Gospel Studies: The Reality and Significance of Heaven and Hell

GOSPEL STUDIES.

THE REALITY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF HEAVEN AND HELL.

BY PROFESSOR N. L. NELSON.

II.

My theme is naturally divisible into two heads: (1) the reality of Heaven and Hell, and (2) the significance of Heaven and Hell. The first is related to the second as cause to effect; that is, upon the reality of these ideas to our minds, and upon the nature of this reality, will depend their significance in shaping our lives. Heaven though afar off seems very real, very probable to me; as actual perhaps as the new world must have seemed to those who listened to Columbus. But it is a reality quite different in character from the phantasmic creations of the poet and revivalist; a reality that depends more upon intellectual perception of what now is, than upon hope-winged imagination of what may be. The fact that the germ idea of a future state seems to be bom in every being that comes into the world, a fact so often relied upon as evidence of a future reality, is by no means the fundamental reason to me. Such an idea is of course, corroborative of other reasons which I shall discuss presently; for it would seem only natural that spirits started during pre-existence upon the race of eternal development would be so strongly impressed with the idea that their journey through varied cycles of being, was to have a definite destination, that the impression would remain in earthlife as an intuition. Nor does the reality of Heaven rest mainly

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upon faith in revelation; though to one who believes implicity in the word of God revelation should be reason enough. The stronger reasons to me are those which may be gathered from an observation of the tendency and direction of life itself. Given the smallest arc of a circle, and the mathematician is able, not only to demonstrate the existence of the circle but also to calculate its dimensions with undeviating exactness. It shall be my purpose, by taking into account certain facts observable in the meagre arc of human existence, to make it seem probable that there is a hereafter, and show what will perhaps be the nature of the hereafter. But the inquiry must be further narrowed down ere we can proceed intelligently. First, I must ask the reader to observe carefully the distinction between principle and the expression or application of principle. To make the distinction clear I will take an illustration from nature. There are perhaps a million forms of plant life, and yet it would be rash to say that nature has exhausted her power of differentiation; but all these varieties are but the multi-form expression or application of a few basic principles of growth, set in motion by the heat and light of the sun. So also in the domain of human thought and actions: though these are so various and complex that a million libraries would not adequately describe them, they all turn on a few basic principles of development set in motion by (the presence or absence of) the Spirit of God. In considering forces the tendency of which is to bring Heaven on earth, the point of view must necessarily be that of principles; for, as applications change to suit the exigency of the times, there

can be no good reason for asserting that the operations of man in the hereafter w^ill be Exactly like his operations in this life; and so form a criterion for judging what will then take place; in other words, because under present conditions we use gold and silver as currency, and wear fabrics made of wool, we are not justified in holding that mining and stock-raising will be prominent industries there. And so of all other external details of existence. Indeed, so far from needing so distinct an order of things as Heaven on which to base such a statement, the brief recorded history of the world shows scores of changes amounting almost to revolutions. Of one thing we may be reasonably certain, however: though the changes in dress, personal habits, occupations, government, and

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other such externals be greater in Heaven than between, say, the cave-dwellers of the geologic epochs and the cultured denizens of any modern city, there will be a close chain of causation between our present state and that future state, just as there has been between the customs of prehistoric man and those of today; (and what is better, we shall move along with and witness the changes) in other words, if the analogy of nature be any guide, there will be, in the progress toward Heaven on the one hand and Hell on the other, no such breaks or chasms as the fervid (or lurid) word painting of revivalists calls for. As, however, I should not succeed in doing anything more definite than to guess at the material conditions of the here^ifter, it will be safe for me to leave Heaven's landscape, with its flora and fauna. Heaven's architecture, with its associations of public and private life, and Heaven's occupations with their glorious means of eternal development, to better prognosticators than I —to poets and prophets — and confine myself as intimated above, to a point of view more tangible and constant than the exterior of things. When we say that God is the same today, yesterday, and forever, we assert the fact of the eternal principles that guide his operations, not of the operations themselves; for the latter vary according to the exigencies of the time. Principles are unchangeable, but the expression or application of them may vary even to infinity; (which latter fact, by the way, may help us to see why Heaven will never, become monotonous). It is therefore to eternal principles that we must come for our point of view. But what principle presents a summit high enough for us to watch the stupendous evolution whereby froil! the crude materials of earth shall be realized the Heaven of the Apocalypse; and from the cruder elements of mankind, the inhabitants worthy to dwell therein? That principle is truth. Consider for a moment what must seem self-evident to every being that thinks, viz., that the universe is one. It is inconceivable that there could be too universes, or that there could be more than one Supreme Power. The very name universe implies oneness, integrity, homogenity. To make graphic the thought I have in view, let the universe be represented by a straight line. This line is eternal truth. Whatever subordinate

