great practical value. It offers us a heaven that is not a realm of unsubstantial shadows, but one of substantial realities. It shows us myriads of human beings, once denizens of earth, now advanced to a more perfect state, with faculties improved, and all the senses become far more acute, and an external world of indescribable beauty. And by revealing the underlying and determining cause of its wondrous beauty—the pure and unselfish loves in the hearts of the angels—it acquaints us with this momentous fact: that our objective world in the Hereafter will be a complete representative of our inner selves, in exact correspondence with our own characters or ruling loves; beautiful beyond conception if these are noble and unselfish, but dreary and dismal if they are mean and selfish. It shows us that, since we take our characters with us into the other world and can take nothing else, therefore every one will take with him his own heaven or—his own hell; for both these kingdoms are within men's souls; and the heaven or the hell that will be visible round about us in the Hereafter, will be the correspondential image of that which has been formed within us here.
Thus the doctrine settles forever—and upon a basis as substantial as the soul itself—the question in regard, to our entrance into heaven, showing the utter impossibility of admission from immediate mercy. It teaches with clearness and impressiveness the solemn truth, that each one is making while here on earth, his garden or his wilderness, his paradise or his desert, for the ages to come;—is building for himself a beautiful palace or a gloomy prison-house that is to endure forever. What
