Daily independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 188?-1915, 1890-04-15
IDEAS ABOUT HEAVEN.


1t seemed to him q place where one
might sit forever in an easy chair and
be served with cake and wine by angels.
Such heaven seemed to his imagina-
tion-nurtured all his life on aches and
pains and thoughts Of the labors of the
morrow-a veritable elysium; the an
tithesis of his somber experiences Of
life, and in consequence there was moth
ing irrelevant in his answer, but simply
a description of what to him was
thought full Of Joy and comfort to his
aching bones. Simple, however, as was
the old mans answer, it was repre-
sentative of the universal voice of man.
kind, and contained within it the germ
of that faith which in all its ages has
blossomed out into aspirations of the
bliss and JOY Of the great unknown"
whose problem has never yet been
solved.
The early Christians, torn by wild
beasts in the Roman arena, driven to
secret worship in underground holes,
prosecuted, tormented and despised,
pictured gorgeous city with streets of
gold and gates of pearl, through which
they could pass with erect head and
crowned with gold bearing palms in
their hands and decked in new robes,
singing till their hymn should resound
as the voice of many waters. This, &C.
cording to writer in the Brooklyn
Standardization, was the Patmosian
heaven, scene of splendid felicity and
pure qualification. What more entranc-
ing idea could there be of such a reward
for those who are faithful unto death,
and what more bright and sweet to the
poor, quivering martyrs who, while
writhing in flames and torture, could
look smilingly up to the troop of "bright
ones" who come to bear them away to
such delights.
The Hebrew apocryphal literature de-
scribes an upper, or heavenly, and
lower, or earthly, paradise. Each Is
divided into seven dwellings, each of
which is twelve times ten thousand
miles In length and breadth. A column
ascends from the lower TO the upper
heaven, by which the souls of the
blessed mount to the higher after
temporary sojourn in the lower. The
Talmud names as one of the glories of
the upper paradise the society OF Enoch,
Elijah, Moses and Ezra, who walk in
the last day all Israei's enemies are to
be cast into Gehenna and the blessed
gathered together in the higher para
disc.
The heaven OF the old Norsemen is
the abode of the heroes slain in battle,
who live again in the scenes OF their lie,
but amid eternal victories, chanting
sagas and battle songs and quatnng
mead from the skulls of their enemies.
OF an entirely different nature is the
heaven of the Buddhist. 1t consists of
twenty-eight grades in a gradually as
cending scale of happiness as follows:
The not-fghCing, the joyful, the change
enjoying, the changing others-ar-
bitrarily, the assembled Brahmas, the
servants Of Brahma, the great Brahmas,
limited light, illimited lights, pure
light, limited purity, iFlimited purity,
perfect purity, great merit, unconscious,
the not great, the exempt from pain,
tho well-seeing, the beautiful, the
highest, illimited space, illimited
science, the place of naught, that Of no.
thought and that of not-no-tt0ught,
this last being a sphere whore all the
activities of life are nil. Indeed, the
final goal Of Buddhism looks toward the
destruction of sin by exhausting its ex-
istonce, or by impeding it's existence.
Much akin to This are tho Brahminical
and Shinto heavens, as well as that OF
the ParSees, which look toward final
gloriiCation in state of ecstatic peace
in company with Ahura Mazada, their
supreme deity.
There IS something pathetica!ly SIM
pie in the distinctively opposite idea in
which the red mans heaven is con-
ceived, TO him there is spread out the
happy hunting grounds where, with his
dog, his bow and arrows, he may follow
tho deer over rustling prairies and
through the whispering woods with no
paleface to follow to impose upon him
tho restraint he dospises; all of which
has been so happily described by Pope.
10, the poor Indianl whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or bears him IN tho SInd.