From the Pew — You Make Your Own Heaven or Hell Right Here

1911

By William L. Brownell

The preacher drew largely upon his fertile imagination as he described to his flock the Celestial City, with its streets paved with gold and its alleys even bordered with precious stones. As he expatiated on the richness and splendor of the place he called Heaven, Mr. and Mrs. Bondholder, down in the pew, were pleased, highly pleased, and they said to themselves, "He is a great preacher," we must not lose him. We must raise his salary; his sermons are so sensible, so uplifting, he gives us something pleasant to think about; he is not always talking about the poor and their suffering, our duty and what will happen to us of we do not perform it."

Then the preacher forgot himself for a moment and was transformed into a mere man, a man among men, and he said: "My friends, for many years I have preached to you about a Heaven that was away off somewhere beyond the stars; a place where, no matter how you had lived here, no matter how unfair, how unjust you had been to your fellow men, you would, if at the last moment you repented, enjoy through an endless eternity."

The old preacher paused, leaned heavily on the pulpit for a moment and then continued: "I feel that I shall not preach to you many more sermons and now I want to say to you something which I draw from my heart and not from my creed, with reference to Heaven and your relation to it. I believe that the poor man is not more liable to reach this place, or condition than is the rich man; that every man is making his own Heaven or hell right here and now, a Heaven or hell which he will carry with him across the border; a Heaven or hell created by his own thoughts and his own deeds, and that just as many poor men as rich men are manufacturing hell records which their future life phonographs will grind out and compel them to listen to. If," he said, "any of you people want to enjoy a Heaven in the hereafter, my advice to you is to start one here, otherwise you will be a long, long time in working it up over there.

—Middletown Daily Times-Press, Middletown, NY, Aug. 5, 1911, p. 4.