We may get many thoughts of the heavenly life from other teachings of
Jesus. Life is continuous. Whosoever liveth and believeth shall never
die. There is no break, no interruption of life, in what we call
dying. We think of eternal life as the life of heaven, the glorified
life. So it is; but we have its beginnings here. The moment we
believe, we have everlasting life. The Christian graces we are
enjoined, to cultivate are heavenly lessons set for us to learn. If we
would conceive of the life of heaven, we have but to think of ideal
Christian life in this world, and then lift it up to its perfect
realization. Heaven is but earth's lessons of grace better learned,
earth's best spiritual life glorified. Therefore we get our truest
thoughts of it from a study of Christ's ideal for the life of his
followers, for it will simply be this life fully realized and
infinitely extended.
For example, the one great lesson set for us, the one which includes
all others, is love. God is love, and we are to learn to love if we
would be like him. All relationships are relationships of love. All
graces are graces of love. All duties are parts of one great duty--to
love one another. All worthy and noble character is love wrought out
in life. All life here is a school, with its tasks, its struggles, its
conflicts, its minglings with men, its friendships, its experiences of
joy and sorrow, its burdens, its disappointments and hopes, and the
final education to be attained is love. Browning puts it thus in
"Rabbi Ben Ezra":--
Our life, with all it yields of joy or woe,
And hope and fear,--believe the aged friend,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been, indeed, and is.