This is the first of them. If you will turn your faces to God, amidst
all the flaunting splendours and vain shows and fleeting possessions of
this present, His face will dawn on you yonder. We can say but little of
what is meant by such a hope as that. But only this we can say, that
there will be, as yet unimaginable, new wealths of revelation of the
Father, and to match them, as yet unimaginable new inlets of
apprehension and perception upon our parts, so that the sweetest,
clearest, closest, most satisfying vision of God that has ever dawned on
sad souls here, shall be but 'as in a glass darkly' compared with that
face to face sight. We live away out on the far-off outskirts of the
system where those great planets plough along their slow orbits, and
turn their languid rotations at distances that imagination faints in
contemplating, and the light and the heat and the life that reach them
are infinitesimally small. We shall be shifted into the orb that is
nearest the sun; and oh! what a rapture of light and life and heat will
come to our amazed spirits: 'I have set the Lord always before me.'
Twilight though the light has been, I have tried to keep it. I shall be
of the sons of light close to the Throne and shall see Thy face. I shall
be satisfied when I wake out of this sleep of life into Thy likeness.

Then, again, if you will keep God at your right hand here, He will set
you on His hereafter. Keep Him here for your Companion, for your Ally,
for your Advocate, to breathe strength into you by the touch of His
hand, as some feeble man, leaning upon a stronger arm, may be upheld. If
you will do that, then the place where the favoured servants stand will
be yours; the place where trusted counsellors stand will be yours; the
place where the sheep stand will be yours; the place where the Shepherd
sits will be yours; for He to whom it is said, 'Sit Thou at My right
hand till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool,' says to us, 'Where I am
there shall also My servant be.' Keep God by your sides, and you will be