Now compare the Old with this New doctrine concerning heaven, and note the contrast. The former teaches that heaven is a place, into which people may be admitted arbitrarily—suddenly—by an act of immediate Divine mercy; the latter says it is a state of life into which people come gradually, and only through voluntary obedience to the laws of that life revealed in the Divine Word. The one teaches that admission into it is granted as a reward for certain acts done or refrained from here on earth; the other, that entrance is effected through the normal opening of the interiors by religious obedience to the God-given laws of the soul. The one presents it as a desirable locality to which the souls of the pious will be transferred when they leave the body; the other, as a certain kind of life that each one must carry with him—obscured though it be, and but partially developed here below. In the light of the Old doctrine, therefore, heaven seems to be an arbitrary gift of God, conditioned, it is true, on the receiver's faith and repentance; while the New doctrine reveals an organic and necessary connection between heaven and earth—be-
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it is obvious how immense is the delight of heaven; for there is in heaven a communication of all with each and of each with all. Such communication flows from the two loves of heaven, which are love to the Lord and love toward the neighbor; and it is the nature of these loves to communicate their delights. Love to the Lord is of this nature, because the Lord's love is the love of communicating all that He has to all his creatures, for He wills the happiness of all; and a similar love is in each of those who love Him, because the Lord is in them."—H. H. n. 399.
