“The more I study the Bible,” she said, “and I study not entirely in ignorance of the commentators and the mysteries, the more perplexed I am to imagine where the current ideas of our future come from. They certainly are not in this book of gracious promises. That heaven which we heard about to-day was Dr. Bland’s, not God’s. ‘It’s aye a wonderfu’ thing to me,’ as poor Lauderdale said, ‘the way some preachers take it upon themselves to explain matters to the Almighty!’”
“But the harps and choirs, the throne, the white robes, are all in Revelation. Deacon Quirk would put his great brown finger on the verses, and hold you there triumphantly.”
“Can’t people tell picture from substance, a metaphor from its meaning? That book of Revelation is precisely what it professes to be,—a vision; a symbol. A symbol of something, to be sure, and rich with pleasant hopes, but still a symbol. Now, I really believe that a large proportion of Christian church-members, who have studied their Bible, attended Sabbath schools, listened to sermons all their lives, if you could fairly come at their most definite idea of the place where they expect to spend eternity, would own it to be the golden city, with pearl gates, and jewels in the wall. It never occurs to them, that, if one picture is literal, another must be. If we are to walk golden streets, how can we stand on a sea of glass? How can we ‘sit on thrones’? How can untold millions of us ‘lie in Abraham’s bosom’?
“But why have given us empty symbols? Why not a little fact?”
“They are not empty symbols. And why God did not give us actual descriptions of actual heavenly life, I don’t trouble myself to wonder. He certainly had his reasons, and that is enough for me. I find from these symbols, and from his voice in my own heart, many beautiful things,—I will tell you some more of them at another time,—and, for the rest, I am content to wait. He loves me, and he loves mine. As long as we love Him, He will never separate Himself from us, or us from each other. That, at least, is sure.”
“If that is sure, the rest is of less importance;—yes. But Dr. Bland said an awful thing!”
“The quotation from a dead divine?”
“Yes. That there will be no separate interests, no thoughts to conceal.”
“Poor good man! He has found out by this time that he should not have laid down nonsense like that, without qualification or demur, before a Bible-reading hearer. It was simply his opinion, not David’s, or Paul’s, or John’s, or Isaiah’s. He had a perfect right to put it in the form of a conjecture. Nobody would forbid his conjecturing that the inhabitants of heaven are all deaf and dumb, or wear green glasses, or shave their heads, if he chose, provided he stated that it was conjecture, not revelation.”
“But where does the Bible say that we shall have power to conceal our thoughts?—and I would rather be annihilated than to spend eternity with heart laid bare,—the inner temple thrown open to be trampled on by every passing stranger!”