The Other Life/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
THE OCCUPATIONS OF HEAVEN.
HOW are we engaged hereafter?
Dr. Chalmers, in an admirable discourse on "the new heaven and the new earth," exposes with a masterly hand the metaphysical delusions which exist in his own and all other evangelical denominations on the immateriality of the life to come.
He characterizes as "an imagination to be rectified, the product perhaps of a wrong but fashionable philosophy," the prevalent idea, "that when a spiritualizing process has purged away all our corruption, then by the stepping-stone of death and resurrection, we should be borne away to some ethereal region, where sense and body and all in the shape either of audible sound or of tangible substance are unknown."
"The common imagination," says he, making a most humiliating confession, "that we have of paradise on the other side of death, is that of a lofty aerial region, where the inmates float in ether or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing; where all the warm and sensible accompaniments, which give such an expression of strength and life and coloring to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre and imperceptible and uninviting to the eye of mortals here below—where every vestige of materialism is done away."
Such is a picture of the Christian heaven drawn by a most learned and devout Christian minister! Contrast it with the true idea of heaven which even children, untutored by catechisms, glean intuitively from the express declarations of Scripture, the appearance of angels, and the recorded visions of prophets and apostles. Do not the simple-minded laity, also, unblinded by metaphysical sophistries, think of heaven as the children do, as a world of superlative grandeur and beauty, full of visible and audible and tangible realities, and inhabited by glorious beings in the human form, living in splendid mansions and clad in radiant garments, displaying, also, the tender sympathies of human love and all the noble activities of the human intellect?
"The holders of this imagination," continues Dr. Chalmers, in a deprecating manner, "forget all the while that there is no essential connection between materialism and sin—that the world which we now inhabit had all the amplitude and solidity of its present materialism before sin entered into it."
"Were our place of everlasting blessedness," he argues, "so purely spiritual as it is commonly imagined, then the soul of man, after having quitted his body at death, would quit it conclusively. Why should the disengaged spirit again be fastened to the drag of that grosser and heavier substance, which many think has only the effect of weighing down its activity? What is the use of a resurrection, if the union that then takes place, is to deaden or to reduce all those energies which are ascribed to the living principle in a state of separation?"
Surely the writer of this would have risen to clearer and nobler views of the soul, the resurrection and the life to come, had he studied the philosophy of Swedenborg, which solves all his difficulties at once by teaching that the spiritual body and the world it lives in, are neither material nor immaterial, but substantial!
His strongest argument for the solidity or reality of the spiritual life, in opposition to the absurd immaterialism which is everywhere taught, is drawn from the fact that God manifested Himself in the flesh, assumed, purified and glorified a human body, and ascended to heaven with it where He reigns for ever in it.
"Does this look", he continues, "like the abolition of materialism after the present system of it is destroyed? Or does it not rather prove, that, transplanted into another system, it will be preferred to celestial honors, and prolonged in immortality throughout all ages?"
Had he understood how material and substantial things exist simultaneously in discrete degrees or planes of being, and undergo corresponding evolutions for ever, he would have escaped all this blundering in the dark, this confused and vague speculation, this annihilation of the physical world and this impossible transfusion of matter into spirit!
"Though a paradise of sense," he says in professional qualification of his statements, "it will not be a paradise of sensuality. Though not so unlike the present world as many apprehend, there will be one point of total dissimilarity betwixt them. It is not the entire substitution of spirit for matter that will distinguish the future economy from the present. But it will be the entire substitution of righteousness for sin. It is this which signalizes the Christian from the Mohammedan paradise. Not that sense and substance and splendid imagery, and the glories of a visible creation seen with bodily eyes are excluded from it, but that all which is vile in principle and voluptuous in impurity will be utterly excluded from it. There will be a firm earth as we have at present, and a heaven stretched over it, as we have at present; and it is not by the absence of these things, but by the absence of sin, that the abodes of immortality will be characterized."
