Chapter 359—Our Curriculum
For our knowledge is imperfect...; but when the perfect comes, the
imperfect will pass away.
1 Corinthians 13:9, 10
, R.S.V.
By faith we should look to the hereafter and grasp the pledge of God of a
growth of intellect, the human faculties uniting with the divine, and every
power of the soul being brought into direct contact with the Source of light.
We may rejoice that all that has perplexed us in the providences of God will
then be made plain; things hard to be understood will find an explanation.
There all who have wrought with unselfish spirit will behold the fruit of
their labors. The outworking of every right principle and noble deed will be
seen. Something of this we see here. But how little of the result of the world’s
noblest work is in this life manifest to the doer! How many toil unselfishly
and unweariedly for those who pass beyond their reach and knowledge!
Parents and teachers lie down in their last sleep, their lifework seeming to
have been wrought in vain; they know not that their faithfulness has unsealed
springs of blessing that can never cease to flow; only by faith they see the
children they have trained become a benediction and an inspiration to their
fellow men, and the influence repeat itself a thousandfold. Many a worker
sends out into the world messages to strength and hope and courage, words
that carry blessings to hearts in every land; but of the results he, toiling in
loneliness and obscurity, knows little. So gifts are bestowed, burdens are
borne, labor is done. Men sow the seed from which, above their graves,
others reap blessed harvests. They plant trees, that others may eat the fruit.
They are content here to know that they have set in motion agencies for good.
In the hereafter the action and reaction of all these will be seen.
Of every gift that God has bestowed, leading men to unselfish effort, a
record is kept in heaven. To trace this in its wide-spreading lines, to look
upon those who by our efforts have been uplifted and ennobled, to behold
in their history the outworking of true principles—this will be one of the
studies and rewards of the heavenly school.
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