First, then, heaven is a place of rest, by which I understand the absence of all those things which disturb us here. True, there is happiness even in this life, but how unsatisfactory, how fleeting! Here we are never far off from wretchedness, and never long without trouble. You go into a great city: how rich and gay every thing looks; what crowds of well-dressed people pass you! Ah! in the next street there is the dismal hovel where poverty hides its head, and the children cry for bread, and there is no one to break it to them. You are strong and healthy, and it is a strange, fierce joy for you on a cold day to struggle with the buffetings of the wintry blast; but see, the rude wind that kindles a glow on your cheek steals away the bloom from yonder sick man, whose feeble step and sharpened features tell of suffering and disease. {254} You have a happy family, and when you go home your children clamber up on your knees, and your wife meets you with a smile of affection. Alas! next door, the widow weeps the night long, and there is none to comfort her, for the young man, the only son of his mother, has been carried to his long home. And as if this were not enough, as if sickness and poverty and death did not cause misery enough in the world, men's passions, hate and envy, lust, avarice, and pride, unite to make many a moment wretched that might else have been happy. But in heaven these things shall be no more. In heaven. there shall be complete and perfect rest. The poor man will no more be forced to toil hardly and anxiously to put bread in his children's mouths--to rise up early, and late take rest; for there they shall not hunger nor thirst any more. The sick man then shall leap as a hart; he shall run and not be weary; he shall walk and not faint. The widow's tears shall be dried, for husband and son shall be again restored to her. Oh, what a day shall that be, when dear friends shall meet together, never to part again, and God shall wipe all tears from their eyes, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away; when the bodies of the saints, glorious and immortal, no longer subject to decay or fatigue or death, clothed in light, shall enter the gates of the celestial city, and shall have a right to the tree of life! And there shall be no sin there, no gust of passion, no reproach of conscience, no sting of temptation. In this life, says St. Augustine, we have the liberty of being able not to sin, but in heaven we shall have the higher liberty of not being able to sin. Brother shall not rise up against brother, neither shall there be war any more, for the former things are passed away. There shall be no strife or hatred or envy; no wrong or oppression; no unkindness or coldness; no falsehood or insincerity; but within a perfect peace, and without an unalterable friendship between all the inhabitants of this happy land, each rejoicing in the other's happiness and glory. And there is no end to these joys of heaven. {255}