We would do well to think more of heaven. It is not a mere annex of
earth. It is not a desolate outpost. As Jerusalem was the capital of
Judae, and Babylon the capital of the Babylonian monarchy, and London
is the capital of Great Britain, and Washington is the capital of our
own republic, the New Jerusalem is the capital of the universe. The
king lives there, and the royal family of the redeemed have their
palaces there, and there is a congress of many nations and the
parliament of all the worlds. Yea, as Daniel had kindred in Jerusalem
of whom he often thought, though he had left home when a very young
man, perhaps father and mother and brothers and sisters still living,
and was homesick to see them, and they belonged to the high circles of
royalty, Daniel himself having royal blood in his veins, so we have in
the New Jerusalem a great many kindred, and we are sometimes homesick
to see them, and they are all princes and princesses, in them the
blood imperial, and we do well to keep our windows open toward their
eternal residence.

It is a joy for us to believe that while we are interested in them
they are interested in us. Much thought of heaven makes one heavenly.
The airs that blow through that open window are charged with life, and
sweep up to us aromas from gardens that never wither, under skies that
never cloud, in a spring-tide that never terminates. Compared with it
all other heavens are dead failures.

Homer's heaven was an elysium which he describes as a plain at the
end of the earth or beneath, with no snow nor rainfall, and the sun
never goes down, and Rhadamanthus, the justest of men, rules. Hesiod's
heaven is what he calls the islands of the blessed, in the midst of
the ocean, three times a year blooming with most exquisite flowers,