not, day and night, in his temple,--we know that they are to judge, and to rule, and to have power over the nations. We know not indeed, what manner of service that of the servitors in the upper temple is to be; whether, like the angels, they are to be ministers to the heirs of salvation in other worlds,— whether they are to be watchers and warners of the tempted, the sinning, and the penitent, whether they are to fly swiftly, bearing the Lord's messages, and rejoicing with those who do rejoice. Into the realms of conjecture we dare not venture; but this we may know, as surely as if we had been caught up into the heavens to see with our own bodily eyes, that among the prepared things of the prepared home, for the prepared people, there will be blessed and congenial service appointed for each, for which all that has gone before of waiting, and longing, and struggling, and working, has been but the preparation,—a service combining, indeed, the joyfulness of praise, and the sweetness of rest, but in its very nature possessing the active, useful, and progressive elements of WORK. "Surely the idea is inadmissible that an instrument wrought up at so much expense to a polished fitness for service, is destined to be suspended for ever on the palace walls of heaven, as a glittering bauble no more to make proof of its temper."* Trained in a school, purified in a furnace, loved with a love which the seraphim and cherubim have never known and * Isaac Taylor's "Natural History of Enthusiasm." never needed; instinct with yearnings and strivings after the high, the beautiful, and the immortal, we cannot doubt that the service of the Lord's redeemed, accompanied as it is to be with the sight of that blessed countenance, the veiling of which is the believer's greatest sorrow upon earth, will be yet higher and nobler than the services of the happy and glorious, but unfallen and unpurchased angels. XVI. CONCLUSION. "Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries."-2. CHRON Xii. 8. "Christian works are no more than THE CHILDREN OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. In our progress through this little volume, we have taken it for granted that those who have accompanied us in quest of a few useful hints belong decidedly to the number of those who rejoice in the title of servants." It is not impossible, however, that these pages may fall into the hands of some who may find the words, duty-work-service, hard and distasteful. There is a sentimental school in the present day, that would fain abolish all these ungraceful words, as they are deemed, and substitute some that are beautiful when joined to the others, but vain and vacant when left to stand by themselves. We hear much of the principle of "love," which is to supplant duty, instead of supporting and adorning it. We have Jehovah revealed to us not as the personal 66 Master, Father, and Saviour, but as God in everything, and everything as God-the works of his hands transformed into himself. We have genius, with all its eccentricities and weaknesses, turned into a faith and a worship. We have "earnestness" much lauded and much recommended-not earnestness in truth, but earnestness often in spite of truth; error taken no account of, as long as men are earnest" in maintaining it. We have æsthetic beauty reared upon an idol's shrine, and all that is "useful" branded, not only as devoid of beauty and elevation, but as debasing to the free and aspiring soul of man. It is little to be wondered at, that men, wrapt in a visionary existence of beauty and perfection, should look with contempt on those who so openly avow themselves to be "servants." What beauty-what merit-what spontaneous grace-what earnest dedication can there be in this menial work? Yet there was one instance of the most devoted love-the most earnest self-sacrifice-the most heroic beauty that the world ever saw, and the prime feature of wonder and praise in that blessed example was, that He made himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant. Since those marvellous days in the elder time, the act of SERVICE has been ennobled and consecrated. The doing the will of a master, the "ministering," instead of being ministered unto, has become work of which neither man nor the spirits that are hovering around us, need to be ashamed. In fact, whether recognised or not, service is the universal law. Aye, and though it sound not fit for ears sentimental and polite, we know that those who serve not God, are the servants, nay, the slaves of a hard task-master. Various and plausible are the forms of his unsatisfying-and if the chains be not broken-his eternal servitude. Some are slaves of the fancy-some are slaves of society-some are slaves of the flesh-some are slaves of the mind; and the fetters are not the less ignoble because unconsciously worn-the tasks not less menial because they are suited to the grovelling tastes of the servants-the work is not less essentially laborious, because it is of no avail: "The people labouring in the very fire for very vanity."-Hab. ii. 13. Thus we have a learned and industrious man, of other times, crying out upon his deathbed-" Alas! I have squandered away my life laboriously in doing nothing."* There is as great a difference in the two services, and the two rewards, as in the two masters. There is as great a difference between the apparent and the real beauty of the work here, as there will be between the beauty and the misery of the two states in eternity. We grant that the beauty of the senses, and the beauty of the feelings, and the beauty of the intellect, and the work to which they lead, surpass infinitely in external graciousness the everyday duty-the heavy cross-the weeping eyes-the *The learned Grotius. See "The Christian World Unmasked," p. 71. |