Among the inquiries that must be raised by my fragmentary recital, I am
only too keenly aware of the difficulty of answering one which I do not
see my way altogether to ignore. I refer to that affecting the domestic
relations of the eternal world.
It will be readily seen that I might not be permitted to share much of
the results of my observation in this direction, with earthly curiosity,
or even earthly anxiety. It is not without thought and prayer for close
guidance that I suffer myself to say, in as few words as possible, that
I found the unions which go to form heavenly homes so different from the
marriage relations of earth, in their laws of selection and government,
that I quickly understood the meaning of our Lord’s few revealed words
as to that matter; while yet I do not find myself at liberty to explain
either the words or the facts. I think I cannot be wrong in adding,
that in a number of cases, so great as to astonish me, the marriages of
earth had no historic effect upon the ties of Heaven. Laws of
affiliation uniting soul to soul in a relation infinitely closer than a
bond, and more permanent than any which the average human experience
would lead to if it were socially a free agent, controlled the
attractions of this pure and happy life, in a manner of which I can only
say that it must remain a mystery to the earthly imagination. I have
intimated that in some cases the choices of time were so blessed as to
become the choices of Eternity. I may say, that if I found it lawful to
utter the impulse of my soul, I should cry throughout the breadth of the
earth a warning to the lightness, or the haste, or the presumption, or
the mistake that chose to love for one world, when it might have loved
for two.
For, let me say most solemnly, that the relations made between man and
woman on earth I found to be, in importance to the individual, second to
nothing in the range of human experience, save the adjustment of the
soul to the Personality of God Himself.
If I say that I found earthly marriage to have been a temporary
expedient for preserving the form of the eternal fact; that freedom in
this as in all other things became in Heaven the highest law; that the
great sea of human misery, swelled by the passion of love on earth,
shall evaporate to the last drop in the blaze of bliss to which no human
counterpart can approach any nearer than a shadow to the sun,--I may be
understood by those for whose sake alone it is worth while to allude to
this mystery at all; for the rest it matters little.
Perhaps I should say, once for all, that every form of pure pleasure or
happiness which had existed upon the earth had existed as a type of a
greater. Our divinest hours below had been scarcely more than
suggestions of their counterparts above. I do not expect to be
understood. It must only be remembered that, in all instances, the
celestial life develops the soul of a thing. When I speak of eating and
drinking, for instance, I do not mean that we cooked and prepared our
food as we do below. The elements of nutrition continued to exist for us
as they had in the earth, the air, the water, though they were available
without drudgery or anxiety. Yet I mean distinctly that the sense of
taste remained, that it was gratified at need, that it was a finer one
and gave a keener pleasure than its coarser prototype below. I mean that
the _soul of a sense_ is a more exquisite thing than what we may call
the body of the sense, as developed to earthly consciousness.
So far from there being any diminution in the number or power of the
senses in the spiritual life, I found not only an acuter intensity in
those which we already possessed, but that the effect of our new
conditions was to create others of whose character we had never dreamed.
To be sure, wise men had forecast the possibility of this fact,
differing among themselves even as to the accepted classification of
what they had, as Scaliger who called speech the sixth sense, or our
English contemporary who included heat and force in his list (also of
six); or more imaginative men who had admitted the conceivability of
inconceivable powers in an order of being beyond the human. Knowing a
little of these speculations, I was not so much surprised at the facts
as overwhelmed by their extent and variety. Yet if I try to explain
them, I am met by an almost insurmountable obstacle.
It is well known that missionaries are often thwarted in their religious
labors by the absence in savage tongues of any words corresponding to
certain ideas such as that of purity or unselfishness. Philologists have
told us of one African tribe in whose language exist six different words
descriptive of murder; none whatever expressive of love. In another no
such word as gratitude can be found. Perhaps no illustration can better
serve to indicate the impediments which bar the way to my describing to
beings who possess but five senses and their corresponding imaginative
culture, the habits or enjoyments consequent upon the development of ten
senses or fifteen. I am allowed to say as much as this: that the growth
of these celestial powers was variable with individuals throughout the
higher world, or so much of it as I became acquainted with. It will be
readily seen what an illimitable scope for anticipation or achievement
is given to daily life by such an evolution of the nature. It should be
carefully remembered that this serves only as a single instance of the
exuberance of what we call everlasting life.
