The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-10-04
MYSTERY OF HEAVEN.
Poets and Artists More Successful in
Portrayal of Sin Than of Felicity.

along routes only family marked by
adventurous explorers, but it always
needs starting point, and it cannot
project paths into wholly unknown re-
gions. The word "unima gina BILE" sug-
gests the limitation of the creative
pictorial faculty which has made prog
reSS possible and is the open door
through which, DR.. Bushnell said,
God finds access to men. 1t is signifi-
cant that all attempts to describe heav-
en- end in luminous vagueness, while
hell and purgatory have been not only
suggested but pictured with terrifying
and convincing power. Dante walks
the awful paths of hell with command
ing authority; he not only sees and
understands, but he describes and in
terprets the world of punishment with
compelling power. And in the world of
publication, though less dramatic and
realistic, he is not less at home; he
knows whence flows the tears of pur-
gatory. But when the gates of para
disc open to his unaccustomed feet. the
sight is too dazzling; lie cannot see for
the unfamiliar brightness; he speaks as
one in a aforementioned dream. His
vision has Travelled far beyond his eX-
perience. Sin he knows, and remorse
and pain and tears he understands, but
he cannot grasp the bliss of heaven; he
walks with faltering steps in worlds
not realized
The Milton of Paradise Lost is a
greater poet than the Milton of Para
disc Regained;" and the Bible, the most
concrete and definite of books in deal
ing with the deep things of God and
with the mysteries of mans life, in the
infrequent references to heaven takes
refuge in a symbolism which the West
ern reader often mistake. for pictorial
imagery. and is rather hindered than
helped by what he reads. In literature
the great sinner is far more powerfully
drawn than the great saint, and the
most pathetic and appealing figures In
the drama and in fiction are the men
and women who. by breaking the law,
have set in motion the tremendous
tragic forces. The great artist finds
his ina gination reinforced and ener-
gized by experience when he deals with
Satan. with Agamemnon, with Faust,
with Richard Ill: but his skill falterS
when he tries to paint st. John or
Galahad. Sin we know, and all the
tragic consequences that follow it in
inevitable companionship; but the
peace which flows from perfect purity
the radiance that shines, the old
painters saw, from the faces of the sin
less, the bliss that waits for those who
stand at home in the presence of God
like happy children, lie beyond our ex-
perience; and, try as we may, we can
not give them form or body. When we
try we become irreverent and take
refuge in a kind of sentimental ma
a golden cloud on the edge of the
horizon or a shining dome hanging I'M
supported in midair
The world of punishment and of purt-
fication we know, but the world of bliss
we not only do not know, but it cannot
be revealed to US; that is the reason
why the longings of the heart are not
met and the cry of the soul for power
to realize the surroundings of those
who have gone on into the next stage
of life is not answered; we are not told
because We could not understand
A description Of the heavenly life by
one who was in the heart of it would
come to us in an unknown tongue;
nothing in our experience would inter-
pref it to US. 1t does not lie even in the
power of the Heavenly Father to make
these mysteries plain to us, as it does
not lie in our power to make clear to
the little children we love the princi-
pies of philosophy. the more abstract
truths of science. the revelations of ripe
Christian experience.
We can know the direction of the
paths which lead us to that highest
plane of living which we call heaven.
but we cannot see the paths; we can
know the elements out of which the
heavenly happiness is compounded, but
we cannot visualize the conditions in
which that happiness is shared; We can
neither give power and shape to the
dimensions and body to the things
which surround them. All the reports
of these things which credulous people
are asked to believe are crude, mater
ialistic. or so vague that they have
only the substance of dream.
Heaven is beyond our power of mag
nation. not because it is unreal. but
because it is a higher reality not yet
grasped by the mind. All life predicts
it: punishment and publication foretell
and affirm it; but it waits on our fuller
experience to reveal it. Mr.. Beecher
has somewhere said that knowledge Is
given us in this life, not to satisfy in
tellectual curiosity, but to aid in the
development of character; and heaven,
which rests immovable on character,
both divine and human, comes at the
end of a process not of thinking but of
living: that is what makes it more real
than the things we know. more sub
stantial and enduring than the things
we paint and carve and describe. When
the scientist begins to experiment with
a short circuit of wire he may dream OF
the time when messages will travel I'M
der great seas along thousands of miles
of cable; he cannot foresee the hour
when they will fly through the air it
self. That vision will come only when
he has mastered the resources of the
wire. and his experience has given his
imaginat ton a new vantage ground for
further flight.-Outlook-
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