The Bible is given to help us to live rightly in this world, not to satisfy curiosity about the other world. But yet some glimpses of the blessed life have come to us, for our teaching.
The first thing to learn is that the chief joy of Heaven shall consist in that of which we can only dream in this life, of which we can have but a partial glimpse even in the Hades or Paradise Life—the Beatific Vision, the clear vision and knowledge of God. All this life and all the Paradise life are fitting and training and preparing us for this consummation.
Wise theologians of old divided the happiness of Heaven into "Essential" and "Accidental." By essential they meant the happiness which the soul derives immediately from God's presence, from the Beatific Vision. By accidental they meant the additional happiness which comes from creatures, from meeting with friends, from the joyous occupations and all the delights of ever-widening knowledge.
But the Presence of God, the Vision of God, is the essential thing which gives light and joy to all the others. Without that Vision of God all would be dark as this beautiful world would be without the sun. Without that joy of God's presence all other joys would be spoiled, just as the gifts of this life would be without the central gift of health.
That is the central thought about Heaven in the Bible, the central thought of God's noblest saints of old, aye, and the central thought of some of the noblest amongst ourselves to-day.
Does it seem unreal, unnatural, to some of us? I can well believe it. Few of us love God well enough yet to desire Him above all things. Most of us, I fear, if we would honestly confess it, think more of the joy of meeting our dear ones than of the joy of being with God. But God is very gentle with us. "He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are but dust." He will gradually train us here and hereafter, and one day we, too, shall love Him above all things. Oh! I do think that to know the tender patience of Christ's love as we shall know it then, to know God as He is, with all the false notions about Him swept away, will make it impossible to withhold our love from Him. And if even our poor love for each other on earth is such a happiness think what joy may come from dwelling in that unutterable Love of God.
III. THE LIFE IN HEAVEN
What can we know further about the life in Heaven, about what the old theologians called the secondary or accidental joys as compared with the supreme joy of the Beatific Vision?
We know, first, There shall be no sin there. It shall be a pure and innocent life. All who on earth have been loving, and pure, and noble, and brave, and self-sacrificing, shall be there. All who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ from the defilements of sin, and strengthened by the power of Christ against the enticements of sin, shall be there. There shall be no drunkenness nor impurity there, nor hatred, nor emulation, nor ill temper, nor selfishness, nor meanness. Ah! it is worth hoping for. We poor strugglers who hate ourselves and are so dissatisfied with ourselves, who look from afar at the lovely ideals rising within us, who think sorrowfully of all which we might have been and have not been—let us keep up heart. One day the ideal shall become the real. One day we shall have all these things for which God has put the craving in our hearts to-day. We shall have no sin there. We shall desire only and do only what is good. We shall be there what we have only seemed or wished to be here—honest, true, noble, sincere, genuine to the very centre of our being.
No sin there.