Let this thought teach us to labour in harmony with the will of God; so that we may never run counter to His wishes or His laws, but, both in the material and spiritual world, ever seek to be “fellow-workers” with Himself.

Let it also comfort us when we see “such a one as Paul the aged” fall asleep after his day of toil:  and strengthen us to bow our heads in meekness when we hear of the young man full of zeal and ardour, apparently fully equipped for God’s service, suddenly cut down; or the self-sacrificing missionary, who seems to have spent his strength in vain, perish with no one in the wilderness to give him burial.  Oh, think not that the work of the old saint who loved it so well, till the last hour of his existence, is ended for ever; or that the labours of younger brethren so unfinished here, shall never be resumed hereafter, and that all this preparation of years has been a mere abortion, a mockery and delusion!  Believe it not!  No day of conscientious study for Christ’s sake has been spent in vain; no habit of industry or self-denial acquired for Christ’s sake has been acquired in vain; nor will the burning zeal to do something for Him who died for them be ever lost in darkness or put to shame.  Soul, spirit, and body, will yet do their work for which they have been so exquisitely adapted, and so carefully trained.  He who has been “faithful over a few things will be made ruler over many things;” and “he who has been faithful in a very little, shall have authority over ten cities!”

Finally, this future life in heaven will be expressed in praise.  What are the ordinary ideas entertained by many excellent Christians of this heavenly work, or the manner in which it is to be performed, would be painful to describe.  But perhaps it is not too much to say that the heaven of many is little more than a grand, eternal act of worship by singing psalms of praise.  No doubt the chief work of heaven is praise; for praise is but the necessary expression of love, admiration, joy.  In what way this praise is to be expressed I know not:  whether in the spontaneous exercise of individual souls, “singing as they shine” with hymned voice, and fashioned instrument of golden harp or angelic trump; or only by the rapt gaze of a spirit absorbed in “still communion;”—­and whether in heaven as on earth there may be great days of the Lord on which the sons of God, gathered from afar, will come specially before the exalted Redeemer, when their joy, uttered by outbursts of harmony, shall wake the amphitheatre of the skies with impassioned hallelujahs,—­who can as yet tell!  But it must be that each soul in heaven being for ever full of love, will for ever be full of praise.  Every new sight of grandeur or of beauty, and every new contrivance of the Creator’s wisdom or power, will but prompt the beholder to praise the wondrous Creator.  Every intellectual height reached in the infinite progress of the soul, onward and upward, must awe it into a profounder sense of