HEAVEN
At last “I” has reached
the goal. In that far future comes the glad
finale of human history, the realization of the eternal
thought in the mind of God from the beginning.
As the unwritten play of a great dramatist lies in
his mind before it is uttered or acted, with every
problem solved and every contingency provided for so
we believe the whole extended drama lay in the Eternal
Mind the path of struggle and pain the
cross-currents of human will the glorious
conclusion of it all. Nothing was an after-thought.
Now at last Christ “shall see of the travail
of His soul and shall be satisfied.” Aye satisfied.
It was worth the cost. Worth the Incarnation
of the Eternal Son worth the sorrow and
the pain worth being misunderstood and shamed
and mocked and scourged and spitted on and crucified this
final satisfaction of His tender love. “Eye
hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entered into
the heart of man to conceive the things that God hath
prepared. They shall hunger no more nor thirst
any more, neither shall the sun light on them nor
any burning heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst
of the Throne shall shepherd them and lead them to
eternal fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away
every tear from their eyes. There shall be no
more death no mourning nor crying nor pain
any more, for the former things the old
bad things have passed away.”
That is the end of God’s purpose for men.
Surely it will be the wondering cry of the angels
for ever, “Behold how He loved them!”
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY HEAVEN?
To us with our limited faculties Heaven
is practically inconceivable. We have no experience
that would help us to realize it. Even the inspired
writers can but touch the thought vaguely in allegory
and gorgeous vision, piling up images of earthly things
precious and beautiful thrones and crowns
and gates of pearl and golden streets in the heavenly
city “coming down from God prepared as a bride
adorned for her husband.”
The only clear thought we have about
external things in Heaven is that “I”
who lived here in an earthly body and in the Near Hereafter
lived a spirit life “absent from the body” shall
in that Far Hereafter have a spiritual body analogous
we suppose to the body “I” had on earth.
Not the poor body, certainly, which rotted in the
grave, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”
but a “glorified body,” and yet it would
seem having some strange mysterious connection with
the earthly body. As the oak is the resurrection
body of the acorn, and the lily of the ugly little
bulb that decayed in the ground, “so also is
the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption,
it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in weakness,
it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it
is raised a spiritual body.” That gives
very little information but it gives some tangible
idea to grasp. Beyond this there is no hold for
imagination.
But as we saw in the earlier chapters
on the Intermediate Life I am still “I,”
the same conscious self through the whole life of Earth.
and Hades and Heaven, and therefore the real life,
the inner life can still be understood.
So when we enquire what can be known about the meaning
of Heaven at the very start I strike the
key-note of the thoughts that follow, in the words
of Christ Himself, “The Kingdom of God is within
you.” Heaven is a something within you
rather than without you. Heaven means character
rather than possessions. The Kingdom of God
is not meat and drink, but Righteousness and Peace
and Joy in the Holy Ghost.
That is the thought which I am trying
to keep prominent all through this book. Hades
life is dependent on character. Judgment is a
sorting according to character. Heaven and Hell
are tempers or conditions of character within us.
They are not merely places to which God sends us
arbitrarily. They are conditions which we make
for ourselves. If God could send all men to
Heaven, all men would be there. If God could
keep all men from Hell, no one would be there.
It is character that makes Heaven. It is character
that makes Hell. They are states of mind that
begin here, and are continued and developed there.
I have known men who were in Hell
here they told me so men of brutal
character, men in delirium tremens, who saw devils
grinning at them from the bed. That if continued
and developed would mean Hell there. I have known
sweet, unselfish lives who are in Heaven here.
That continued and developed would mean Heaven there.
You know how one could be in Heaven here. Do
you remember these wonderful words of our Lord, “No
man hath ascended into Heaven, only the Son of Man
who is in Heaven”? Not was, not
shall be, but is always in Heaven, because
always in unselfish love always in accord
and in communion with God. So, you see, a man
carries the beginning of Heaven and Hell within him,
according to the state of his own heart. A selfish,
godless man cannot have any Heaven so long as he remains
selfish and godless. For Heaven consists in
forgetting self, and loving God and man with heart
and soul.
Section 2
Do you see, then, the mistake that
people have been making in discussing what is meant
by Heaven? In all ages in all races men
have speculated about it, and their speculations have
been largely coloured by their characters and temperaments.
The Indian placed it in the Happy Hunting Ground.
The Greeks placed it in the Islands of the Blest,
where warriors rested after the battle. The Northman
and the Mussulman had his equally sensual Heaven.
