Heaven Revealed/Chapter 6
VI.
VERDICT OF REASON AND EXPERIENCE.
NOW is this doctrine respecting heaven, as thus far opened, true? Let us see,—and we will first examine it in the light of reason, common observation and human experience.
However people's ideas of heaven may differ in other respects, they all agree in this: that whoever goes there, will find great and enduring happiness. The Bible clearly warrants this belief. But in what does human happiness consist? What do reason, observation and experience teach on this point? Certainly that it does not consist in any outward appliances of which time and space are predicable. It is not those who are most comfortably lodged and luxuriously fed and royally apparelled, who are the happiest. By no means. True and enduring happiness is something which the wealth of the Indies cannot purchase. For it does not depend on the character or condition of things without, but on the character and condition of the world within us on the state of the soul. Locate people as you may, place them in the midst of the loveliest surroundings, supply them with all the elegances, comforts and luxuries that wealth can furnish—houses, furniture, equipage, books, friends, companions, all that the natural man craves—and you will not thereby make them happy. They may appear and even esteem themselves happy for a time; but it is only an external delight, a merely natural gratification which they experience, and which from its very nature must soon pass away. Every person of much reflection or self-intuition, knows that
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
The soul very soon stamps its own complexion on a man's entire surroundings. The outer soon acquires the color and the key of our inner world; becomes beautiful and harmonious if there be beauty and harmony within, but ugly and discordant if deformity and discord are in the soul. As one of our own poets sings:
"It is the soul's prerogative, its fate
To shape the outward to its own estate;
If right itself, then all around is well;
If wrong, it makes of all without a hell."
No. It is in vain that men seek, with any hope of finding, true happiness from without—from any new political, social, economic or industrial arrangements. We do not mean to say that some external arrangements may not be more useful than others in promoting internal and spiritual culture. But real happiness can never come from without, but only from within—from a regenerate and well-ordered state of the soul, yea, from the Lord's own presence therein. It is the normal result of obedience to the laws of our spiritual life. Let these laws be faithfully obeyed, and the soul is thereby opened to an influx of the Divine life, and the man is happy under almost any circumstances. But let them be violated, and no amount of purple and fine linen and sumptuous fare can ward off the evil consequences of such violation. The truly good man, however bereft of comforts and luxuries, is never really miserable; nor is the bad man, though crowned with abundant earthly treasures, ever truly happy. For true happiness never comes from without, but depends wholly on the condition of the soul. How clearly did Milton see this, when he sang in strains no less true than beautiful:
"He that hath light within his own clear breast,
May sit in the centre and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun,
Himself is his own dungeon."
And another of England's poets says:
"Know then this truth (enough for man to know),
Virtue alone is happiness below.
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing,
Bliss is the same in subject and in king."
And the same thing has been seen, if not sung, by every one who has received from the Creator a single spark of poetic inspiration.
If, then, all who go to heaven are to be happy there, and if true happiness on earth comes only from a regenerate and well-ordered state of the soul, the conclusion is forced upon us that heaven is not a place into which people may be admitted from immediate mercy, but a certain state of life. And it may be further inferred that it is a similar state (it may be far more exalted and perfect) to that which is known to be attended with the highest happiness on earth. And what is that state? Let reason, observation and experience testify.
Consider that God is Law and Order itself. He governs the material universe by fixed and determinate laws. In every form and condition of matter, laws pervade and preside over it. We call them laws of matter, but they are really the Lawgiver's own vital presence in matter,—laws to which He continually subjects matter. And every infraction of these laws, we know, is attended with more or less suffering. Our corporeal frame has its laws—beneficent and God-ordained; and bodily health and comfort can be enjoyed only on condition of the strict observance of these laws. They cannot be transgressed with impunity. If we overwork our bodies or our brains, if we indulge our appetites to excess, if we take poison (be it food or drink) into the system, if we breathe a vitiated atmosphere or neglect all bodily exercise for a considerable time, we must suffer the penalty of every such infraction of the body's laws,—a penalty always proportioned to the extent of the violation.
Now, mind has its laws as well as matter. There are laws of the soul as well as of the body. And it is just as essential to the health of the soul—as essential, therefore, to human happiness—that these spiritual laws be obeyed, as it is to the body's health and comfort that we obey the laws of our physical being. All these laws are divine—are God's laws; and none of them can be transgressed with impunity. If the soul's laws, therefore, be violated, the soul will be sick and suffer, and unhappiness will ensue; as certainly as bodily sickness and suffering follow the transgression of the body's laws.
But where and what are the laws of the soul, on the observance of which human happiness is conditioned? They are all contained in the Word of the Lord. The Word is, indeed, the Book of Life, for herein are recorded all the laws of our spiritual life. Yet some of these laws may be rationally inferred. They may be learned from experience and observation. Since they are God's laws, they must all be laws of love, and therefore good; and if carefully obeyed, they must produce the greatest possible amount of happiness. Obedience to divine laws can never be attended with unhappiness. This is ever the result of disobedience.
