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MAKING HEAVEN SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

similarly engendered. Such hymns of the romantic escape from reality are Bishop Faber's "O Paradise, O Paradise, Who doth not long for rest," and Stone's "Weary of earth and laden with my sin, I look at Heaven and long to enter in." Perhaps to this time also belongs the child's song our mothers used to sing:

"I want to be an angel,
And with the angels stand,
A crown upon my forehead,
A harp within my hand."

Such songs make us pause and consider this heaven of ours which poets and sages have upbuilt out of the meager materials of the Scriptures, a vision kept perennially bright before the eyes of successive generations by such hymns as Mother Dear Jerusalem, Jerusalem My Happy Home, and the modern version of the medieval hymn of St. Bernard of Cluny, Jerusalem the Golden. In such hymns is specifically described that place wherein "no sorrow can be found, nor grief, nor care nor toil." In this "sweet and blessed country . . . apostles, martyrs, prophets around their saviour stand," the "king who sitteth on his throne"; and round about for his felicity are "harpers harping on their harps" while "angels evermore do sing." It is somewhat like a bright residential suburb of the universe, "dear land of rest," where temptingly the Trees of Life forevermore bear fruit by living streams which flow with silver sound through golden streets. To such a Lotus Eaters' Utopia the Chris- tian pilgrim has been taught to look, crying as he journeys through our workaday world:

"Then shall my labors have an end
When I thy joys shall see!"

Was it mere accident that this classic mood found secular expression of exquisite perfection in the Victorian laureate's song of Ulysses' mariners who, "propt on beds of amaranth and moly," sang drowsily:

"All things have rest: why should we toil alone. . . .
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more."