And many Christians have as foolish notions as any
one else. Some think that they win Heaven by
believing something with their minds about our Lord’s
atonement. Some think they go to Heaven by soaring
up through the air. Some of them, taking in
its literal meaning the glorious imagery of the Apocalypse,
picture to themselves streets of beaten gold and walls
of flashing emerald and jasper, and the wearing of
crowns and the singing of Psalms over and over again
through all the ages of eternity.
What is the fault in all such?
That they do not understand what Heaven really means.
They think of it as a something outside them which
anybody could enjoy if he could only get there.
They do not understand that Heaven means the joy
of being in union with God that the outward
Heaven has no meaning till the inward Heaven has begun
in ourselves. I need not point out to you that
our immortal spirits would find little happiness in
golden pavements and gates of pearl. People on
this earth, who have their fill of gold and pearl,
do not always gain much happiness from them.
They are mere external things they cannot
give eternal joy, because that comes from within,
not from without. It depends not on what we
have, but on what we are, not on the riches of our
possessions, but on the beauty of our lives.
The gorgeous vision of the Apocalypse
has its meaning, but it is not the carnal, literal
meaning of foolish men. It tells of the bright
river of the water of life; of glorified cities, where
nothing foul, or mean, or ignoble shall dwell; of
the white robes of our stainless purity; of the crowns
and palms, the emblems of victory over temptation,
of the throne which indicates calm mastery over sin;
of the song and music and gladsome feasting to image
faintly the abounding happiness and the fervent thanksgiving
for the goodness of God. They are all mere symbols mere
earthly pictures with a heavenly meaning, and the
meaning which lies behind them all is this: The
joy of Heaven means the inward joy; the joy of character;
the joy of goodness; the joy of likeness to the Nature
of God. That is the highest joy of all the
only joy worthy of making Heaven for men who are made
in the image of God.
Section 3
It is not difficult to show this to
any true man or woman who is humbly trying to do beautiful
deeds on earth. Of course, if a man be very
selfish and worldly; a man who never tries to help
another; a man who smiles at these things as unreal
sentiment; who tells you that hard cash and success
in life, and “to mind number one,” as they
say, are the chief things; a man who never feels his
pulses beat faster at the story of noble deeds you
cannot absolutely prove to him that the joy of character
is the highest happiness. You cannot prove to
a blind man the beauty of the sunset sky; you cannot
arouse a deaf man to enthusiasm about sweet music;
and you cannot prove to an utterly selfish, earthly
man that self-sacrifice and purity and heroism and
love are the loveliest and the most desirable possessions the
sources of the highest and most lasting joy.
But I feel sure that most of us, with all our faults,
have in our better moments the desire and the admiration aye,
and the effort, too, after nobleness of life, and
therefore we can understand this highest joy of Heaven.
We have had experience sometimes, however rarely,
of lovely deeds, and the sweet, pure joy that follows
in their train. Well, whenever you have conquered
some craving temptation or borne trouble for another’s
sake; when you have helped and brightened some poor
life, and kept quiet in the shade that no one should
know of it; when you have tried to do the right at
heavy cost to yourself; when the old father or mother
at home has thanked God for the comfort you have been
in their declining years; whenever in the midst of
all your sins you have done anything for the love
of God or man, do you not know what a sweet, pure happiness
has welled up in your heart, entirely different in
kind, infinitely higher in degree than any pleasure
that ever came to you from riches or amusement or
the applause of men. Of this kind surely must
be the pure joy of Heaven. Call up the recollection
of some of those cherished moments of your life, and
multiply by infinity the pleasure that you felt, and
you will have some faint notion of what is meant by
Heaven, the Heaven that God designs for man.
II. WHAT IS HEAVEN’S SUPREME JOY?
Thus, then, we answer the first of
our questions What is meant by Heaven?
Heaven means a state of character rather than a place
of residence. Heaven means to be something rather
than to go somewhere. But though Heaven means
a state of character rather than a place of residence,
yet it means a place of residence, too. And though
Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere,
yet it means to go somewhere, too. And from
this the second question easily follows. What
can be known about that life in Heaven?
“Oh, for a nearer insight into Heaven,
More knowledge of the glory
and the joy,
Which there unto the happy souls is given,
Their intercourse, their worship,
their employ.”
We do not know a great deal about it.
The Bible is given to help us to live
rightly in this world, not to satisfy curiosity about
the other world. But yet some glimpses of the
blessed life have come to us, for our teaching.
The first thing to learn is that the
chief joy of Heaven shall consist in that of which
we can only dream in this life, of which we can have
but a partial glimpse even in the Hades or Paradise
Life the Beatific Vision, the clear
vision and knowledge of God. All this life and
all the Paradise life are fitting and training and
preparing us for this consummation.
