vision of "the river of water of life that flows from the throne
of God."



CHAPTER XXI

RIVERS AND DEATH

The world of fact, no less than the world of abstract thought, is
full of contradictions and unsolved antinomies. Here is one such
contradiction or antinomy. Moving water, it has been shown, is
suggestive of life. But over against it we find a suggestion of
death. Indeed there has been a widely diffused belief in a river
of death--a striking foil to the inspiring mysticism of the river of
life. The old-world mythology taught, in varying forms, but
with underlying unity of concept, that there is a river, or gulf,
which must be crossed by the departing soul on its way to the
land of the departed. Evidently the extension of the original
thought to cover its seeming opposite has a basis in the nature
of things. Its most elaborate presentment is in the ancient myths
of the nether regions and of the seven streams that watered
them--from Styx that with nine-fold weary wanderings bounded
Tartarus, to where

"Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the river of oblivion runs."

Nor has Christianity disdained to adapt the idea. Bunyan, for
example, brings his two pilgrims within sight of the heavenly