ll not get what they hope for; and
they would not like it if they did. I do not believe that there are
any such; and sure I am, if there are, that it is not Christianity
that has made them so. But a thought that we must not take as a
supreme motive, we may rightly accept as a subsidiary encouragement.
We are not Christians unless the dominant motive of our lives be the
love of the Lord Jesus Christ; and unless we feel a necessity,
because of loving Him, to aim to be like Him. But, that being so, who
shall hinder me from quickening my flagging energies, and stimulating
my torpid faith, and encouraging my cowardice, by the thought that
yonder there remain rest, victory, the fulness of life, the flashing
of glory, and the purity of perfect righteousness? If such hopes are
low and selfish as motives, would God that more of us were obedient
to such low and selfish motives!

Now it seems to me, that this spring of action is not as strong in
the Christians of this day as it used to be, and as it should be. You
do not hear much about heaven in ordinary preaching. I do not think
it occupies a very large place in the average Christian man's mind.
We have all got such a notion nowadays of the great good that the
Gospel does in society and in the present, and some of us have been
so frightened by the nonsense that has been talked about the
'other-worldliness' of Christianity--as if that was a disgrace to
it--that it seems to me that the future of glory and blessedness has
very largely faded away, as a motive for Christian men's energies,
like the fresco off a neglected convent wall.

And I want to say, dear brethren, that I believe, for my part, that
we suffer terribly by the comparative neglect into which this side of
Christian truth has fallen. Do you not think that it would make a
difference to you if you really believed, and carried always with you
in your thoughts, the thrilling consciousness that every act of the
present was registered, and would tell on the far side yonder? We do
not know much of that future, and these days are intolerant of mere
unverifiable hypotheses. But accuracy of knowledge and definiteness
of impression do not always go together, nor is there the fulness of
the one wanted for the clearness and force of the other. Though the
thread which we throw across the abyss is very slender, it is strong
enough, like the string of a boy's kite, to bear the messengers of
hope and desire that we may send up by it,