Wise theologians of old divided the
happiness of Heaven into “Essential”
and “Accidental.” By essential
they meant the happiness which the soul derives immediately
from God’s presence, from the Beatific Vision.
By accidental they meant the additional happiness
which comes from creatures, from meeting with friends,
from the joyous occupations and all the delights of
ever-widening knowledge.
But the Presence of God, the Vision
of God, is the essential thing which gives light and
joy to all the others. Without that Vision of
God all would be dark as this beautiful world would
be without the sun. Without that joy of God’s
presence all other joys would be spoiled, just as
the gifts of this life would be without the central
gift of health.
That is the central thought about
Heaven in the Bible, the central thought of God’s
noblest saints of old, aye, and the central thought
of some of the noblest amongst ourselves to-day.
Does it seem unreal, unnatural, to
some of us? I can well believe it. Few
of us love God well enough yet to desire Him above
all things. Most of us, I fear, if we would honestly
confess it, think more of the joy of meeting our dear
ones than of the joy of being with God. But
God is very gentle with us. “He knoweth
our frame; He remembereth that we are but dust.”
He will gradually train us here and hereafter, and
one day we, too, shall love Him above all things.
Oh! I do think that to know the tender patience
of Christ’s love as we shall know it then, to
know God as He is, with all the false notions about
Him swept away, will make it impossible to withhold
our love from Him. And if even our poor love
for each other on earth is such a happiness think what
joy may come from dwelling in that unutterable Love
of God.
III. THE LIFE IN HEAVEN
What can we know further about the
life in Heaven, about what the old theologians called
the secondary or accidental joys as compared
with the supreme joy of the Beatific Vision?
We know, first, There shall be
no sin there. It shall be a pure and innocent
life. All who on earth have been loving, and
pure, and noble, and brave, and self-sacrificing,
shall be there. All who have been cleansed by
the blood of Christ from the défilements of sin,
and strengthened by the power of Christ against the
enticements of sin, shall be there. There shall
be no drunkenness nor impurity there, nor hatred,
nor emulation, nor ill temper, nor selfishness, nor
meanness. Ah! it is worth hoping for. We
poor strugglers who hate ourselves and are so dissatisfied
with ourselves, who look from afar at the lovely ideals
rising within us, who think sorrowfully of all which
we might have been and have not been let
us keep up heart. One day the ideal shall become
the real. One day we shall have all these things
for which God has put the craving in our hearts to-day.
We shall have no sin there. We shall desire
only and do only what is good. We shall be there
what we have only seemed or wished to be here honest,
true, noble, sincere, genuine to the very centre of
our being.
No sin there.
Section 2
And that will make it easier to understand
the second fact revealed to us. No sorrow there.
“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any
more. There shall be no more curse ... no pain,
nor sorrow, nor crying, and God shall wipe away all
tears from their eyes.” That is not hard
to believe. Sin is the chief cause of our sorrow
on earth. If there be no sin there; if all are
pure and unselfish and generous and true, and if God
wipes away all tears that come from causes other than
sin, it is easily understood.
But let us not degrade this thought
or make it selfish or unreal. One often hears
the sneer or the doubt about the happiness of Heaven
while any exist who have lost their Heaven.
We do not know the answer now. But we shall know
it then. And we must be absolutely certain that
the answer lies not in the direction of selfish indifference.
The higher any soul on earth grows in love the less
can it escape unselfish sorrow for others. Must
it not be so in that land too? Surely the Highest
Himself must have more pain than any one else for the
self-caused misery of men. If there be joy in
His presence over one that repenteth must there not
be pain over one that repenteth not? We can only
say in our deep ignorance that until the day when
all evil shall have vanished there are surely higher
things in God’s plan for His redeemed than selfish
happiness and content. There is the blessedness
that comes of sympathy with Him in the pain which
is the underside of the Eternal Love.
Section 3
No sin in Heaven. No sorrow
in Heaven. What else do we certainly know?
That the essence of the Heaven life will be love.
The giving of oneself for the service of others.
The going out of oneself in sympathy with others.
There at last will be realized St. Paul’s glorious
ideal. There it can be said of every man, He
suffereth long and is kind; envieth not; vaunteth
not himself; is not puffed up; seeketh not his own;
behaveth not uncourteously. He is like the eternal
God Himself, who beareth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things (1 Cor. xii-7).
