So that we need not be utterly disappointed, if our picture of heaven be at present ill composed: if it seem to be little else than a gorgeous mist after all. We cannot fill in the members of the landscape at present. If we could, we should be in heaven. Remembering this our necessary incapacity for the inquiry, let us try to carry it as far as we may. And that we may not be forsaking the guidance of Holy Scripture for mere speculation, let us take the words of St. Paul--"_Now we see in a mirror, obscurely, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then I shall know even as also I was known_ (_by God_.)" This immense accession of light and knowledge must of course be interpreted partly of keener and brighter faculties wherewith the blessed shall be endowed; but shall it not also point to glorious employment of those renewed and augmented powers? How could one endowed with them ever remain idle? What a restless, ardent, many-handed thing is genius even here below? How the highly endowed spirit searches about and tries its wings, now hither now thither, in the vast realms of intellectual life! And if it be so here, with the body weighing on us, with the clogs of worldly business and trivial interruption, what will it be there, where everything will be fashioned and arranged for this express purpose, that every highest employment may find its noblest expansion without let or hindrance? Besides, think for a moment of the relative positions of men with regard to any even the least amount of this light and knowledge of which we are speaking. In order to take in this the better, think of the lowest and most ignorant of mankind who shall attain to that state of glory. Measure the difference between such a spirit and an Augustine, and then recollect that Augustine himself, that St. Paul himself, was but a child in comparison of the maturity of knowledge and insight which all shall there acquire. Such a thought may serve to show us what a gap must be bridged over, before any such perfect knowledge will be attained by any of the sons of men. And when we remember that all blessings come by labour and the goodly heat of exercised energy, shall we deny to the highest of all states the choicest of all blessings? So that the attainment of, and advance in, the light and knowledge peculiar to that glorious land must be imagined as affording unending employment for the blessed hereafter. And this gives us another insight into the matter. As there is so great disparity among men here, so we may well believe will there be there. All Scripture goes to show that there will be no general equalizing, no flat level of mankind. Degrees and ranks as they now are, indeed, there will be none. Not the possession of wealth, not the accident of birth, which are held here to put difference between man and man, will make any distinction there: but inequality and distinction will proceed on other grounds; the amount of service done