In Eden, nothing that the hand of God could give, enabled man to taste His redeeming love; but in the paradise of God, the place of His joy, we find a place where all His redeemed people will be gathered in the full sense of it, and with nothing to remind them of the past; but it is not a place where man as a mere creature could find his joy. If we take the close of the book of Revelation, and compare the description there with Eden, we find God showing in every point the superiority of one over the other.
The thing I see most important to understand is that God has pitched a tabernacle of mercy in the heavens, so that a ruined creature can draw near and worship. There can be no thought of being in heaven without worship. I know who is in heaven, and I cannot be there without my heart melting with adoration and worship.
When God gives living water in the soul, all need in the soul has a perfect answer; and not only that, but the water springs up. It is not difficult to know whether one has such a fountain welling up in the soul, although not always walking in the power of it.
How blessed to find when under trial, or in weakness and temptation, a little stream rising up in connection with God which gives power to go on: to see this power in saints on a death-bed, enabling them to rise above all the misery of human anguish, giving thoughts of the Father's love and of joys above, by which thoughts of self are all broken down; and to see this stream rising with more and more power; it is something that comes without effort, springing up into eternal life. When saints walk onward with this stream in them rising up to eternal life, they do not thirst for anything by the way.