Startling, yet True

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 9, 1858

Startling, yet True.

ThE Rev. H. Harbaugh in a work entitled "Heaven," published at Philadelphia, 1857, page 61, has the following common sense remarks:

"There seems something undesirable, if not repugnant to our hopes, in the idea that at death we are to be launched forth into a world with no other material substratum but ether, or something still more subtle or refined. It grates on the feelings of one familiar with Scripture representations of heaven, and sounds wild and unnatural to a deeply pious christian consciousness."

Again he says,

"It is said that even Irenæus declared the idea 'that the souls of the saints pass immediately at death to Christ into heaven,' to be heresy."

Again, Dr. Chalmers, a high orthodox divine, thus satirizes the popular idea of Paradise:

"The common imagination that we have of Paradise, on the other side of death, is that of a lofty, ærial region, where the inmates float in ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing—where all warm and sensible accompaniments, which give such an expression of strength, and life, and coloring to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre and imperceptible, and utterly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below—where every vestige of materialism is done away, and nothing left but unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies with which it is felt impossible to sympathize."

James Challen, Pastor of a Campbellite church, Philadelphia, Editor of the "Ladies' Christian Annual," and publisher of Dr. Barclay's Jerusalem, speaking of heaven, says:

"The popular idea we have of heaven, is that of some ærial region on the other side of Jordan, in which the spiritual beings which inhabit that etherialized world are mysteriously wafted on unseen wings, or suspended upon invisible clouds, where every vestige of materialism has passed away, and all familiar scenes and objects, persons and things, shall come into remembrance no more again forever. This, we conceive, is a metaphysical dream. It may be the Heaven of the Poets, but not of the Prophets!—the air-built castles of the enthusiast, but not the warm and sensible abodes of the just made perfect."