As you ascend the mount of holiness, the next higher note struck will be “Hallelujah!” This note is sweeter than honey and the honey comb. In order to understand music on this key, you must live in the promised land. Thus far in the scale of everlasting joy we have language to express in a very faint degree the heaven that reigns within. But there comes a condition in our onward flight when all the language employed by mortal beings fail to express the joy that floods the soul. St. Paul, master of the Greek language, which is said to be very expressive, could not give it in that, so, doubtless, he gave it in the language employed by angels. “For,” says the Apostle, “Believing, ye rejoice with joy which is unspeakable and full of glory.” That must be a little of the bliss that we shall know when we surround the throne; bliss without alloy; joy unspeakable and full of glory. “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” God grant that the reader and the writer may have a great deal of this joy, regardless of the outer manifestation.
But in this condition of salvation, there will be outer manifestations; outer developments. Life is not an even spun thread. Rivers are not all the way through, the same, width and depth. The earth is not a dead level—a vast prairie—not all hill—not all valley, but a variety. The beauty of creation, is this endless variety. Who could bear to gaze forever on a vast plain, or mountain scenery? I believe that Heaven will be made up of change. It will take all of eternity to develop God’s creative power. It is true, there will be some general features that will abide; it is so with Christian life; but outwardly there will be new developments, new manifestations.
“Good works,” will be the most marked, demonstration. This people are “zealous of good works.” The work of beneficence occupies a large place with all that truly belong to Jesus. In this they will be like Him, who went about doing good to the souls and bodies of men; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, and so far as we have the power, helping in every legitimate way:
“The voice of charity is kind,
She thinketh nothing wrong—
To every fault she seemeth blind;
Nor vaunteth with her tongue.
’Tis not to pause when at the door—
A shivering brother stands:
To ask the cause, what made him poor!