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."

Whatever mystery there may be concerning the life that believers in
Christ shall live in heaven, we may be sure at least that they will
carry with them all that is true and divine of their earthly life. The
character formed here they will retain throug