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— creations take place worlds for instance, or systems of worlds must, if they are to endure forever, be created on lines parallel to this great line, for if they deviate by so much as the fractions next to infinity, they are false by so much, and being in opposition to the oneness and integrity of the universe, will be crushed sooner or later — crushed, because the whole is greater than the part. Come down now from the sublime heights where you gaze upon solar systems, and look upon the minor details of worlds. The law holds equally good here. Heaven-making is merely a process of straightening out, and making parallel, subordinate creations. It was this vision that Isaiah tries to express when he cries, "Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain: and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." The Prophet means to signify merely that all things must be made to agree with divine truth; that is, become one with the integrity of the universe. Now, lest some reader will think that there is to be a literal straightening or making parallel, let me change the figure and say .that the great principle of oneness is Harmony. Then Heaven-making is merely a process of causing unperfected and therefore discordant creation to chime with the wondrous Diapason of the universe. Let me vary the figure once more and say that the great principle or criterion of eternal unity is Light. Then Heaven-making is a process of rendering translucent creations which are opaque,

of making transparent creations which are translucent. This was the figure that came to John the Revelator's mind when he de- — scribed Heaven as a sea of glass a Urim and Thummim; and it is a favorite comparison of nearly all the sacred writers when they wish to make plain the conditions fitting man for Heaven. Note our Savior's remark, for instance: "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Let us begin now to make some applications. Is this earth

undergoing the process of Heavenizing? Who can doubt it? That marvelous collection of truths relating to the natural history of the earth, made by Darwin and his colaborators and called evolution, is merely the imperfect record of God's work in perfecting this

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planet and all that is upon it. (Not only imperfect as being incomplete, let me say, but articulated from the wrong point of view from that of blind force taking the least resistance, instead of eternal energy yielding to the dictates of Intelligence.) To my mind there is no doubt that this earth is gradually approaching harmony with the universe, not only as a whole but in all its details;and I have no doubt that at this very instant it is furnishing pleasurable employment not only to him who planned it, but to millions of past-masters in the science of earth building, who by carrying out the instructions of the master-architect, are perfecting their own powers of creation. I gain this last thought from two considerations; (1) from the analogy that no human enterprise requiring time for its perfection can proceed without supervision; and (2) from a comparison of various epochs of the earth's history, which show a constant and progressive development of the planet toward becoming the abode of a higher and more cultured race. But is not much of this development owing to the work of man? Well, suppose it is, should we not expect a wise Father to employ his children as part of the agencies for completing their heavenly home? Granted, indeed, that the earth is being made better by man; but who is it that fills him with conceptions of improvement, and at the same time gives him strength and wisdom to execute his conceptions? We come now to a consideration of the Heavenizing process as applied to man. By what means is the truth, or the harmony, or the LIGHT of the universe held up before him as a criterion by which to parallel his crookednesses, attune his discordancies^ or light up the dark recesses of his soul? There are two ways by which man's evolution toward Heaven is accomplished: a direct and an indirect way. In both cases the moving cause is the Spirit of Truth. Let us treat first of the indirect. Perhaps it will aid the reader to understand what follows if he consider well the following analogy. Stand on some eminence and gaze upon the varied landscape of a bright spring morning; the eye is entranced with the hues, tints, and shades in sky, orchard, field, meadow, and mountain side. What is the original source of all this wonderful play of color? The answer is sunlight— sunlight refiected and refracted by ten thousand natural

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prisms and color mirrors, such as soil, leaf, and cloud. In other words, the whole of the color panorama in nature is made up of the indirect rays of the sun. In like manner what are the unnumbered operations in the natural world which form the subject matter of a thousand growing sciences and as many busy arts following in their footsteps? What, indeed, but the refracted, differentiated rays of that central oneness and homogenity which we call eternal truth? What is each so-called law of nature but a wavelet from that ocean of "infinite and eternal Energy whence all things proceed?" But coming back again to our analogy, let us suppose a man might go through life without ever seeing the sun; gathering his ideas of pure sunlight from mental combinations of the rainbow hues around him. How near to a conception of the unrefracted light would he come? It is difficult to say. Such a one, however, would resemble a Spencer trying to find out God by attempts at correlating his works. Would he ever succeed ? His conception would certainly be purer than that of him who never tried to correlate and find out the common source of things; but as to his finding out God — listen to what the Bible says:

"Then I beheld all the works of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun; because though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it." —Ecclesiastes 8: 17.