Now every one knows that people are not happy who are governed by an inordinate self-love, and who seek their own good exclusively, regardless of the good of their neighbor. Every one who has not wholly quenched the Divine Spirit within him, feels that, in obeying at all times the promptings of self-interest—living and acting with a supreme and exclusive regard to himself—he is not obeying the will of God, nor that law of life which God has ordained. He is inwardly conscious of living and acting otherwise than the Heavenly Father would have him. Nor is he happy—far from it—in the perpetual indulgence of his love of self. He is restless and sour and hard and morose. And not only does this love make the soul of its possessor unhappy, but its indulgence is attended with unhappiness to others. Its tendency is altogether evil. Let all men act in obedience to its promptings, and universal hatred, anarchy, war and wretchedness would be the inevitable consequence.
Nor are those persons happy who are in the lust of dominion—who seek to exalt themselves above others and to rule over others; nor those who pride themselves on their attainments, and desire to be esteemed and honored above others on account of them; nor those who cherish hatred and revenge, who indulge in bitter and vindictive feelings toward enemies. All such dispositions and feelings are the legitimate offspring of self-love, and utterly opposed to the laws of life which God has revealed for the government of human spirits. And from the bosoms in which they dwell, they drive away all genuine peace, and induce a restless fever-heat which burns and burns to the core of life—a tormenting fire of hell.
Very different is the case with those who obey the laws of neighborly love; whose supreme desire is to render themselves useful—to do all the good they can in the world; who love, and seek to do good to, even their enemies; who have no desire to rule over but only to serve others; who care little for mere earthly rewards—the honors or praises of men; who claim no merit on account of what they know or do, but in their hearts acknowledge their utter dependence on the Lord, and ascribe all the honor and glory to Him. These are the truly great, wise and noble ones of earth, however obscure their names or humble their abode. Viewed in the light of that truth by which all souls are to be finally judged, they shine like stars even in this world. They are the golden links in God's great chain of love, connecting men on earth with the angels in heaven. Men call them angels—for some perception of the quality of angelic life is vouchsafed to many here on earth.
And such persons, too, are the only ones who know what true and substantial happiness is. They are happy because they obey the highest laws—laws divinely ordained and revealed for the government of human beings. And the nearer men approach to this state, or to the quality of angelic life as disclosed by Swedenborg—the more faithfully they obey all the revealed laws of the higher or regenerate life—the more pure, serene and exalted is their happiness. This has been the universal experience of mankind in all ages.
But Swedenborg does not teach that the happiness of heaven in all its fullness, can ever be enjoyed on earth. We must lay aside the material body before we can arrive at the perfection of that state denoted by the term heaven. The blessedness experienced here on earth resulting from strict conformity to the highest laws, or from the highest spiritual state to which we are capable of attaining here, is obscure and meagre when compared with that which regenerate souls will enjoy in the world beyond. Accordingly Swedenborg says:
"The man who is in the loves of self and the world, so long as he lives in the body feels delight from these loves, and also in each of the pleasures to which they give birth. But the man who is in love to God and the neighbor, does not, so long as he lives in the body, feel a manifest delight from these loves and from the good affections thence derived, but only a blessedness almost imperceptible, because it is stored up in his interiors, and veiled by the exteriors which are of the body, and blunted by worldly cares.
"But the states are entirely changed after death. The delights of the love of self and the world are then turned into painful and horrible sensations, which are called hell-fire, and occasionally into things defiled and filthy corresponding to their unclean pleasures which—strange to say—are then delightful to them. But the obscure delight and almost imperceptible blessedness which had been enjoyed by those in the world who were in love to God and in love toward the neighbor, are then turned into the delight of heaven, which becomes perceptible and sensible in all manner of ways; for that blessedness which lay stored up and hidden in their interiors when they lived in the world, is then revealed and brought forth into manifest sensation, because they are then in the spirit, and that was the delight of their spirit."—H. H, n. 401.
"All goods increase immensely in the other life. But man's life while in the body is such that he cannot go beyond loving his neighbor as himself, because he is in corporeal principles; but when these are removed the love becomes more pure, and at length angelic, which is to love the neighbor more than one's self. For inheaven it is delightful to do good to another, and not delightful to do good to themselves unless in order that the good may become another's, thus for the sake of another; and this is to love the neighbor more than themselves." —Ibid, n. 406.Heaven, then, according to the New Christianity, is essentially a state of life. And if happiness must enter into our idea of it, as an essential element, then it can be no other than the very state that Swedenborg says it is; and the angels, if human and subject to the laws ordained for the government of human beings, must be of precisely the character that he has so often and so vividly portrayed. The nature of the heavenly life can be none other than that he describes. This is the clear and undeniable testimony of enlightened reason, common observation, and all human experience. To suppose the character of the angels to be at all different from that revealed through him—to suppose them possessed of different dispositions and feelings, to be actuated by different motives, to desire and seek different ends, would be to suppose them not thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Gospel, not subject to the laws of the higher life as revealed in the Divine Word, not images and likenesses of the Lord, not children of the Heavenly Father, and therefore not his "ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation."
But what is the testimony of Holy Scripture on the subject? We have incidentally introduced some of it already; but we will consider this question more in detail, and answer it more fully, in the next chapter.