Our friends will know us then: for their joy, will it be, or their sorrow? Will their hearts sink within them when they look on the real likeness of us? Or will they rejoice to find that we were not so much to be blamed as they thought, in this thing or that which gave them trouble?
Let us remember, however, that not evil only will be unveiled; that many a masking misconception will uncover a face radiant with the loveliness of the truth. And whatever disappointments may fall, there is consolation for every true heart in the one sufficing joy--that it stands on the border of the kingdom, about to enter into ever fuller, ever-growing possession _of the inheritance of the saints in light_.
_Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light_.--Ep. to the Colossians i. 12.
To have a share in any earthly inheritance, is to diminish the share of the other inheritors. In the inheritance of the saints, that which each has, goes to increase the possession of the rest. Hear what Dante puts in the mouth of his guide, as they pass through Purgatory:--
Perche s'appuntano i vostri desiri Dove per compagnia parte si scema, Invidia muove il mantaco a' sospiri. Ma se l'amor della spera suprema Torcesse 'n suso 'l desiderio vostro, Non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema; Che per quanto si dice piu li nostro, Tanto possiede piu di ben ciascuno, E piu di caritade arde in quel chiostro.
Because you point and fix your longing eyes On things where sharing lessens every share, The human bellows heave with envious sighs. But if the loftiest love that dwelleth there Up to the heaven of heavens your longing turn, Then from your heart will pass this fearing care: The oftener there the word _our_ they discern, The more of good doth everyone possess, The more of love doth in that cloister burn.
Dante desires to know how it can be that a distributed good should make the receivers the richer the more of them there are; and Virgil answers--
Perocche tu rificchi La mente pure alle cose terrene, Di vera luce tenebre dispicchi. Quello 'nfinito ed ineffabil bene, Che lassu e, cosi corre ad amore, Com' a lucido corpo raggio viene. Tanto si da, quanto trova d' ardore: Si che quantunque carita si stende, Cresce sovr' essa l' eterno valore. E quanta gente pin lassu s' intende, Piu v' e da bene amare, e pin vi s' ama, E come specchio, l' uno all' altro rende.
Because thy mind doth stick To earthly things, and on them only brood, From the true light thou dost but darkness pick. That same ineffable and infinite Good, Which dwells up there, to Love doth run as fleet As sunrays to bright things, for sisterhood. It gives itself proportionate to the heat: So that, wherever Love doth spread its reign, The growing wealth of God makes that its seat. And the more people that up thither strain, The more there are to love, the more they love, And like a mirror each doth give and gain.
In this inheritance then a man may desire and endeavour to obtain his share without selfish prejudice to others; nay, to fail of our share in it, would be to deprive others of a portion of theirs. Let us look a little nearer, and see in what the inheritance of the saints consists.
It might perhaps be to commit some small logical violence on the terms of the passage to say that 'the inheritance of the saints in light' _must_ mean purely and only 'the possession of light which is the inheritance of the saints.' At the same time the phrase is literally 'the inheritance of the saints _in the light_;' and this perhaps makes it the more likely that, as I take it, Paul had in his mind the light as itself the inheritance of the saints--that he held the very substance of the inheritance to be the light. And if we remember that God is light; also that the highest prayer of the Lord for his friends was that they might be one in him and his father; and recall what the apostle said to the Ephesians, that 'in him we live and move and have our being,' we may be prepared to agree that, although he may not mean to include all possible phases of the inheritance of the saints in the one word _light_, as I think he does, yet the idea is perfectly consistent with his teaching. For the one only thing to make existence a good, the one thing to make it worth having, is just that there should be no film of separation between our life and the life of which ours is an outcome; that we should not only _know_ that God is our life, but be aware, in some grand consciousness beyond anything imagination can present to us, of the presence of the making God, in the very process of continuing us the live things he has made us. This is only another way of saying that the very inheritance upon which, as the twice-born sons of our father, we have a claim--which claim his sole desire for us is that we should, so to say, enforce--that this inheritance is simply the light, God himself, the Light. If you think of ten thousand things that are good and worth having, what is it that makes them good or worth having but the God in them? That the loveliness of the world has its origin in the making will of God, would not content me; I say, the very loveliness of it is the loveliness of God, for its loveliness is his own lovely thought, and must be a revelation of that which dwells and moves in himself. Nor is this all: my interest in its loveliness would vanish, I should feel that the soul was out of it, if you could persuade me that God had ceased to care for the daisy, and now cared for something else instead. The faces of some flowers lead me back to the heart of God; and, as his child, I hope I feel, in my lowly degree, what he felt when, brooding over them, he said, 'They are good;' that is, 'They are what I mean.'