The speculations of this great evangelical thinker, though far below the standard of New Church truth, and showing rather a brave search and struggle for light than the light itself, are cordially commended to those persons, who are afraid to think independently on those sublime themes, or even to think of them at all. They may infer from these views that it is unscriptural, unphilosophical and absurd, to speak or even think of heaven as a vague and felicitous state of the soul floating away in immaterial ethers. And that, on the contrary, it is highly rational and biblical to describe it as a genuine and beautiful world, full of glorious and saintly people, living in the constant exercise of all the activities, and in the enjoyment of all the pleasures of which the soul and body of man are capable.
The scientific element predominates so largely in our modern culture, and the current theology is so utterly divorced from science, that in the minds of most men the spiritual and natural worlds stand far apart, without the least necessary or philosophical connection. The result is a deep-rooted naturalism both in and out of the church, so that the intellect is actually offended at the idea of open communication with heaven, as if it were something absurd or impossible.
Swedenborg teaches us the difference and the analogy between substance and matter, between the spiritual and natural worlds, and satisfies our rational faculty as to their corresponding laws and phenomena. This he has done under special and constant illumination from divine sources, surrounded by every safeguard to protect him from error or imposition. The Bible will hereafter be a sealed book only to those who refuse to examine the spiritual light revealed in its pages by its Divine Author through his chosen medium. To them, indeed, death will remain a dark shadow, and heaven a vague splendor, an imaginary state, a celestial hope, a pious dream; and the whole life to come a mystery, before which the uninstructed mind sinks down in helplessness or total apathy.
We have seen in the previous chapters that heaven is, first, a state of love and charity in the heart; secondly, and flowing from the first, a state of wisdom and illumination in the mind; and thirdly, as an effect of these emotional and intellectual states, a vast world of beauty and glory, making precisely the same kind of impression upon our spiritual senses that the natural world makes upon our natural senses.
Heaven begins at the centre, in a state of love and charity in the heart. That is the essential basis of its existence, the primal cause of its creation. No physical changes, no variations of place, no possible yearnings or prayers can bring a soul into heaven. No learning, no wisdom, no spiritual illumination, no faith, no operations of the understanding, can of themselves advance the spirit one step nearer to the pearl-white gates and mansions of the blessed. Love to God in the heart, charity to the neighbor, obedience to the divine laws, a life according to the commandments, however acquired, under whatever names or forms or creeds; these are the passports to heaven, for these are the powers which create it and animate it and sustain it from one moment to another.
The material of heaven is, therefore, a numberless multitude of souls, each one of whom is perfectly submissive to the divine will, and loves his neighbor better than himself. Each one is ready and eager to give, not only much but all he has for the benefit of others, and to devote his labors and consecrate his life to the common good. This lofty ideal is attained by a good life on earth, and by the judgment after death, when the good and evil elements in the character are separated, the evil cast out or made thoroughly dormant, and the good made the ruling loves and guiding principles of the future life.
Souls, such as we have described the angels to be, live in society with each other. Men, as we see them here on earth, are gregarious, like animals; but angels are consociative; that is, they are drawn together by spiritual affinities, and they are arranged or organized into societies, series, orders and degrees, according to the special functions they can discharge. The organizing power is not the selfhood of the spirit, nor the rule of the strongest, nor a transmuted authority, nor the will of a majority. The organizing power is the love and wisdom of God, flowing through authentic and recognized channels, felt in every heart, clearly comprehended in every mind. There is no possible collision of interests or powers or forces, because all these have been surrendered to God. He assigns every angel his post and office, just as He keeps every star in its place throughout the shining abysses of the natural sphere.
The type upon which all the heavenly organizations are effected is the Human Form, that transcendent epitome of all the principles, forms and powers of the universe, that image and likeness of God. Each society is constituted and each heaven is consolidated on the principle of the human body, in which every organ and every cell and unit of an organ, lives and works for the benefit of all the rest, and takes nothing from the common fund but what is required to keep it in healthful, working condition. The life and joy of the soul are in the work and in the use or the good of it.
