Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/165

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and the true in however humble a degree. The African and the Arab, the Hindu and the Turk, the Anglo-Saxon and the Indian—every one of whatever color, clime, or creed, who has religiously followed the light vouchsafed him, will find there a congenial home in the society of kindred spirits. He will be among his spiritual kith and kin, and have no desire to be elsewhere, being in just the society that is suited to him, and that he most covets. But the heaven of the Mahometan will not be that of the Christian, nor will all the good from Christian lands dwell together, but every one in his own heaven—every one in the society of those he loves best, and in happiness proportioned to the kind and degree of his goodness. All who have an affinity for the society of the just, will find a congenial home in some one of the "many mansions" in the realms above.

Then look at the practical tendency of this doctrine. It is plain to see how it discountenances that narrow and exclusive spirit which would have us believe there is but one kind and degree of goodness, but one acceptable or saving creed, and but one denomination or church through which an entrance into heaven can be effected. It inculcates the beautiful truth which all the best people in Christendom are beginning to see and acknowledge, that the church on earth—though one in spirit, like the societies in heaven—must needs consist of an endless, variety. It deals a fatal blow, therefore, to the old sectarianism which has so long disfigured and misrepresented the Christian religion; and shows that it is a part of the beautiful economy of God, avouched by everything in heaven as well as on earth, that people's minds