V.

OUR ACTIVE LIFE.


It is unnecessary to do more than remind you how labour is essential
here to our happiness. Rest from fatigue is indeed enjoyment; but
idleness from want of occupation is punishment. Nor is this fact a
part of our inheritance as sinners. Fatigue and pain of body from
exertion may be so, but not exertion itself. Perfect and unfallen man,
as I have already reminded you, was placed in the garden of Eden "to
dress and to keep it." And this is what we would expect as the very
appointment for a creature made after the image of Him who is ever
working, and who has imbued every portion of the universe with the
spirit of activity. For nothing in the world of nature lives for
itself alone, but contributes its portion of good to the welfare of
the whole. And man, as he becomes more godlike, rejoices more and more
in the dispensation by which he is enabled to be a fellow-worker with
his Father, and is glad in being able to give expression by word or
deed to what he knows and admires.

And if all this holds true of man now, what reason have we for
doubting that it shall hold true of man for ever? Why should this
inherent love of action, and delightful source of enjoyment, so
refined and elevated, be annihilated? and what shadow even of
probability have we for supposing that the heaven revealed in
Scripture is a world the occupations of whose inhabitants must for
ever be confined to mere ecstatic contemplation?