Societies and individuals have their places, associations, powers, forms and objective surroundings according to the uses or functions they love to perform. They differ widely in all these respects, but such is the divine order which prevails in heaven, that all the infinite parts work harmoniously together to the common end; and such is the perfection, peace and fitness of the whole, that the heavens appear in the sight of the Lord as one man, and each individual is a perfect miniature of the whole.
This pure or unlimited and spiritual anatomy, this transcendental physiology, this universal philosophy of form, which redeems psychology from its abstractions and makes the universe a concrete, living cosmos, or organism of beauty, although first definitely stated by Swedenborg, has been dimly foreseen by other great thinkers.
Paul, writing to the Corinthians, gives this heavenly principle of organization the following expression:
"Now there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administration but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operation, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal" (or for definite uses).
After specifying some ten of the different functions of the Spirit in different individuals, he continues:
"But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one and hath many members; and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free."
We shall understand more clearly what the occupations of these heavenly spirits are, if we first remove from our mind's eye, as calculated to obscure our perceptions, all those present and earthly engagements, which, by the very constitution of the spiritual world as unfolded by Swedenborg, are unnecessary or impossible in the future life.
The natural world is the sphere of birth and of death. In the spiritual world nothing is born and nothing dies. The natural world is fixed in time and space, not responding or responding very slowly to the spiritual changes of the soul. The spiritual world on the contrary is instantaneously plastic to the motions of the soul, of which its times, spaces and all its objective phenomena are strictly representative. From this philosophical basis there springs up at once a vast difference between the occupations of the inhabitants of the respective spheres.
Abstract from the business of our world all the arts and trades and labors which are concerned in the feeding, clothing, housing and governing of mankind, what would be left? No seasons, no crops, no farming; no hunting, no fishing; no transportation of commodities, no bargain and sale; no wages, no property, no money or other representative of value; no manufactures, no housebuilding, no planting, no quarrying; no birth, no diseases, no death; no governments like ours, no elections, no taxes; no criminal jurisprudence; no wars, no treaties, no parties in Church or State. Take all these things and many others away from our conception of active life, and at first blush what an enormous vacuum is left! It seems to us as if all was taken away, all motives to action; yea, the very basis of affection and thought.
Now all these occupations, with the feelings, ideas and motives which they involve and engender, are peculiar to the natural world, to a realm of time and space in which fixed things are created, born, grow and die. They are necessary to this our first stage of existence, and are the very means of our rational development and of our preparation for the higher life. Their use, however, is only temporary, and they obscure our perceptions of spiritual things, and hide from us the riches and glory of our future inheritance. Our life here is a fore-gleam of immortality. This world is the seed-field of elements which are to bear flower and fruit in heaven.
These things do not exist in the spiritual world, because the operation of the law of creation there differs from its operation here, that being a world of spiritual substances and not one of inert matter. Spiritual substances are emanations or concretions from a divine substance, and take form and coloring from the operations of the Divine Mind, and from those of the finite minds which He creates. Our spiritual bodies, the garments they wear, the houses they live in, the objects which surround them, are all "made without hands." As Swedenborg expresses it, they are all given freely by the Lord. Food, clothing, shelter, are no longer objects of painful solicitude. In our Father's house are "many mansions" prepared for us by Himself. We are fed with "angels' food," a spontaneous creation like the manna of the wilderness. We find ourselves daily clothed in correspondence with our interior states, like the lilies of the field which neither toil nor spin. The golden city "garnished with all manner of precious stones," and the river of life "clear as crystal," rise ever before us as in a ravishing and perpetual dream.
"O sweet and blessed country!
The home of God's elect;
O sweet and blessed country!
That eager hearts expect.
O fields that know no sorrow!
O state that fears no strife!
O princely bowers! O land of flowers!
O realm and home of Life!"
We can now see that the occupations of the other life are spiritual in their character. They all have reference to the growth and illumination of the mind, to the purification of the affections, and to the sanctification of the will and the conduct of the life on principles of love to the Lord and charity to the neighbor. To grow in wisdom, intelligence, goodness and usefulness for ever, is the life and felicity of heaven.
