Page:The Christian's Last End (Volume 2).djvu/126

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On the Joy the Elect shall have in Heaven.
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their lives to study; I shall understand and know more than all philosophers, naturalists, astronomers, and geographers; in a word, more than all the scientists of the whole world. Now, in spite of the long time we devote to study, how little we are able to know thoroughly! We see the earth, the trees, the herbs with our eyes, but we rarely have a thorough knowledge of their nature. Philosophers and doctors have been disputing with each other up to the present day, and their dispute continues still whenever there is question of deciding in what consists the “continuum,” that is, for instance, the length and breadth of a finger; and they are bound to acknowledge that up to this no one has advanced a sound theory on the matter. So dark is our understanding in spite of our craving for knowledge. But in the place of eternal joys the full light shall shine on the mind, and it will know and understand in its first sight of God all that it can ever wish to know and understand: all history, from the beginning to the end of the world, of all peoples, times, and individuals. There are still living and shall live till the end of the world two renowned men, one of whom is not less than two thousand four hundred and ninety years old, the Prophet Elias; the other is still older and has reached the age of five thousand three hundred and fifty years, that is Enoch. Imagine those two men coming into the city of Treves; what an immense rush there would be to see and speak to them! What a treat it would be to hear Elias describing the character of King Achab, with whom he had to deal, and the fierce anger of Jezabel, from whom he was forced to fly! What delight it would cause to hear how and why he made fire to fall from heaven on the soldiers who had come to bring him before the king! how food was brought him by the raven! what was the taste of the hearth-cake on which he was able to subsist without any other food for forty days, and to walk up to the mountain of God! How interesting it would be to hear Enoch describing the size and appearance of Adam and Eve, our first parents, with whom he lived for more than two hundred years! to hear his description of the deluge, which he witnessed, and how and where he was saved from it by the Almighty! What pleasure it would give us to learn all about the various changes of dynasties and the great events in the history of the world that they saw! And yet they could not tell us that they saw how the earth, or sky, or the stars, or the light, or the elements were made. Yet it would interest us very much to hear