w ask yourselves, what does the child at its play know of the
employments of the man? Such portions of them as are merely external
and material he may take in, and represent in his sport: but the work
and anxiety of the student at his book, and the man of business at his
desk, these are of necessity entirely hidden from the child. And so it
is onward through the advancing stages of life. Of each of them it may
be said, "We know not with what we must serve the Lord, until we come
hither."

So that we need not be utterly disappointed, if our picture of heaven
be at present ill composed: if it seem to be little else than a
gorgeous mist after all. We cannot fill in the members of the
landscape at present. If we could, we should be in heaven.

Remembering this our necessary incapacity for the inquiry, let us try
to carry it as far as we may. And that we may not be forsaking the
guidance of Holy Scripture for mere speculation, let us take the words
of St. Paul--"_Now we see in a mirror, obscurely, but then face to
face: now I know in part, but then I shall know even as also I was
known_ (_by God_.)" This immense accession of light and knowledge must
of course be interpreted partly of keener and brighter faculties
wherewith the blessed shall be endowed; but shall it not also point to
glorious employment of those renewed and augmented powers? How could
one endowed with them ever remain idle? What a restless, ardent,
many-handed thing is genius even here below? How the highly endowed
spirit searches about and tries its wings, now hither now thither, in
the vast realms of intellectual life! And if it be so here, with the
body weighing on us, with the clogs of worldly business and trivial
interruption, what will it be there, where everything will be
fashioned and arranged for this express purpose, that every highest
employment may find its noblest expansion without let or hindrance?
Besides, think for a moment of the relative positions of men with
regard to any even the least amount of this light and knowledge of
which we are speaking. In order to take in this the better, think of
the lowest and most ignorant of mankind who shall attain to that state
of glory. Measure the difference between such a spirit and an
Augustine, and then recollect that Augustine himself, that St. Paul
himself, was but a child in comparison of the maturity of knowledge
and insight which all shall there acquire. Such a thought may serve to
show us what