a Baruch to read it; a Paul to plant, and an Apollos to water. One man is a "son of consolation," another a "son of thunder." One servant has five talents, another two, and another one. As the Church in heaven is but the consummation of the Church on earth, we may infer that the law of variety which shines in this earthly exhibition of Christianity, and which prevails all over this region of existence, sheds its fascinations over paradise.
The highest service that we can render is to reveal God. It is true that at the best we can only reveal certain aspects of God to another. One by his sterling integrity gives a glimpse of the Divine righteousness ; another by his purity, a glimpse of the Divine holiness ; a third by his sympathy, some reflection of the Divine compassion; a fourth by his tenderness, some idea of the Divine love. Only once has there been a man — the Divine Man — who could reflect every aspect of the Divine perfections ; for He was the brightness of His Father's Glory, the express Image of His Person.
^ Ruskin, MocUrn Painters, pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xv. § 12 ( Works, iv. 217).
350 THE PERFECT LIFE
Here the whole Deity is seen, Nor dares a creature guess, Which of the glories brighter shone The justice or the grace.
If " Because I live," saith our Lord, '* ye shall live also," and as living, be partakers in that which belongs to Life: freedom, expansion, and variety. It has been often remarked that each one among the branches of our Lord's great family preserves some portion of His teaching more faithfully, reflects some aspect of His character more clearly, than is done by the rest, and passing from churches to individuals, we shall find that they who are in Christ will resemble each other in so much as they resemble Him ; they will be like each other (as in earthly relationships) without being alike. Our natural characteristics are not obliterated ; rather is the man renewed after Christ's likeness restored to Himself, that excellent thing for which God made him at the first, the type from which he had consciously fallen away.^