But this is not the kind of heaven and heavenly life which the teachings of Jesus Would lead us to imagine. True, he speaks of the place to which he is going, and where, by and by, he would gather all his disciples, as "my Father's house." This suggests home and love; and the thought is in harmony with what we have seen in the life of Jesus during the forty days,--the continuance of the friendships formed and knit in earthly fellowships. But the vision of home life thus suggested need not imply a heaven of inaction. Indeed, no life could be more natural and beautiful than that which the thought of home suggests. We have no perfect homes on earth; but every true home has in it fragments of heaven's meaning, and always the idea is of love's service rather than of blissful indolence.
We may get many thoughts of the heavenly life from other teachings of Jesus. Life is continuous. Whosoever liveth and believeth shall never die. There is no break, no interruption of life, in what we call dying. We think of eternal life as the life of heaven, the glorified life. So it is; but we have its beginnings here. The moment we believe, we have everlasting life. The Christian graces we are enjoined, to cultivate are heavenly lessons set for us to learn. If we would conceive of the life of heaven, we have but to think of ideal Christian life in this world, and then lift it up to its perfect realization. Heaven is but earth's lessons of grace better learned, earth's best spiritual life glorified. Therefore we get our truest thoughts of it from a study of Christ's ideal for the life of his followers, for it will simply be this life fully realized and infinitely extended.
For example, the one great lesson set for us, the one which includes all others, is love. God is love, and we are to learn to love if we would be like him. All relationships are relationships of love. All graces are graces of love. All duties are parts of one great duty--to love one another. All worthy and noble character is love wrought out in life. All life here is a school, with its tasks, its struggles, its conflicts, its minglings with men, its friendships, its experiences of joy and sorrow, its burdens, its disappointments and hopes, and the final education to be attained is love. Browning puts it thus in "Rabbi Ben Ezra":--
Our life, with all it yields of joy or woe, And hope and fear,--believe the aged friend, Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, How love might be, hath been, indeed, and is.
What is this love which it is the one great lesson of life to learn? Toward God, it may express itself in devotion, worship, praise, obedience, fellowship. This seems to be the chief thought of love in the common conception of heaven. It is all adoration, glorifying. But love has a manward as well as a Godward development. St. John, the disciple of love, teaches very plainly that he who says he loves God must prove it by also loving man. If the whole of our training here is to be in loving and in living out our love, we certainly have the clew to the heavenly life. We shall continue in the doing of the things we have here learned to do. Life in glory will be earth's Christian life intensified and perfected. Heaven will not be a place of idle repose. Inaction can never be a condition of blessedness for a life made and trained for action. The essential quality of love is service--"not to be ministered unto, but to minister;" and for one who has learned love's lesson, happiness never can be found in a state in which there is no opportunity for ministering. In heaven it will still be more blessed to give than to receive; and those who are first will be those who with lowly spirit serve most deeply. Heaven will be a place of boundless activity. "His servants shall serve him." The powers trained here for the work of Christ will find ample opportunity there for doing their best service. Said Victor Hugo in his old age, "When I go down to the grave, I can say, like so many others, 'I have finished my day's work;' but I cannot say, 'I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again next morning. My tomb is not a blind alley, it is a thoroughfare; it closes with the twilight to open with the dawn."