Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-02-25
IDEAS ABOUT HEAVEN.
Aspirations and Faiths Concerning the
 Great Beyond.

GH08C beyOn0.
 Every body has heard of the poor old fellow, aged, bent double by labor and sickness, and with only secondhand a. uaintance with pleasure, who when aal;ed his idea of heaven answered that it seemed to him a 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 noth- ing irrelevant in his answer, but simply description of what to him was a 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 tho Roman arena, driven to secret worship in underground holes, persecutcd, 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 tho voice of many waters. This, ac- cording to writer in the Brooklyn Standard-U nion, was the Patmosfan heaven, scene of splendid felicity and pure Identification. What more entranc- ing idea could there be of such a reward for those who are faithful unto death, and what moro bright and sweet to the poor, quivering martyrs who, while writhing in flames and torture, could look smilingly up to tho troop of bright ones" who come to bear them away to such delights.
 Tho Hebrew apccryphal literature de- scribes an upper, or heavenly, and a. lower, or earthly, paradise. Each is divided into seven dwellings,, each of which is twelve times ten thousand miles Ill length and breadth. A column ascends from the lower to the upper heaven, by which the souls of the blessed mount to tho higher after q 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 tho light of the coming Messiah. At the last day all Israel's enemies are to be cast into Gehenna and the blessed gathered together in the higher para disc.
 The Mohammedan heaven, as de- scribed in the Koran, is a place of the | rarest delights, where tho righteous re-
 oline on messy couches in fair garden, | listening to entrancing strains and | drinking of the rarest and pleasantest i beverages.
 The heaven of the old Norsemen is | the abode of the heroes slain in battle, | who live again in the scenes of their life,
 but amid eternal victories, chanting
 sagas and battle songs and quafing
 mead from the skulls of their enemies. Of an entirely different nature Is tho heaven of the Buddhist. It consists of
 twonty-eight grades in gradually as-
 conding scale of happiness as follows: 1 The not-fghting, the joyful, the change | enjoying, tho changing others-ar-
 bitrarily, tho assembled Brahmas. tho
 servants of Brahma, the great Brahmas, 1 limited light, illimited lights, pure | light, limited purity, illimited purity,
 perfect purity, great merit, unconscious, the not great, the exempt from pain,
 tho well-seeing, the beautiful, the highest, illimitcd space, illimited science, the place of naught, that of no-
 thought and that of not-no-thought,
 this last being sphere where all the
 activities of life arc nil. Indeed, the
 final goal of Buddhism looks toward tho
 destruction of sin by cxhausting it's ex- | istence, or by impeding it's existence Much akin to this arc the Brahminical and Shinto heavens, as well as that of
 the Parsees, which look toward final rlorihcation in state of ecstatic peace in company with Ahura- Mazda, their supreme deity.
 There is something pathetically sim
 plo 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
 the deer over rustling prairies and
 through tho whispering woods with no paleface to follow to impose upon him
 the restraint he despises; all of which
 has been so happily described by Pope. To- the poor Indian whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or bears hSn ln tho wind. His soul proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way; Yet simple nature to his hope hns given
 Behind the cloudtopd hill m humber heaven; Some safer world in depths of woods embraced
 Some happier island in tho watery waste, Where slaves once moro their native land be. hold, -'" N' No thieves torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
 To be, contents his natural desire;
 He asks no angels wing no seraph's fire, But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company Remedy for Chapped Hands. One of tho best remedies for rough or