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Charity never faileth. Holy love is an everlasting quality and employment; it shall not fail at death, as other graces do, but be perfected at death.
Repentance should accompany us to the gates of heaven, but repentance ceases for ever in heaven; for no need of repentance where there is entire innocence.
Faith is swallowed up in vision, and hope in fruition; but love is then and there in its exaltation.
Thus charity never faileth, but all other gifts will fail; prophesying, languages, sciences, and all artificial knowledge, will cease for ever; knowledge itself in heaven shall vanish away.
But how vanish?
The meaning is, that such knowledge as we have now shall vanish then; that imperfect knowledge we have now will cease and be useless then. Our present knowledge is attained with much labour and study; but it shall be no more difficult to know in heaven, than it is for the eye to open and see; the beautiful face of truth shall in a moment be unveiled to us in heaven, and the curtain drawn away by the hand of God, which interposed between us and the light.
Again: knowledge of so imperfect a degree, as now it is of, shall vanish away: here we know what we know by divine revelation, but in part; and we prophesy by inspiration, but in part.