When we say that the occupations of the heavenly life are spiritual in their character, we are far from meaning that heaven is an infinite Church, and our life there a perpetual sabbath in the ordinary sense of these words. Take up any orthodox work on the subject, and you will find that holiness, self-renunciation, faith, love, praise and prayer are considered as the elements and business of the heavenly life. This is a great mistake. These are only elements of the heavenly character which prepare one for the heavenly life. The heavenly life is one of constant spiritual activity, in which every intellectual faculty of the mind and every exalted affection of the heart is called into blissful operation.
The religious instinct of course exists in heaven in the highest degree; but it is not the whole of heavenly life as is commonly supposed. There are private and public devotions, and the spirit in its exercises of praise and prayer rises to an ecstasy of faith and love, of which we have here no conception. The public worship is conducted by singing, praying and expounding the Word of God, and the Church militant on earth receives its best inspiration from the Church triumphant in heaven. Religious offices perform there the same use they are designed to fill here; they bring us into closer communion with the Divine Love, and renew the soul with heavenly strength and peace, only to fit us more thoroughly for the consociations of life and the discharge of all our social and domestic duties.
The happiness of heaven depends on its neighborly activities, and not on its holiness or its prayers or its praises, although the former cannot exist without the latter. The joy of heaven is in use. No genuine or permanent felicity can flow from abstract states of the mind, establishing a merely personal relation with God for the sake of one's own salvation. States of mind entered into as if no other beings were in existence but the soul and its Maker, must have in them a large element of selfishness. This is the religion of the hermit in his cave, or of St. Simon on his pillar, not that of Wesley in his camp-meetings, and of Howard in the prisons. Christians of the former class are besieged by devils, while the latter are attended and comforted by angels.
No; the love of God is best exhibited in the love of the neighbor. Unless our love of God leads us to establish fraternal and helpful relations with all about us, it is a soul without a body; ideas without words to reveal them; a house without a foundation.
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small."
The angels have learned that lesson, so hard for the carnal mind to comprehend, that happiness consists in loving and obeying God so supremely, that our selfhood is put in the last and lowest place, and our life is expended upon and for others.
This is to be like God. He did not create the world for the display of His own glory, as some of the old catechisms have it, but to make a universe of wise and happy creatures, and to flood all the spheres of creation with light and peace and beauty and eternal joy. To receive from Him and to give to others is the secret of heavenly happiness. The more the angel gives, the more he receives. The poorest is the richest. He that loses his life, finds it. The greatest is the servant of all. The wisest is the most childlike. Oh happy, glorious reversal of the aims, dispositions and feelings of our earthly and unregenerate state!
The occupations upon which the angelic energies are expended are domestic, social and civil. As the heavenly character begins with the heart, so the heavenly world begins with the home. Every society in heaven is a cluster of homes. Every house or home is a little paradise, in which an Adam and an Eve (for marriage is the proper state of the angels), conversing daily with Jehovah, enjoy in mutual love the eternity of wedded bliss. The married pair is the unit of heaven, representing the union of the Good and the True in the church, and of the divine love and wisdom in the Divine Man. From the home, as the centre of life and power, proceed all the angelic activities for the public good.
As the individuals of every society differ in talent and power, and in the degrees of love and wisdom they have received from the Lord; as some are wiser and more capable than others; and as all inferior things must be subordinated to superior things, and inviolable order be prescribed for every office and function; therefore there are governments in heaven. The government of heaven is that of mutual love. The law of the Lord is the only law that reigns or can be executed in those blissful spheres. They are governors and princes and rulers there, who have the law of the Lord most clearly inscribed upon their judgments and most deeply engraven upon their hearts. They do not desire office, nor are they elected to it. They hold it by virtue of their inherent capacity, patent to all eyes, of executing it best. This principle assigns every incumbent to his post, from the king and the priest to the humblest servant and doorkeeper, and the highest and lowest are bound together by the golden chain of love.
