CHAPTER XXII.
Heaven.
After my ambition to visit one thousand worlds had been realised, and I was darting toward the confines of our own little Solar System, instinctively I looked out once more over the vast stretches of space. All around me, at amazing distances, loomed up the millions of spheres which I had not visited by reason of my limited time. I felt like some one who, after gaining his first thousand dollars, has a wild craving to accumulate ten or one hundred thousand more.
Still I scanned the heavens while deeper longings pervaded my soul. While in this mood the most unusual vision flashed upon my eyes. Suddenly I forgot whither I was going and in wild astonishment I drank in the first view of Heaven. Inwardly I marveled that I had not seen at least a part of it before.
Heaven is fashioned on a transcendently large scale. It is not a single sphere, but a universal chain of vast and luminous star-groups, scattered harmoniously throughout the infinite regions of space, so that a part of it lies suspended preciously near to our own Solar System. Heaven is more real and substantial than the suns and planets of the universe, although not one of its numberless parts can be detected by the human eye, or discerned through a telescope. These luminous orbs that constitute Heaven control the movements of the planets, suns and systems which we call material. They are whiter than snow and shine with a luster not dazzling, but restful to the eye capable of seeing them.
How this glimpse put to naught all my former crude conceptions of Heaven, and if I found myself unable to describe the wonders of many a dark world which I have visited, how much less could I portray the vastly superior beauties of Heaven which are so far beyond the glory of dark, rugged worlds that I felt an inexpressible desire to take up my abode there at once and to remain forever.
Inwardly I shouted for joy as this new light illumined my face, and I loathed to think of proceeding on my journey to any sin-cursed world of the universe, for the ties of kinship, friendship, and earthship all vanished at the sight of such resplendent spheres.
THE GREATNESS OF HEAVEN.
There is no language to be employed that can fitly describe the parts of Heaven I saw, and I know that the greater glory was curtained from my view. But the size of the lustrous orbs is not equaled by the large material suns that blaze in the depth of immensity. Heaven's diamond splendor extended as far as my unassisted eyes could reach, and according to the way it appeared it must extend without limit.
It would require one hundred millions of years for a child of God to take one excursion trip to the physical worlds of our universe. Then there are millions of such universes, (I know of no better name to use) each one occupying its own immense stretches of space. These universes average about sixteen hundred millions of worlds each.