The Bossier banner., 1894-04-12
Where is HeavenP
From the New York Herald.1

And Elisha prayed and said, Lord
l pray thee, open his eyes that he
may see. And the Lord opened the
eyes of the young man; and he saw
and, behold, the mountain was full
of horses and chariots of fire round
about Elisha.-II. Kings, vi, II.
Nobody knows where heaven is, but
everybody hopes there is a heaven
somewhere. To say that it is a con.
dition of mind is misleading use OF
language, an intangible abstraction
of no practical use. 1t is either a
place, or it is a hallucination. If a
heavenly y frame of mind is all there is
of heaven, then the possession is
nothing to boast of and may end
with the last gasp of life; but if it is
a place whose boundary line we cross
at the moment of death, in which our
intellectual activity will have un-
bounded scope, where souls can grow
unhampered by the cruel and repress-
ing limitations of the body, then we
have series of motives which irradi-
ate the present and fill the future
with the glow and promise of sun
rise.
We cannot see heaven, and for that
reason doubt hangs in the sky
But there are SO many things which
we cannot see that such an argument
becomes enfeebled. On an ordinary
night we can see perhaps two or three
thousand separate stars; with good
field glass the number may easily be
increased tenfold; with the Lick tele-
scope on Mount Hamilton at least a
million are visible. Our imperfect
vision can discover but small part of
the wonders of creation. There are
invisible worlds all around us, reveal
ed by optical instruments, and still
other worlds which no instruments
yet invented can discover. What We
can see, therefore, is by no means the
limit of what is.
tits interesting to ask whether any
one, under any circumstances, has
seen what is to us invisible. The text
we have chosen contains marvellous
statement. The prophet and the
youth were side by side. There was
no defect in the vision of the later,
for he could see the hills and the
clouds as clearly as the former. But
the prophets eyes were gifted with
faculty unknown to the stripping
who attended him. He saw what was
in the air as we'll as what was. on the
ground. and the seeing gave him
courage. The young man was dis
mayed, for host of Syrians with
spears had come to make them pris-
oners, but the prophet was calm and
serene and sure of the victory.
Then something happened to the
young mans eyes, and for a brief
moment he saw what he had never
before looked upon and what he prob
ably never looked upon thereafter
They were the same eyes that he had
always used, but an additional facul-
ty had been given them, and they
caught glimpse of the horses and
chariots, the army of spiritual Great
ures who, as Milton asserts, walk the
earth unseen both when we wake and
when we sleep.
Ifitis possible to believe that, first,
heaven is just as truly locality as
any one of the United States, and,
second, that though we may not be
able to see the citizens of this celes-
tial commonwealth they can see US,
we are travelling along the highway
to some very important truths. II
heaven is correctly described in these
statements, it becomes vivid and
thrilling. We have ia heart for any
fate;" can pass through any expert
ence unscatched; can even open the
door of the tomb and lay the tired