Talents are given to be employed, not to be buried in the ground. Every soul has a specific genius which constitutes its individuality. If the soul is immortal and retains its identity, it will be the same soul, intellectually and morally, that it was here. Therefore every faculty of man will come forth in the future life for its share of display, development and use. The man of science, the philosopher, the mathematician, the theologian will delight in study and reflection, and will communicate ever new and wonderful truths which they will draw from the exhaustless storehouses of the divine wisdom. Artists will gladden the eye with creations surpassing all terrestrial achievements. Poets will charm the mind with songs of perennial beauty. Musicians will ravish the soul with melodies of heaven. Death only frees, expands, elevates and glorifies all the capabilities of the good.
There are games and amusements and social parties and public gatherings in heaven as well as on earth. Everything which ever recreated and delighted the heart of man, and which can be thoroughly divested of evil and of the faintest suggestion of evil, will be reproduced hereafter in more beautiful, enchanting and enduring forms. Nor will that histrionic talent, which God has so largely showered upon man, fail to impart under the purest auspices the instruction and amusement it was designed to bestow.
The life and joy of angels have a wider field of action than the pleasures of individual culture and the bestowal of their spiritual possessions upon others. Those happy beings have a vast series of duties to perform for the human race, which will be perpetual; for the physical universe is the necessary basis of the spiritual, and men will never cease to be born in this world and to become angels in the next.
"The angels of every society," says Swedenborg, "are sent on missions to men, to guard them and to withdraw them from evil affections and the thoughts thence originating, and to inspire them with good affections so far as they will freely receive them."
"Are they not all ministering spirits?" says the apostle Paul.
There are societies of angels who have the charge of infants, whom death has early released from the bondage of nature.
Other societies instruct and educate them as they grow up.
There are some who assist in the resurrection of the dead, that perpetually-recurring miracle of divine love and power.
There are some who protect the souls of those newly deceased from the infestations of evil spirits.
There are some who are mediatory spirits between one society and another, each representing his own society and speaking for it.
There is thus a vast chain of connection and communication of all the societies with each other, so that the soul by successive progressions or changes of state may pass from one to another and explore all the wonders and glories of heaven.
And this chain of connection reaches to men in the natural sphere. As that charming poet. Gerald Massey, sings:
"Eyes watch us that we cannot see;
Lips warn us which we may not kiss:
They wait for us, and starrily
Lean toward us from heaven's lattices.
"We cannot see them face to face;
But love is nearness: and they love
Us yet, nor change with change of place,
In their more human world above."
Nor are heaven and earth the only fields of angelic love and labor; for the angels are frequently sent into the hells, bearing the olive branch like commissioners of peace, to restrain the violence of infernal passion, and to mitigate the sufferings which evil spirits inflict upon each other.
"These occupations of the angels," says Swedenborg, "are their general ones; but to every angel is assigned his own in particular. For every general use is composed of innumerable other uses. All and each of these are co-ordinated and subordinated according to divine order, and taken together, they constitute and perfect the general use, which is the common good."
This infinitely diversified and perfect system of organization is the form of heaven, the Grand Man. Into this form the divine love and wisdom flow, communicating as they descend the blessings of goodness and truth to each angel and spirit in his degree and according to his capacity. With the divine sphere, come not only affection and thought, but innocence, peace, joy, strength and power. Every nerve and fibre of the angelic form is perpetually pervaded with a serene delight.
How can we attain this grand ideal of individual and social perfection? We, who bear the mark of the beast on our foreheads and the indenture of hereditary evil in our hearts; we, whose every step and thought and emotion have somewhat in them which is abhorrent to angels and to God; we whose good deeds are selfish, whose very prayers and preachings are tainted with personal aspirations; we, who assign to others a lower place than our own, who have pride to be wounded and vanity to be insulted; we, whose avarice, ambition and sensuality cleave to our souls like the leprosy of Naaman to his body!
How can we inherit the kingdom of heaven?