hoping some day to go to heaven, to ask. How shall we be occupied, or what shall we do, when we get there? Has Swedenborg answered this question? Yes—quite explicitly.
But first, let us see what Christians prior to his time thought about it. On this, as on most other questions touching the Hereafter, opinions were divided. Some believed they should sit upon thrones, and that their happiness would spring from the exercise of regal authority. Others, that they would feast with patriarchs and prophets on the daintiest viands, and that this would be unutterable bliss. Others, that they should dwell in a city with pearl gates and golden streets, be surrounded by more than princely magnificence, and that idly gazing on such outward splendor would make them supremely happy. Others, that there would be in heaven a complete release from all active employment, and that happiness would be found in utter idleness—its denizens forever quaffing delights without rendering the slightest service. Others, that heaven is a place abounding in spontaneous paradisiacal joys, where all things pleasant to the senses are daily born with endless variety, and where it is bliss to respire the fresh and ever-varying delights. Others (and some Christians of the present day may be included in this class) have supposed that acts of formal worship—oral prayer and songs of thanksgiving and praise—would be the chief employment of the heavenly inhabitants.
Such are the opinions which Christians have hitherto entertained. Does any one of them appear reasonable in the light of the present day? To conceive of human
