Here our best pleasures are alloyed by their transitoriness; but there, there is no fear for the future. No wave disturbs the deep, clear sea of crystal that lies before the throne of God. The angel has sworn that time shall be no longer, and the great day of eternity has begun. O heavenly Jerusalem! O city of God! which has no need of sun or moon to enlighten it, for there is no night there! welcome haven of rest to the poor exiles of earth! Blessed are they that shall enter thy gates of pearl and tread thy streets of gold, for thou art the perfection of beauty and the joy of the whole earth. In thy secure recesses the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. "Blessed are they that die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord. My people shall be all just; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, to glorify me." But though it is easier to describe heaven as a place of rest, that is not the whole description of it. Heaven is also a place of joy, and of joy the most complete, the most pure, the most satisfying that the human heart can possess. Joy in seeing and loving God, or, as it is called, in the Beatific Vision. This it is in which consists essentially the Christian idea of heaven. I say the Christian idea, for our faith teaches us to look forward to a happiness very different from what we could have expected by nature. Of course natural reason teaches us to look forward to a future life, but it promises no other knowledge of God but such as is possible to our own natural powers when fully developed. But Christianity promises us a knowledge of God to which our natural powers, however enlarged, could never aspire. It teaches us that we shall see Him as He is--not only think about Him and commune with Him and adore Him, but actually look upon His unveiled Divinity, gaze upon Him face to face. It is not of our Lord's glorified humanity that I speak. {256} That, too, we shall see, and that will be a sight of unspeakable beauty and joy; but we shall see more: we shall look upon and into the Divine Essence. Now to our natural powers this is impossible. A blind man can know a great deal about the sun. He may hear it described, he may reason about it, he may feel its effects, but he cannot lift up his eyes to heaven and see it. So, naturally speaking, we have not the faculty whereby to see God. "_No man hath seen God at any time_," says St. John. "_Whom no man hath seen, or can see, who inhabiteth the light inaccessible_," says St. Paul. [Footnote 24] [Footnote 24: St. John i. 18; I. Tim. vi. 16.] Clearly there must be some great change in us, something given to us that does not belong to us as men, in order to enable us to see God, and the Holy Scripture tells us what that change shall be: "_We shall be like to Him, for we shall see Him as He is_," says St. John. [Footnote 25]