The Good News of God | Page 8

lost. And
therefore God is perfect love, and his eternal life a life of eternal love,
because he sends his Son eternally to seek and to save that which is
lost.
This, then, is eternal life; a life of everlasting love showing itself in
everlasting good works; and whosoever lives that life, he lives the life
of God, and hath eternal life.
What I have just said will help you, I think, to understand another royal
text about eternal life.
For now' we may understand why it is written, that this is life eternal, to
know the true and only God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. For if
eternal life be God's life, we must know God, and God's character, to
know what eternal life is like: and if no man has seen God at any time,
and God's life can only be seen in the life of Christ, then we must know
Christ, and Christ's life, to know God and God's life; that the saying
may be fulfilled in us, God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is
in his Son.
One other royal text, did I say? We may understand many, perhaps all,
the texts which speak of life, and eternal life, if we will look at them in
this way. We may see why St. Paul says that to be spiritually minded is
life; and that the life of Jesus may be manifested in men: and how the
sin of the old heathen lay in this, that they were alienated from the life
of God. We may understand how Christ's commandment is everlasting
life; how the water which he gives, can spring up within a man's heart
to everlasting life--all such texts we may, and shall, understand more
and more, if we will bear in mind that everlasting life is the life of God
and of Christ, a life of love; a life of perfect, active, self-sacrificing
goodness, which is the one only true life for all rational beings, whether
on earth or in heaven.
In heaven, my friends, as well as on earth. Form your own notions, as
you will, about angels, and saints in heaven, for every one must have
some notions about them, and try to picture to himself what the souls of

those whom he has loved and lost are doing in the other world: but bear
this in mind: that if the saints in heaven live the everlasting life, they
must be living a life of usefulness, of love and of good works.
And here I must say, friends, that however much the Roman Catholics
may be wrong on many points, they have remembered one thing about
the life everlasting, which we are too apt to forget; and that is, that
everlasting life cannot be a selfish, idle life, spent only in being happy
oneself. They believe that the saints in heaven are NOT idle; that they
are eternally helping mankind; doing all sorts of good offices for those
souls who need them; that, as St. Paul says of the angels, they are
ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to those who are heirs of
salvation. And I cannot see why they should not be right. For if the
saints' delight was to do good on earth, much more will it be to do good
in heaven. If they helped poor sufferers, if they taught the ignorant, if
they comforted the afflicted, here on earth, much more will they be able,
much more will they be willing, to help, comfort, teach them, now that
they are in the full power, the full freedom, the full love and zeal of the
everlasting life. If their hearts were warmed and softened by the fire of
God's love here, how much more there! If they lived God's life of love
here, how much more there, before the throne of God, and the face of
Christ!
But if any one shall say, that the souls of good men in heaven cannot
help us who are here on earth, I answer, When did they ascend into
heaven, to find out that? If they had ever been there, friends, be sure
they would have had better news to bring home than this--that those
whom we have honoured and loved on earth have lost the power which
they used to have, of comforting us who are struggling here below.
That notion springs altogether out of a superstitious fancy that heaven
is a great many millions of miles away from this earth-- which fancy,
wherever men get it from, they certainly do not get it from the Bible.
Moreover it seems to me, that if the saints in heaven cannot help men,
then they cannot be happy in heaven. Cannot be happy? Ay, must be
miserable.