And yet, is this the complete ideal of life? and is this the way in which we are to accomplish its true end? I think we may safely say that even the brightest realizations of religion should be comparatively rare, otherwise we forget the work and lose the discipline of our mortal lot.The great saints--the men whose names stand highest in the calendar of the church universal--are not the ascetics, not the contemplators, not the men who walked apart in cloisters;but those who came down from the Mount of Communion and Glory, to take a part in the world; who have carried its burdens in their souls, and its scars upon their breasts; who have wrought for its deepest.interests, and died for its highest good; whose garments have swept its common ways, and whose voices have thrilled in its low places of suffering and of need; -men who have leaned lovingly against the world, until the motion of their great hearts jars in its pulses forever; men who have gone up from dust, and blood, and crackling fire; men with faces of serene endurance and lofty denial, yet of broad, genial, human sympathies; --these are the men who wear starry crowns, and walk in white robes, yonder.
We need our visions for inspiration, but we must work in comparative shadow; otherwise, the very highest revelations would become monotonous, and we should long for still higher.
And yet, are there not some whose desire is for constant revelation? Who would see supernatural sights, and hear supernatural sounds, and know all the realities towards which they are drifting, as well as those in which they must work?
They would make this world a mount of perpetual vision;overlooking the fact that it has its own purposes, to be wrought out by its own light, and within its own limits.For my part, I must confess that I do not share in this desire to know all about the next world, and to see beforehand everything that is going to be.I have no solicitude about the mere scenery and modes of the future state.But this desire to be in the midst of perpetual revelations argues that there is not enough to fill our minds and excite our wonder here; when all things around us are pregnant with suggestion, and invite us, and offer unfathomed depths for our curious seeking.There is so much here, too, for our love and our discipline; so much for us to do, that we hardly need more revelations just now; -they might overwhelm and disturb us in the pursuit of these appointed ends.Moreover, the gratification of this desire would foreclose that glorious anticipation, that trembling expectancy, which is so fraught with inspiration and delight, --the joy of the unknown, the bliss of the thought that there is a great deal yet to be revealed.
We do need some revelation; just such as has been given; --a glimpse of the immortal splendors; an articulate Voice from heaven --a view of the glorified Jesus; a revelation in a point of time, just as that on the mount was in point of space.We need some; but not too much, --not all revelation;not revelation as a customary fact.If so, I repeat, we should neglect this ordained field of thought and action.We should live in a sphere of supernaturalism, --in an atmosphere of wonder, --amid a planetary roll of miracles;still unsatisfied; still needing the suggestion of higher points to break the stupendous monotony.
And I insist that work, not vision, is to be the ordinary method of our being here, against the position of those who shut themselves in to a contemplative and extatic piety.
They would escape from the age, and its anxieties; they would recall past conditions; they would get into the shadow of cloisters, and build cathedrals for an exclusive sanctity.
And, indeed, we would do well to consider those tendencies of our time which lead us away from the inner life of faith and prayer.But this we should cherish, not by withdrawing all sanctity from life, but by pouring sanctity into life.We should not quit the world, to build tabernacles in the Mount of Transfiguration, but come from out the celestial brightness, to shed light into the world, --to make the whole earth a cathedral; to overarch it with Christian ideals, to transfigure its gross and guilty features, and fill it with redeeming truth and love.
