CHAPTER II.

Pagan Ideas of Beavenly Bappiness.

In such a world, so thorny, and where none
Finds happiness unblighted, or, if found,
Without some thistle sorrow at its side;
It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin
Against the law of love, to measure lots
With less distinguished than ourselves; that thus
We may with patience bear our moderate ills,
And sympathize with others suff'ring more.

COWPER.

THE future world, with all its living glories, lies beyond the reach of the senses. We cannot see its objects, hear its music, or in any way, by the senses, touch its realities. It is not, therefore, through the medium of the sensual side of our nature that we can converse with the mysteries of another life.

The light of reason is equally inadequate to so great a task. Reason, like the cold moon, revolves only around the earth, and shines but with a reflected light. It can move only in its own orbit, which is an intellectual one; of the mysteries of faith it can know nothing, until it becomes itself the subject of its operations. It only shines after it is shone upon. We can, therefore, know nothing, intellectually and

definitely, of another life, until we are informed by illuminations that come from the other side of the material veil. The heathen, consequently, who have lived out of the range of heavenly communications, except so far as these reached them in vague traditions, have been in the dark in regard to the nature of another life. They reasoned, but at the grave, or at that awful verge which divides the seen and unseen, their empirical investigations were abruptly lost in dark uncertainty. Their yearning spirits, in attempting to penetrate these mysteries, fluttered against the veil which hides them, and beat it till their wings were weary, and then descended again into the sphere of sense and of cold abstractions, from which they had started. Only that which comes from God and eternity can lead back to them. As the mist which rises from the earth floats awhile cloudily in the air, and then seeks earth's bosom again, so the aspirations of the heathen after another life soon returned to their source. As the world by wisdom knew not God, so it did not know the eternity in which He dwells. As the gods of the heathen were but fragmentary and shadowy ideas concerning the true God, so their ideas of the future life were but dark adumbrations of the blessed reality.

It is true the spirits of the heathen were so constituted as the spirits of all men areas constantly and earnestly to sigh after another life, as an exile in a strange land sighs for his home; yet they could not tell, with certainty, whether that for which they longed was not a mere dream of the heart, a cheat of some malignant spirit, who would flatter to disappoint, or

whether it originated perhaps in a capricious or wicked dissatisfaction with their present lot. Hope, enkindled by floating traditions, rather than faith, recognized faintly a better life beyond the tears of this; but this hope was sadly clouded by fears that it might prove a hope which was led on to disappointment by a pleasant lie. There was a capacity in the spirit for sympathy with the unseen and infinite, but having no objective revelations to give certainty to its aspirations, their own thoughts and feelings, wakened to hope by some floating traditions, served only to darken and confuse the earnest and mysterious longings of their nature. Without was mystery, and within were fears. Often did they, stirred by the deep wants of their hearts, adopt the belief in another life, and as often again they first doubted, then denied, and at last cast it away as a vexatious delusion. "He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it."

As in the natural world it gives us pleasure to look towards the hopeful orient, and see how the dawn of morning passes into day; so, in the spiritual history of our race, it is interesting to trace all the better things which we now enjoy, back into the grey twilight of the world's morning, when the human spirit spake as a child, understood as a child, and thought as a child. It will also serve to lead us more livingly into the substance of those blessed truths of revelation which we propose, in this volume, to exhibit; for no subject can be fully understood except in its history— its history is a commentary on it. Moreover, we can only fully appreciate the value of divine revelation, after we see how the world has stumbled in the dark without it.

It is only after we have walked in a dark and dreary night, with nothing to guide us but "reason's feeble ray," that we can feel the beautiful force of the expression: "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the Sun." We propose, therefore, as preparatory to what shall follow, to give an exhibition of the ideas of future happiness as they are found among pagans of all ages and all lands.

SECTION I.

ALL PAGANS HAVE HAD SOME IDEA OF HEAVENLY HAPPINESS.

As the belief of the soul's immortality was a very ancient tradition, so also was the collateral doctrine of rewards and punishments. If it was believed that the virtuous would be rewarded hereafter, it was also necessary to believe that some particular place would be assigned them, prepared for that purpose, where these rewards would be bestowed. As ideas are always very indefinite in the childhood of nations, the minds of the ancient pagans were long satisfied with the most vague and general ideas of the place of departed men. As among the early Hebrews, where the doctrine of immortality was more fully known, they for a long time spoke of the dead in the most general way, as having been gathered to their fathers, as gone to Sheol, out of sight; so, among pagans, it was for a long time the traditionary style of speaking of the dead as having gone to the gods. As to where the gods dwelt, they did not closely question their minds.

Later, however, when the more logical and philosophical training of their minds required their ideas to become more definite, they began to speculate as to the home of the gods, and the place of happiness reserved for the good after this life. As their minds were earthly, they, for the most part, located the heaven of the good upon the earth; associating in their minds, with these abodes, all kinds of earthly ideas, and adorning them with earthly drapery. Since their knowledge of the face of the earth was limited, and since there were still around them many undiscovered solitudes and unexplored seas, there was abundant room for the imagination to locate these happy abodes, and of surrounding them with sacred mystery, where there was no danger that any bold intrusion would break the holy charm. Human fancy has never combined scenery of loveliness and beauty equal to their Elysian Fields, Hesperian Gardens, and Islands of the Blest. These lovely and peaceful abodes of the departed lay in unearthly beauty before the hopes of the ancients, and all the fascinations of poetry and eloquence were employed to heighten their charms and unfold their attractions. There were mild skies, soft air, refreshing shadows, and all the glories of perpetual spring.

There vine-clad vale and incense-breathing mound,
And bowers Elysian shed their fragrance round;
Lawns bask in light,-in gloom uprise the woods,
And mossy grottoes echo crystal floods

That murmur over sands of gold, and run
Now brown with shades, now glittering in the sun:
Ambrosial trees their buds and fruits unfold
In silver flowers and vegetable gold,