Wesley Corpus

Some writers make a distinction which seems not improper. They speak of the essential part of heaven and the accessory parts. A man without any learning is naturally led into the same distinction. So the poor dying peasant in Frederica: ' To be sure heaven is a fine place, a very fine place; but I do not care for that: I want to see God and to be with Him.' I do not know whether the usual question be well stated, ' Is heaven a state or a place ' There is no opposition between these two; it is both the one and the other. It is the place wherein God more immediately dwells with those saints who are in a glorified state. Homer could only conceive of the place that it was paved with brass. Milton in one place makes heaven' s pavement beaten gold; in another he defines it more sublimely ' the house of God, star-paved.' As full an account of this house of God as it can yet enter into our hearts to conceive is given us in various parts of the Revelation. There we have a fair prospect into the holiest, where are, first, He that sitteth upon the throne; then the four living creatures; next, the twenty-four elders; afterwards the great multitude which no man can number; and, surrounding them all, the various myriads of angels, whom God hath constituted in a wonderful order. 'But what is the essential part of heaven ' Undoubtedly it is to see God, to know God, to love God. We shall then know both His nature, and His works of creation, of providence, and of redemption. Even in paradise, in the intermediate state between death and the resurrection, we shall learn more concerning these in an hour than we could in an age during our stay in the body. We cannot tell, indeed, how we shall then exist or what kind of organs we shall have: the soul will not be encumbered with flesh and blood; but probably it will have some sort of ethereal vehicle, even before God clothes us ' with our nobler house of empyrean light.'