The Savannah morning news., 1901-04-05


u,rps and Eternal Paenns of
Praise Necessary to Compile Hap
piness.
From the New York Sun
A. the Unitarian Church of the Messiah
,astordav the Rev. Minot ]. Savage
,aohed on Heavens" On the preced-
- sunday his subject was "Hells," and
y, that occasion he described the various
,deas of a place of future punishment
,n+ertained by the human race so far as
-,are is any record of them in history.
+bA course of the sermon yesterday Mr..
savage said:
ort is a good deal easier to describe suf-
.-,icv and make it interesting than it is
70 describe happiness and make it inter-
sting. You can describe whole round
- tort,res and each one will be perfectly
d3stinct from the rest, and you feel every
,,ang. but can 1 describe to you, do you
think twelve kinds of enjoyments so as
- make them distinct and perfectly clear
~ Won. so you will not get little tired
Of If before l am through?
Now | do not know what sort of hui
initiating confession l may be making, but
am going to tell you that have read
Dan+e or tried to read him, several times.
I have always been intensely interested
IN his Inferno; il seems human in spite of
its horror; it seems real. was less inter
asted in the Purgatory; it seemed less
r-,l to me. somehow, less human; and
I've always found it intensely difficult to
s,av in his Heaven long enough to get
tbrouph it, 1t may be all my fault, but
+ nave found ii too tenuous, too intangi-
HE 10 touch me as human being, to
come within range of human thoughts
and human occupations.
And very much of the same is true in
regard to Milton. Milton's He'll is in
+enselv interesting, and Satan is in inter
est and power SO much beyond any or the
other characters that some of his critics
has said that he was evidently his hero,
and that Milton himself being something
of a rebel sympathized with this arch,
gigantic rebel of the universe, at least on
tna rebel side of him. He makes him ter
riblv human. But Adam, the angels,
there never seemed to me any human pro-
iections about them that l could hang
any interest on.
And so l have concluded that it is in
feuselv difficult TO describe happiness in
know there is a saying that the happy
uoman has no history; the stream of
happiness flows on so smoothly there are
no breaks no rippes, no cataracts to re-
cord nothing to write about. Suppose
YOU describe her happiness yesterday, all
the experiences she went through and
that she enjoyed it intensely, the very
breathing of the air was joy, the fra
GRANGE of the flowers joy, the CLEAN of
of the eastern sky as the sun was COM
ing up was joy; but can you describe it,
can you make it real, tangible 90 people,
and particularly if the next ten or fifteen
days are very much the same? Can you
describe them so as to make them differ
ent from the rest, so as to give detailed
picture of happiness and make it mean
much to you?
81 have hunted the descriptions of
Heaven that 1 have been able to find
through from beginning to end, and 1
find that up to the present time the writ
ers have not succeeded in making them
interesting to me. Take the writer Of
the old hymn-I thought / should be able
to recall his name. but have not been
able 20 put my finger on it-who sings:
When we've been there ten thousand
years.
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing Gods praise
Than when we first begun.
Now you can imagine yourself happy
singing Gods praise every day for 10000
years. Can you imagine God willing t.
put up with it! OF course it is all fgur-
awe. l am simply using these illustra-
tons to show how difficult it is except
in general terms, to describe the Heaven
That even we desire
1 remember, painfully well, when
was little boy, hearing the choir sing
sometimes, perhaps for the last hymn
when l had been SO tired for twenty min
utes that 1t seemed almost impossible
Tor me to keep still any longer, the Old
hymn that closed with
Where congregations ne'er break up
And Sabbaths have no end.
Now, l suppose that must have been
expressive of a state of mind into which
somebody worked himself when he wrote
mat hymn, to make it mean something to
hlh' out is it anything that makes us
want to go to Heaven?
1t seems to me that there must be a
reform in our thoughts about Heaven in
Inc direction of making it sweet and real
ana human. And it is curious, and it is
strange and more curious and more
strange that the people who stand in
lhe way of a little more light do not
see H. 1t is curious 1 say, to see how
Peopfe Will stand in the way of a little
more sensible human thought in some of
these directions
NOW when Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
WroIe her Gates 'Ajars what did she do
Ior-What was the main point of the
oooh! care not whether her particular
Iueas Were true or not, but what did she
pleau Tor? A typical illustration will show
you A little girl learns to play the pi-
SHO' She has never had one, she longs
~ o"e as the great, crowning achieve
enI ana glory of her life, and she asks
MSS Fheips whether she believes that
sie VIII nave piano in Heaven. What
an MISS Phelps say to her? She tells her
iI7hhly that she thinks she will, and all
lhls country, and all over Europe
rose howl. What for? Because UP
~ mat time the only instruments that
u peen introduced into Heaven appar-
enLy were harps!
L., no" harp. for anything I can see.
- just as material, If that was the troiI-
as piano; but this little girl didn't
~" now to play on a harp; II would
4o'e been no heaven to her to give her
s,bi1. ana Miss Phelps keenly and SEN
by saw, whether she was telling her
I'm, Hleral truth or not that she was
80 her the divinest and deepest truth
an when she told her that the SUI
and satifsed "D'N Oe met
bas every step of religious progress
,hotna'a TO meet this sort of STUPID.
na1e e'I ness pure prejudice. As / said a
NsN