believe that it answers to and is commensurate with the infinitude of His own being, the domain of absolute perfection and absolute blessedness. Viewed in its immediate relation to the triune God heaven is identical with itself, the same before the creation of worlds that it is now, the same now that it will be when the first creation in the first man and the new creation in the Second Man have come to their ultimate consummation.

2. As related to the Son incarnate, now glorified at the right hand of the Father, heaven is organically connected in two directions: with the eternal life of triune absolute Love, and with the new creation brought into existence by Jesus Christ in the economy of the time-world. Under this view heaven embraces the perfected natural in the form of the ideal human, As a consequence heaven is

now somewhat other than heaven was before the first creation, or before the incarnation. Inasmuch as the Son of Man is now glorified, that is, since He is so transfigured that He has become intrinsically fitted for, and has been invested with the glory which the pre-incarnate Son had with the Father before the world was, the heaven of His glorification is an actual sphere of divine-human existence different from the eternal glory of the Godhead. Difficult it is, if not impossible, to express the difference in terms of the natural understanding. Nevertheless Christian thought ruled by Christian faith, as certainly as it recognizes the enthroned Christ to be the Son of Man glorified in union with the Son of God, must also recognize a difference in the organization of heaven by as much as the incarnate Son, who through His manhood is dynamically connected with the cosmos, differs from the pre-incarnate Son.

But the heaven of the glorification of the incarnate Son and the eternal heaven of the triune God are not to be so construed as to imply separation. The one is not discon nected from the other. The two heavens are one heaven, one in life, one in love, one in blessedness. The heaven of glorification is related to the original, the absolute heaven, as the God-Man is related to the Son of God in the eternal fellowship of the Godhead. Eschatology has to distinguish heaven from heaven as Christology distin guishes between the pre-incarnate Son and the incarnate Son. Eschatology has to identify heaven with heaven as Christology holds the being of the pre-incarnate Son and the being of the incarnate Son to be one and the same. Accepting these scriptural premises, the heaven proper of the triune God is seen to be not a realm mechanically fixed, excluding the movement of organized life. The ascension of Christ constitutes an epoch in the history of God's kingdom in heaven as it constituted an epoch in the history of His kingdom on earth.

3. The heavenly life of the God-Man glorified is the source of the heavenly life of His members, who will be perfected in Him at His second coming. The heaven of final blessedness for the members of Christ will exist by virtue of their life-communion in the Holy Spirit with His perfected personality. That life-communion, begotten by the Spirit, and nourished by His flesh and blood during their earthly history, is now in Him the perfected life. What the Son of Man is, they are becoming. The new life which they live on earth in the Church militant and the new life which they will live with Christ in the Church triumphant are as to kind the same eternal life. Their heaven of blessedness is none other than the completed

fruitage of that transforming fellowship in the Spirit with Jesus Christ which now by faith they have and are perfecting.

Under one view, therefore, the heaven of the saints is now in existence. It is existing in principle; for the exaltation, perfection and blessedness of the Son of Man constitute the very perfection and blessedness for which His members are in process of preparation, into which they shall enter, and which with Him they shall possess.

In another respect, however, the heaven of the saints is not now in existence. The final heaven for them will be brought to pass when the entire creating and redeeming activity of the incarnate Son shall become complete by the actual glorification of the saints themselves. For the perfected likeness to Christ of His members conditions their fitness for blessedness as really as His own glorified life is the ground and source of their spiritual perfection.

4. Not only, however, does the final perfection of the saints condition for them the blessedness of heaven, but their final perfection also affects the glory of Christ, their Head; for the life of Christ as fulfilled by the everlasting life of His members completes His own glorification.

On the one hand we are taught that His members are glorified with the glory of Christ. The glory which thou gavest me, He says, I have given unto them.1

In turn Christ, the Head, is glorified by the final perfection of His members. He says: "I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me; for they are thine: and all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified 'John xvii. 22.

in them."

The final perfection of His members completes His mediatorial work. It actualizes under its ultimate form the eternal purpose of God's wisdom and love. Universal history, including all worlds, from the moment when the first creative word was spoken onward to the last day, will be developed into the transcendent beauty and sublimity of the kingdom. The kingdom, the.completed organism of the mystery of life, of which each individual member is an exponent, will be what divine love designed the whole and every part to be, and so become the organ of the glorification of Christ. As the Father honors the Son, as the Son honors the Father, so do fallen men redeemed from sin, transformed and beauti fied by grace, honor the Son. By that which they have become in Him they actualize and set forth that which He is. And living the life of divine love by the Spirit in the glorified communion with the Son they also honor the Father.

Hence of the final abode of the saints we may not think, exclusively, under the image of a magnificent city with innumerable finished palaces, all ready awaiting the reception of guests. The grand imagery of the twenty-first chapter of the Apocalypse describes the truth of heaven for the saints under its divine aspect only. The whole truth includes human conditions. Though heaven is eternal and is now truly in existence, yet the final blessedness of Christ's members is internally connected with, and therefore dependent on the new life of the kingdom now in process of growth on earth and in Paradise. For the saints, after the final consummation, heaven will be

John xvii. 9, 10. Cf. John xv. 7, 8; xvi. 13, 14; xvii. 20-24; Rev. xiv. I-3; xv. 3, 4; xxi. 3-5.

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what it is not now. There is a sense in which the saints make their own heaven. They condition it after a manner analogous to the manner in which Christ makes His heaven of glorification. We may say that the sphere of final blessedness is, in one respect, the self-produced environment of the personal Christ and of the members of His mystical body. To use the words of another: Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.

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The everlasting life which the saints will live in the fellowship of Christ is the informing principle and the substance of their heavenly blessedness.

Being the consummation of the kingdom of God, the heaven of perfection embraces the totality of the individual organization of its members.

I. The life of the saints is distinct and different from the life of God. God lives His absolute life of love in the fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit. The saints on the contrary live a relative life of love. The difference is the infinite difference between the personal Creator and the personal creature.

Yet the life everlasting which the saints will live in heaven is of one order with the life of the incarnate Son; for He is man of man, He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified being all of one.' And the life of the incarnate. Son is one with the absolute life of God. As the Father hath life in Himself even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself. This life of the Father which the Son has in Himself the saints possess. The members of the kingdom of the incarnate Son live the life of the 2John v. 26; xvii. 20-26.

1 Heb. ii. II.