Below, I remember that I used sometimes to doubt the possibility of
one’s being happy forever under any conditions, and had moods in which I
used to question the value of endless existence. I wish most earnestly
to say, that before I had been in Heaven days, Eternity did not seem
long enough to make room for the growth of character, the growth of
mind, the variety of enjoyment and employment, and the increase of
usefulness that practically constituted immortality.
It could not have been long after my arrival at my father’s house that
he took me with him to the great music hall of our city. It was my first
attendance at any one of the public festivals of these happy people,
and one long to be treasured in thought. It was, in fact, nothing less
than the occasion of a visit by Beethoven, and the performance of a new
oratorio of his own, which he conducted in person. Long before the
opening hour the streets of the city were thronged. People with holiday
expressions poured in from the country. It was a gala-day with all the
young folks especially, much as such matters go below. A beautiful thing
which I noticed was the absence of all personal insistence in the crowd.
The weakest, or the saddest, or the most timid, or those who, for any
reason, had the more need of this great pleasure, were selected by their
neighbors and urged on into the more desirable positions. The music
hall, so-called, was situated upon a hill just outside the town, and
consisted of an immense roof supported by rose-colored marble pillars.
There were no walls to the building, so that there was the effect of
being no limit to the audience, which extended past the line of
luxuriously covered seats provided for them, upon the grass, and even
into the streets leading to the city. So perfect were what we should
call below the telephonic arrangement of the community, that those who
remained in their own homes or pursued their usual avocations were not
deprived of the music. My impressions are that every person in the city,
who desired to put himself in communication with it, heard the oratorio;
but I am not familiar with the system by which this was effected. It
involved a high advance in the study of acoustics, and was one of the
things which I noted to be studied at a wiser time.
Many distinguished persons known to you below, were present, some from
our own neighborhood, and others guests of the city. It was delightful
to observe the absence of all jealousy or narrow criticism among
themselves, and also the reverence with which their superiority was
regarded by the less gifted. Every good or great thing seemed to be so
heartily shared with every being capable of sharing it, and all personal
gifts to become material for such universal pride, that one experienced
a kind of transport at the elevation of the public character.
I remembered how it used to be below, when I was present at some musical
festival in the familiar hall where the bronze statue of Beethoven,
behind the sea of sound, stood calmly. How he towered above our poor
unfinished story! As we grouped there, sitting each isolated with his
own thirst, brought to be slaked or excited by the flood of music;
drinking down into our frivolity or our despair the outlet of that
mighty life, it used to seem to me that I heard, far above the passion
of the orchestra, his own high words,--his own music made
articulate,--“_I go to meet Death with joy._”
When there came upon the people in that heavenly audience-room a stir,
like the rustling of a dead leaf upon crusted snow; when the stir grew
to a solemn murmur; when the murmur ran into a lofty cry; when I saw
that the orchestra, the chorus, and the audience had risen like one
breathless man, and knew that Beethoven stood before us, the light of
day darkened for that instant before me. The prelude was well under
way, I think, before I dared lift my eyes to his face.
The great tide swept me on. When upon earth had he created sound like
this? Where upon earth had we heard its like? There he is, one listening
nerve from head to foot, he who used to stand deaf in the middle of his
own orchestra--desolate no more, denied no more forever, all the
heavenly senses possible to Beethoven awake to the last delicate
response; all the solemn faith in the invisible, in the holy, which he
had made his own, triumphant now; all the powers of his mighty nature in
action like a rising storm--there stands Beethoven immortally alive.
What knew we of music, I say, who heard its earthly prototype? It was
but the tuning of the instruments before the eternal orchestra shall
sound. Soul! swing yourself free upon this mighty current. Of what will
Beethoven tell us whom he dashes on like drops?
As the pæan rises, I bow my life to understand. What would he with us
whom God chose to make Beethoven everlastingly? What is the burden of
this master’s message, given now in Heaven, as once on earth? Do we hear
aright? Do we read the score correctly?
“Holy--holy”--
A chorus of angel voices, trained since the time when morning stars sang
together with the sons of God, take up the words:
“Holy, _holy_, HOLY is the Lord.”
* * * * *
When the oratorio has ended, and we glide out, each hushed as a hidden
thought, to his own ways, I stay beneath a linden-tree to gather breath.
A fine sound, faint as the music of a dream, strikes my ringing ears,
and, looking up, I see that the leaf above my head is singing. Has it,
too, been one of the great chorus yonder? Did he command the forces of
nature, as he did the seraphs of Heaven, or the powers of earth?
The strain falls away slowly from the lips of the leaf:
“Holy, holy, holy,”--
It trembles, and is still.