Ideas of Heaven

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 930, 25 March 1930, Page 11

Ideas of Heaven

WHAT AUCKLAND THINKS Individual Belief Upheld

MUCH better to allow individual opinions to have an unLi trammelled course in considering what the modern Heaven actually is. Most of the views of representative people in Auckland agree in this respect.

So far. not one Aucklander has supported the notion of young men of Oxford and Cambridge, according to a discussion raised in London, that Heaven, to satisfy modern people, should be replete with airplanes and motor-cars instead of the conventional wings. A woman social worker, giving her opinion this morning, criticised this Oxford-Cambridge view. •Why young folk these days, in their efforts to appear modern, have ‘frothy’ and absurd ideas, I cannot imagine,” she said. “The opinion of these young men is simply a material one. It cannot agree with the essentially spiritual conception of Heaven. In any case, personal opinion should count.” The Mayor, Mr. George Baildon, was not to be drawn into the voicing of an opinion on a modern Heaven. A waterside labourer discovered by a reporter was in good humour over the question.- He did not see why conditions in Heaven should change because motor-cars, airplanes and wireless were used on earth. All he was interested in was his own modest hope that he would enjoy Heaven. A morose man on the waterfront admitted his unconcern, so an effort was made to secure an opinion from a tramway conductor. Fie thought Heaven was everlasting and completely spiritual. “EARTH, WITHOUT SIN” “A new earth without sin—my idea of Heaven is exactly what the Scriptures tell us,” said Major Annie Gordon, of the Salvation Army, Female Probation Officer of Auckland. “The Salvation Army stands hard and fast that it is a prepared place for prepared people. It must be a beautiful city without , sin, where all will enjoy pleasure and peace. As for the suggestion of macadamised tfoads and motor-cars—the idea is absurd! In fact, it is to get away from such things that most of us want to go to Heaven.”

enter so-called theological discussion as to j the -,-xact meaning of the similes and | metaphors of the Bible,” said Mr. Rob- j ert A. Laidlaw. 'We can arrive at ; nothing more definite than individual j views and it is, after all. of no great j moment whether we believe that Heaven ; is paved with gold or with macadam, and decide that all travel is in airplanes. We read in the New Testa - ment that ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.’ This shows quite definitely that we can have no clear impressions of Heaven and, 1, personally, am quite prepared to leave it at that trusting that everything will be revealed in due time.” That Rotary was concerned with the fostering of good fellowship on this earth and in no way guided its individual members in their views of the next world was the reply of Mr. G. W. Hutchison, a past president of the Rotary Club in Auckland, this morning. The movement is entirely non-political and non-sectarian, including in its membership men of all shades of political opinion and of varying theological beliefs. “I think Heaven is rather outside our particular sphere,” was the somewhat cryptic contribution of Mr. C. H. Furness, of the Auckland branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He said the society had no official views on the question. Mr. Freddie Forbes, the London comedian now playing at His Majesty’s Theatre, has a very simple idea of Heaven. /‘Plenty of work for actors and no agents,” he says. Mrs. Forbes (Aster Faire): No talkies and no income tax; no harps, haloes or streets of gold; wonderful friendship and understanding. I think we will reach a stage when monotony, if any, would be a joy after the struggles on this earth.