Rest is sacred, celestial, and the appreciation of it and longing for it are mingled with the religious sentiment of all nations.  I cannot remember the time when there was not to me a certain ineffable suggestion in the apostolic words, “There remaineth, therefore, a rest for the people of God.”  But the repose of the godlike must, as that of God himself, be infinitely removed from mere sluggish inactivity; since the conception of action is the conception of existence itself,—­that is, of Being in the act of self-manifestation.  Celestial rest is found in action so universal, so purely identical with the great circulations of Nature, that, like the circulation of the blood and the act of breathing, it is not a subtraction from vital resource, but is, on the contrary, part of the very fact of life and all its felicities.  This does not exclude rhythmic or recreative rest; but the need of such rest detracts nothing from pleasure or perfection.  In heaven also, if such figure of speech be allowable, may be that toil which shall render grateful the cessation from toil, and give sweetness to sleep; but right weariness has its own peculiar delight, no less than right exercise; and as the glories of sunset equal those of dawn, so with equal, though diverse pleasure, should noble and temperate labor take off its sandals for evening repose, and put them on to go forth “beneath the opening eyelids of the morn.”  Yet, allowing a place for this rhythm in the detail and close inspection even of heavenly life, it still holds true on the broad scale, that pure beauty and beatitude are found there only where life and character sweep in orbits of that complete expression which is at once divine labor and divine repose.

Observe, now, that this rest-motion, as being without waste or loss, is a manifested immortality, since that which wastes not ends not; and therefore it puts into every motion the very character and suggestion of immortal life.  Yea, one deed rightly done, and the doer is in heaven, —­is of the company of immortals.  One deed so done that in it is no mortality; and in that deed the meaning of man’s history,—­the meaning, indeed, and the glory, of existence itself,—­are declared.  Easy, therefore, it is to see how any action may be invested with universal significance and the utmost conceivable charm.  The smaller the realm and the humbler the act into which this amplitude and universality of spirit are carried, the more are they emphasized and set off; so that, without opportunity of unusual occasion, or singular opulence of natural power, a man’s life may possess all that majesty which the imagination pictures in archangels and in gods.  Indeed, it is but simple statement of fact to say, that he who rests utterly in his action shall belittle not only whatsoever history has recorded, but all which that poet of poets, Mankind, has ever dreamed or fabled of grace and greatness.  He shall not peer about with curiosity to spy approbation, or