The Employments of Heaven
His servants shall serve Him. (Apoc. xxii. 3.)
While faith and hope will be at an end in Heaven the virtue of charity will remain. There
is nothing on earth so sweet as love; nothing that
fills the heart with such continual joy; nothing
that so occupies the soul and causes men to forget
all else. This is the case when the object of
our love is a perishable imperfect creature like
ourselves. How much more when the object of our
love is the God of infinite beauty, containing in
Himself every possible earthly perfection, not only
multiplied to an infinite degree, but altogether
higher in kind, and therefore a source of greater
joy than all possible created beauty.
A strong love makes the long hours pass away
in a scream of unceasing delight; no weariness, no
monotony, no desire for anything else. One thing
only checks the perfection of the happiness of love,
and that is the thought that it cannot last for
ever. In Heaven there will be a stream of delight
immeasurably richer, and the joyful consciousness
that there is no fear of its ever coming to an end.
As God is infinite in His perfections, they will
necessarily be inexhaustible. The various phases
(if we may use the term) of His Divine loveliness
will never come to an end. After a million years
there will still be the same inexhaustible treasure
of multiform delights to be enjoyed, and after a
million years it will not be diminished. No fear
then of sameness in Heaven, no fear of monotony,
it will ever be the same and yet ever new.