Section 4
We may well believe that there
will be no dead level of attainment, no dead level
of perfection and joy. That would seem to us
very uninteresting. If we may judge from God’s
dealings here and from the many texts of Scripture,
there will be an infinite variety of attainment, of
positions, of character. “In the Father’s
house there are many mansions.” Our Lord
assumes that we would expect that from our experience
here. “If it were not so, I would have
told you.” I suppose there will be little
ones there needing to be taught and weak ones needing
to be helped; strong leaders sitting at His right hand
in His Kingdom, and poor backward ones who never expected
to get into it at all.
And so surely we may believe, too,
will there be varieties of character and temperament.
We shall not lose our identity and our peculiar characteristics
by going to Heaven, by being lifted to a higher spiritual
condition. Just as a careless man does not lose
his identity by conversion, by rising to a higher
spiritual state on earth, so we may well believe when
we die and pass into the life of the waiting souls,
and again when at Christ’s coming we pass into
the higher Heaven we shall remain the same men and
women as we were before and yet become very different
men and women. Our lives will not be broken
in two, but transfigured. We shall not lose our
identity; we shall still be ourselves; we shall preserve
the traits of character that individualize us; but
all these personal traits and characteristics will
be suffused and glorified by the lifting up of our
motive and aim. As far as we can judge, there
will be a delightful, infinite variety in the Heaven-life.
What else? There shall be work
in Heaven. The gift of God is eternal life
and that life surely means activity. We are told
“His servants shall serve Him.”
We are told of the man who increased the talents or
the pounds to five or ten that he was to be used for
glorious work according as he had fitted himself “Lord,
thy talent hath gained five talents, ten talents.”
What was the reply? “You are now to go
and rest for all eternity.” Not a bit of
it. “Be thou ruler over five cities, over
ten cities; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
I know some men who are now retired after a very busy
active life of work, and they hate the idleness, they
are sick of it. No wonder the conventional Heaven
does not appeal to them. Ah, that is not God’s
Heaven. “They rest from their labours.”
Yes; but that word “labours” means painful
strain. In eternal, untiring youth and strength
we shall be occupied in doing His blessed will in helping
and blessing the wide universe that He has made.
Who can tell what glorious ministrations, what infinite
activities, what endless growth and progress, and
lifting up of brethren, God has in store for us through
all eternity. Thank God for the thought of that
joyous work of never-tiring youth and vigour; work
of men proudly rejoicing in their strength, helping
the weak ones, teaching the ignorant aye! perhaps for
the very best of us going out with Christ into the
outer darkness to seek that which is lost until He
find it. For even that is not shut out beyond
the bounds of possibility in the impenetrable mystery
of the Hereafter. Do you know Whittier’s
beautiful poem of the old monk who had spent his whole
life in hard and menial work for the rescue and help
of others? And when he is dying his confessor
tells him work is over, “Thou shalt sit down
and have endless prayers, and wear a golden crown
for ever and ever in Heaven.” “Ah,”
he says, “I’m a stupid old man.
I’m dull at prayers. I can’t keep
awake, but I love my fellow men. I could be
good to the worst of them. I could not bear to
sit amongst the lazy saints and turn a deaf ear to
the sore complaints of those that suffer. I
don’t want your idle Heaven. I want still
to work for others.” The confessor in
anger left him, and in the night came the voice of
his Lord
“Tender and most compassionate.
Never fear,
For Heaven is love, as God Himself is
love;
Thy work below shall be thy work above.”
Be sure that the repose of Heaven
will be no idling in flowery meadows or sitting for
ever in a big temple at worship, as the poor, weary
little children are sometimes told after a long sermon
in church. No, “there is no temple in
Heaven,” we are told no Church.
Because all life is such a glad serving and rejoicing
in God that men need no special times and places for
doing it.
IV. SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN HEAVEN?
What else can we learn? Shall
we know one another? Does any one really doubt
it who believes in God at all? What sort of Heaven
would it be otherwise? What sort of comfort
would there be if we did not know one another?
Oh, this beggarly faith, that God has to put up with,
that treats the Father above as it would treat a man
of doubtful character. “I must have His
definite texts. I must have His written pledges,
else I will not believe any good thing in His dealing.”
That is our way. We talk very piously about
our belief in God’s love, but we are afraid
to infer anything, to argue anything from the infinitude
of that love. No, we must have God’s bond
signed and sealed. I do believe that one reason
why we have not more of direct answers about the mysteries
of the future life is because God thought that no such
answer should be necessary that His love,
if one would only believe in it, is a sufficient answer
to them all.
There is less need of discussing the
subject here, since we have already dealt with the
question of Recognition in the Intermediate Life (Part
I, Chapter VII). If even in that imperfect state
“absent from the body” we saw reason to
hope for recognition, think how that hope rises to
certainty in the great perfect life of Heaven where
“I” shall be again “in the body”
the glorious perfect spiritual body.
