Nevada County picayune., 1889-05-08
RELIGIOUS COLUMN.
1 by GEO. A. GARDNER.
Heaven.


 | is bright or beautiful or grand, Tn earth or sky, will be reproduced there in greater perfection. Light, as pure and radiant as the throne or the Eternal. will be there, to flash its | glories and splendors athwart the celestial city but it will be far Supe- rior to the light of the sun, flor the | Lord God and the Lamb will be the | light thereof. Water as clear as crystal and purer than the virgin snow. will be there but it will be | the pure river of the water of life, proceeding from the throne of tod. | Trees, laden with ambrosial fruit and | symmetrical and magnificent in their proportions, will be there on the | banks of the beautiful river but they | will be the trees of life, whose leaves will never fade, and whose fruit will rpen every month, as long as the years of eternity roll their ceaseless rounds. Mansions, adorned with divine skill and furnished with divine liberalty, shall be there in endless variety and indescribable beauty but they shall be mansions not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, and rehecting the glory of their divine Architect. Streets of pure gold. wondrous in workmanship and ample in dimensions, shall be there, with their entrancing views and pam oramic scenes; but they shall be streets whose plan and consummation emanated from the wisdom and power and beneticence of linn who doeth all things we'll.
 A city, infinitely more beautiful and resplendent than the grandest cities of earth, shall be there, tran quilly reposing in splendor and mag nifcence amid the ineffable glories of it's Divine Founder; for it will be q city which hath foundations, whose | builder and maker is God, whose streets and mansions and stories are
 he finished and perfect product of creative skill.
 Heaven is as much place as the Earth, or Jupiter, or Mercury, or the Sun; as much city as New York, or Paris or London, or Jerusa- lem: in fact, it is more substantial and tangible than any of these places, for it Is made of finer materials and is more responsive to the touch and all the other senses of it's happy ln- habitants. It has local habitation in the boundless immensity of the universe. According to two passa- ges of scripture, it must be located at considerable distance from the earth. In the Psalms it is said, "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty thou shalt behold the land that is far off. .'' The other passage to which we refer, though somewhat vague and uneNpllcit, teaches by inference the same theory it can be found in the book of Daniel, 9th chapter, Dist verse. Dr. Dick, the celebrated Scotch astrono- mer. believed that Heaven occupies the geographical center of the uni verse and as the sun. the great cen ter of the solar system, is estimated to be 800 times larger than all the planets and satellites in his system, so, reasoning from analogy, he thought that Heaven. inasmuch as it is the grand center of the universe, around which all other systems re- volve, and to which they gravitate as to common center, must be 800 times larger than all the other worlds in the immensity of space. 1t is | impossible for the mind to conceive the stupendous magnitude and ineffa  ble grandeur of Heaven as involved in this rational and plausible theory. It would take swift-winged seraph, flying as fast as light itself (eight millions of miles per minute) thou sands, perhaps millions of years, to traverse its illmitable fields of light and beauty. Here is ample room for progress, expansion an q deyelop- ment. Here, amid the glores of the universe, the unfettered intellect may expatiate forever, and ever and anon witness new scenes of grandeur and enlargement as time goes by on golden wings.
 Heaven is the august capital, the metropolis of Jehovah's boundless empire. We love to think of it as a home, permanent abiding home. Here we have no continuing city, but
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