We shall all doubtless be changed, but in what direction?—­to something less, or to something greater?—­to something that is less we, which means degradation? to something that is not we, which means annihilation? or to something that is more we, which means a farther development of the original idea of us, the divine germ of us, holding in it all we ever were, all we ever can and must become?  What is it constitutes this or that man?  Is it what he himself thinks he is?  Assuredly not.  Is it what his friends at any given moment think him?  Far from it.  In which of his changing moods is he more himself?  Loves any lover so little as to desire no change in the person loved—­no something different to bring him or her closer to the indwelling ideal?  In the loveliest is there not something not like her—­something less lovely than she—­some little thing in which a change would make her, not less, but more herself?  Is it not of the very essence of the Christian hope, that we shall be changed from much bad to all good?  If a wife so love that she would keep every opposition, every inconsistency in her husband’s as yet but partially harmonious character, she does not love well enough for the kingdom of heaven.  If its imperfections be essential to the individuality she loves, and to the repossession of her joy in it, she may be sure that, if he were restored to her as she would have him, she would soon come to love him less—­perhaps to love him not at all; for no one who does not love perfection, will ever keep constant in loving.  Fault is not lovable; it is only the good in which the alien fault dwells that causes it to seem capable of being loved.  Neither is it any man’s peculiarities that make him beloved; it is the essential humanity underlying those peculiarities.  They may make him interesting, and, where not offensive, they may come to be loved for the sake of the man; but in themselves they are of smallest account.

We must not however confound peculiarity with diversity.  Diversity is in and from God; peculiarity in and from man.  The real man is the divine idea of him; the man God had in view when he began to send him forth out of thought into thinking; the man he is now working to perfect by casting out what is not he, and developing what is he.  But in God’s real men, that is, his ideal men, the diversity is infinite; he does not repeat his creations; every one of his children differs from every other, and in every one the diversity is lovable.  God gives in his children an analysis of himself, an analysis that will never be exhausted.  It is the original God-idea of the individual man that will at length be given, without spot or blemish, into the arms of love.

Such, surely, is the heart of the comfort the Lord will give those whose love is now making them mourn; and their present blessedness must be the expectation of the time when the true lover shall find the restored the same as the lost—­with precious differences:  the things that were not like the true self, gone or going; the things that were loveliest, lovelier still; the restored not merely more than the lost, but more the person lost than he or she that was lost.  For the things which made him or her what he or she was, the things that rendered lovable, the things essential to the person, will be more present, because more developed.