The
Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but Righteousness and Peace and
Joy in the Holy Ghost.

That is the thought which I am trying to keep prominent all through
this book. Hades life is dependent on character. Judgment is a
sorting according to character. Heaven and Hell are tempers or
conditions of character within us. They are not merely places to which
God sends us arbitrarily. They are conditions which we make for
ourselves. If God could send all men to Heaven, all men would be
there. If God could keep all men from Hell, no one would be there. It
is character that makes Heaven. It is character that makes Hell. They
are states of mind that begin here, and are continued and developed
there.

I have known men who were in Hell here--they told me so--men of brutal
character, men in delirium tremens, who saw devils grinning at them
from the bed. That if continued and developed would mean Hell there.
I have known sweet, unselfish lives who are in Heaven here. That
continued and developed would mean Heaven there. You know how one
could be in Heaven here. Do you remember these wonderful words of our
Lord, "No man hath ascended into Heaven, only the Son of Man who is in
Heaven"? Not _was_, not _shall be_, but is always in Heaven, because
always in unselfish love--always in accord and in communion with God.
So, you see, a man carries the beginning of Heaven and Hell within him,
according to the state of his own heart. A selfish, godless man cannot
have any Heaven so long as he remains selfish and godless. For Heaven
consists in forgetting self, and loving God and man with heart and soul.

Section 2

Do you see, then, the mistake that people have been making in
discussing what is meant by Heaven? In all ages--in all races--men
have speculated about it, and their speculations have been largely
coloured by their characters and temperaments. The Indian placed it in
the Happy Hunting Ground. The Greeks placed it in the Islands of the
Blest, where warriors rested after the battle. The Northman and the
Mussulman had his equally sensual Heaven. And many Christians have as
foolish notions as any one else. Some think that they win Heaven by
believing something with their minds about our Lord's atonement. Some
think they go to Heaven by soaring up through the air. Some of them,
taking in its literal meaning the glorious imagery of the Apocalypse,
picture to themselves streets of beaten gold and walls