CRUDE SYMBOLS

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2157, 25 May 1914, Page 5

CRUDE SYMBOLS

' l WHAT SOME PEOPLE THINK ABOUT HEAVEN. By TolcsraDh—Press Aeeociation—Conyrißhv "Times" and Syducv "Sun" Rcrvicon. ■ London, May 22. Tho Doan of St. Paul's (Dr. liigo), in a sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, said that many uneducated people, supposed that the Church taught that Heaven was a literal place, where God and His angels lived. Many clergy wero perpk'xed themselves, and they said as littlo about Heaven as they decently could. The time had passed when people* wero best taught by gaudycoloured dogmatic picture-books; they would rather the clergy said they didn't know than liavo crude symbols given them as literal facts. "AN APPALLING IDEA." ■Preaohins d£ St. Paul's Pro-Cathedral, Wellington, yesterday morning, the J!ev. C. H. Harvey said tho finite mind cannot fully Krasp all that is meant by the torm "heaven. It refers to somethi.'ip; beyond human experience, and \v& have to fall back on metaphor ami symbol. When we speak of the ascension of Christ into Heaven we really mean that If? went where God is. Iteavfn is where God is. It implies a change* of stale* rather .than a locality. Christ camo from God and went to God; in other words, Hβ became spiritual. Heaven is not actually a placo with shining streets and noisy bands, and that sort ot thing. AVo arc not required to accept such metaphors literally. They merely express Sic idea of joy for overmore. It is an appalling idea to thiiii of Heaven as a ptaco where people will do nothinor throughout eternity but play harps. The. true conception is .iJiafc of work without weariness.