John.
Therefore let us not feed our fancies with pictures of what the next
world will be like,--pictures, I say, which are but waking dreams of men,
intruding into those things which they have not seen, vainly puffed up in
their fleshly minds--that is in their animal and mortal brain. Let us be
content with what St. John tells us, which is a matter not for our
brains, but for our hearts; not for our imaginations, but for our
conscience, which is indeed our highest reason. Whatever we do not know
about the next world, this, he says, we do know,--that when God in Christ
shall appear, we shall be like Him. Like God. No more: No: but no
less. To be like God, it appears, is the very end and aim of our being.
That we might be like God, God our Father sent us forth from His eternal
bosom, which is the ground of all life, in heaven and in earth. That we
might be like God, He clothed us in mortal flesh, and sent us into this
world of sense. That we might be like God, He called us, from our
infancy, into His Church. That we might be like God, He gave us the
divine sense of right and wrong; and more, by the inspiration of His holy
spirit, that inward witness, that Light of God, which lightens every man
that cometh into the world, He taught us to love the right and hate the
wrong.
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