Though the rulers of this world know it not, yet often in their councils
angels have been spokesmen. Human eyes have looked upon them. Human ears
have listened to their appeals. In the council-hall and the court of
justice, heavenly messengers have pleaded the cause of the persecuted
and oppressed. They have defeated purposes and arrested evils that would
have brought wrong and suffering to God’s children. To the students in
the heavenly school, all this will be unfolded.
Every redeemed one will understand the ministry of angels in his own
life. The angel who was his guardian from his earliest moment; the angel
who watched his steps, and covered his head in the day of peril; the
angel who was with him in the valley of the shadow of death, who marked
his resting-place, who was the first to greet him in the
resurrection-morning,—what will it be to hold converse with him, and to
learn the history of divine interposition in the individual life, of
heavenly co-operation in every work for humanity!
[Sidenote: _Perplexities Made Plain_]
All the perplexities of life’s experience will then be made plain. Where
to us have appeared only confusion and disappointment, broken purposes
and thwarted plans, will be seen a grand, overruling, victorious
purpose, a divine harmony.
[Sidenote: _Fruition of Life’s Sowing_]
There all who have wrought with unselfish spirit will behold the fruit
of their labors. The outworking of every right principle and noble deed
will be seen. Something of this we see here. But how little of the
result of the world’s noblest work is in this life manifest to the doer!
How many toil unselfishly and unweariedly for those who pass beyond
their reach and knowledge! Parents and teachers lie down in their last
sleep, their life-work seeming to have been wrought in vain; they know
not that their faithfulness has unsealed springs of blessing that can
never cease to flow; only by faith they see the children they have
trained become a benediction and an inspiration to their fellow-men, and
the influence repeat itself a thousandfold. Many a worker sends out into
the world messages of strength and hope and courage, words that carry
blessing to hearts in every land; but of the results he, toiling in
loneliness and obscurity, knows little. So gifts are bestowed, burdens
are borne, labor is done. Men sow the seed from which, above their
graves, others reap blessed harvests. They plant trees, that others may
eat the fruit. They are content here to know that they have set in
motion agencies for good. In the hereafter the action and reaction of
all these will be seen.
[Sidenote: _The Heavenly Record_]
Of every gift that God has bestowed, leading men to unselfish effort, a
record is kept in heaven. To trace this in its wide-spreading lines, to
look upon those who by our efforts have been uplifted and ennobled, to
behold in their history the outworking of true principles,—this will be
one of the studies and rewards of the heavenly school.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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