Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
We shall not there be independent, of course, of constant supplies from
the great central Fulness, any more than we are here. One may see in one
aspect, that just as the Christian life here on earth is in a very true
sense a state of never thirsting any more, because we have Christ, and
yet in another sense is a state of continual longing and desire--so the
Christian and glorified life in heaven, in one view of it, is the
removal of all that thirst which marked the condition of man upon earth,
and in another is the perfecting of all those aspirations and desires.
Thirst, as longing, is eternal; thirst, as aspiration after God, is the
glory of heaven; thirst, as desire for more of Him, is the very
condition of the celestial world, and the element of all its
blessedness.
That future life gives us two elements, an infinite God, and an
indefinitely expansible human spirit: an infinite God to fill, and a
soul to be filled, the measure and the capacity of which has no limit
set to it that we can see. What will be the consequence of the contact
of these two? Why this, for the first thing, that always, at every
moment of that blessed life, there shall be a perpetual fruition, a
perpetual satisfaction, a deep and full fountain filling the whole soul
with the refreshment of its waves and the music of its flow. And yet,
and yet--though at every moment in heaven we shall be satisfied, filled
full of God, full to overflowing in all our powers--yet the very fact
that the God who dwells in us, and fills our whole natures with
unsullied and perfect blessedness, is an infinite God; and that we in
whom the infinite Father dwells, are men with souls that can grow, and
can grow for ever--will result in this, that at every moment our
capacities will expand; that at every moment, therefore, the desire will
grow and spring afresh; that at every moment God will be seen unveiling
undreamed-of beauties, and revealing hitherto unknown heights of
blessedness before us; and that the sight of that transcendent,
unapproached, unapproachable, and yet attracting and transforming glory,
will draw us onward as by an impulse from above, and the possession of
some portion of it will bear us upward as by a power from within; and
so, nearer, nearer, ever nearer to the throne of light, the centre of
blessedness, the growing, and glorifying, and greatening souls of the
perfectly and increasingly blessed shall 'mount up with wings as
eagles.' Heaven _is_ endless longing, accompanied with an endless
fruition--a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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