Returning again to the analogy of light, we may suppose a man not only never seeing the sun, but totally oblivious —not to say careless and indifferent — to the fact that the colored rays coming to him from objects on the earth have any common source whatever. Such a one would represent ninety per cent, of the people who daily come into contact with nature's laws; men and women who have eyes but see not, ears but hear not, hearts but do not comprehend. That is, they are people who perceive a truth by inch lengths, but are slow to make a chain of it; who have eyes and ears for facts but not for relations; who work their perceptive faculties and memories, but allow their powers of correlation to rust. What then? It is something to see and appreciate the green

of the earth, the blue of the sky, and the red of coming twilight

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even though as unrelated truths of color (empiricism); it is something better to appreciate them and be able at the same time to correlate them if only by a lame process of reasoning (science) it ;

is still better to realize the full blaze of their unity by looking

upon the Source of the light itself (revelation). Fortunately mankind is constituted to take things on trust; the first class lea.rn from the second (and third); whence it often happens that their lives are more in harmony with the universe than are their conceptions; which fact renders it all the easier for their conceptions to fall into line. It would be well if the second class could have the humility of the first, and so get inspiration from the third; but of this I shall speak later. Let us proceed now to discuss how the indirect acquirement of truth prepares man for Heaven. In the light of the foregoing reasoning, consider the lessons taught by the history of civilization. Compare the enlightenment of the nineteenth century with the glory of any past epoch. What is the distinguishing diiference? The essence of it all is a wider and deeper sense of unity in our times. In the palmiest days of Greece and Rome the tendency of thought was to a multiplication of gods or creative and •

controlling agencies; today the conception tends to that of oneness. So also in all other tendencies affecting the race as av/hole; differences commercial, political, geographical, social, intellectual, religious, divided mankind into small factions that spent most of their time in war of conquest. There are still barriers separating the children of our Heavenly Father, but they are far between and growing still further. The millions of smaller fences are gone forever. The products both of the earth and of the human mind, which once halted timidly on the border line between rival cities, now encircle the globe; yea, more, cross it and intersect it in a million directions. What is the explanation of this greater homogeneity in our day? It is the inflowing of that oneness, harmony, truth or light

which constitutes the integrity of the universe. True, this harmony or truth has come to man mainly through indirect channels, just as the indirect sunlight comes to us in all the lines of the rainbow, but it is part of the central oneness nevertheless. It has come from ten thousand times ten thousand explorations in the

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New World of Nature, discovered by Francis Bacon, the Columbus of science, and the scientists that followed him; it is coming to-

day from an equal number of exploring parties now in the field. Nor has truth poured in upon man from nature-study alone. History, the graveyard of the past, has been dug into; and the relics exhumed have been scanned by eyes capable of drawing truer conclusions than could the men whose dust lies mingled with the monuments of by-gone ages. Such conclusions have proved lessons in truth —lessons tending heavenward in government and sociology; and what is still better than the light cast backwards by such studies upon the past, is the light reflected forward again upon the present and the future. Events taking place today in the social and political world, have a significance that they never could have had to beings uninstructed in the failures and successes of our predecessors. Truly the day has come when knowledge should be poured out upon all nations. I have said that the tendency of modern thought and activity toward homogeneity, is due to the influence upon the souls of men of the great ocean of truth, the oneness or harmony pf the universe. What then is truth? Truth is law. Whoever discovers law, whether in the inch lengths which operate in the last details, the uttermost twigs of creation, or in lines which reach beyond the Pleiades — opens the channel a little wider for the inflow of eternal

truth, and contributes so much toward the bringing of Heaven to man, or man to Heaven. It took a long, long while to trace the series of causes and effects connecting, say, the blush of the rose with the power of the sun ninety-one million miles away — causes and effects which involve, near or remote, the sum total of man's knowledge of the physical universe but at each link in the chain ;

a myriad of discordancies, that distracted mankind, gave place to an ever widening circle of unities and harmonies —Heaven, by so much, if you please. As the reader will by this time have realized more fully my definition of Heaven as harmony with the universe, I may venture to discuss another aspect of what Heaven is not. Many good people are under the impression that Heaven is wholly and solely a religious place or state. A Latter-day Saint might consistently take such a view, since religion to him signifies all truth, whether