As I have pointed out the Bible gives
only passing hints on the subject. But it comforts
the mourners with the thought of meeting those whom
Christ will bring with Him. What would be the
good of meeting if they should not know them?
St. Paul expects to meet his converts and present
them before Christ. How could he do so if he
did not know them? Our Lord depicts Dives and
Lazarus even in the lower Hades life as knowing each
other. He says to the dying thief as they went
within the veil, “To-day shalt thou be with Me.”
What could it mean except they should know each other
within?
But surely the Bible does not need
to say it. It is one of those things that we
may assume with certainty. We know that Heaven
would scarce be Heaven at all if we were to be but
solitary isolated spirits amongst a crowd of others
whom we did not know or love. We know that the
next world and this world come from the same God who
is the same always. We know that in this world
He has bound us up in groups, knowing and loving and
sympathizing with each other. Unless His method
utterly changes He must do the same hereafter.
And we have seen what a prophecy of recognition lies
deep in the very fibres of that nature which God has
implanted in us. If we shall not know one another,
why is there this undying memory of departed ones,
the aching void that is never filled on earth?
The lower animals lose their young and in a few days
forget them. But the poor, human mother never
forgets. When her head is bowed with age, when
she has forgotten nearly all else on earth, you can
bring the tears into her eyes by mentioning the child
that died in her arms forty years ago. Did God
implant that divine love in her only to disappoint
it? God forbid! A thousand times, no.
In that world the mother shall meet her child, and
the lonely widow shall meet her husband, and they
shall learn fully the love of God in that rapturous
meeting with Christ’s benediction resting on
them.
I know there are further questions
rising in our hearts. Will our dear ones remember
us? Will they, in all the years of progress,
have grown too good and great for fellowship with
us? There is no specific answer save what we
can infer from the boundless goodness and kindness
of God. Since He does not forget us we may be
sure they will not forget us. Since His superior
greatness and holiness does not put Him beyond our
reach, we may be sure that theirs will not their
growth will be mainly a growth of love which will
only bring them closer to us for ever and ever.
V. HOW DO MEN ENTER HEAVEN?
We have asked, What is meant by Heaven?
What can be known of the details of life in Heaven?
And now I close this book with the solemn question
for us all: How shall we enter Heaven? If
you have followed me thus far the answer is easy.
Though there is a special place which shall be Heaven,
yet, if Heaven means a state of mind rather than a
place of residence, if Heaven means to be something
rather than to go somewhere, though it means to go
somewhere, too, then the answer is easy. We
enter Heaven by a spiritual, not by a natural act.
We begin Heaven here on earth, not by taking a journey
to the sun or the planets, not by taking a journey
from this world up through the air, but by taking
a journey from a bad state of mind to a good state
of mind; from that state of mind which is enmity against
God, to that of humble, loyal, loving obedience to
Christ. It is not so much that we have to go
to Heaven. We have to do that, too. But
Heaven has to come to us first. Heaven has to
begin in ourselves. “The beginning of
Heaven is not at that hour when the eye grows dim and
the sound of friendly voices becomes silent in death,
but at that hour when God draws near and the eyes
of the spiritual understanding are opened, and the
soul sees how beautiful Christ is, how hateful sin
is; the hour when self-will is crucified, and the
God-will is born in the resolutions of a new heart.”
Then Heaven has begun, the Heaven that will continue
after our death.
Do we believe that this is the right
way to think of Heaven? For if so it is a serious
question for us all. What about my hopes of entering
Heaven? If Heaven consists of character rather
than possessions, of a state of mind rather than a
place of residence, if, in fine, Heaven has to begin
on earth, what of our hopes of entering Heaven?
Is it not pitiful to hear people talk lightly about
going to Heaven, whose lives on earth have not any
trace of the love and purity and nobleness and self-sacrifice
of which Heaven shall entirely consist hereafter?
To see men with the carnal notions about Heaven as
a place of external glory and beauty and jasper and
emerald, where, after they have misused their time
on earth, they shall fly away like swallows to an eternal
summer. Why, what should they do in Heaven?
They would be miserable there even if they could
get there. They would be entirely out of their
element, like a fish sent to live on the grass of a
lovely meadow. Those who shall enjoy the Heaven
hereafter are they whose Heaven has begun before.
They who may hope to do the work of God hereafter
are those who are humbly trying to do that will on
earth. These shall inherit the everlasting Kingdom.
Unto which blessed Kingdom may He vouchsafe to bring
us all! Amen.