Heaven in Recent Fiction [pp. 843-852]

i885.~ HEAvEKIK RECENT FICTION. 843
HEAVEN IN RECENT FICTION.
THE modern novelist has long ago appropriated every known
corner of the navigable globe. From the wilds of Siberia to the
heart of Cathay, from the ice-peaks of Finland to the Nubian
desert, everywhere he has floated his standard and called the
land his own. Not content with this universal sovereignty, he
sighs for fresh worlds to conquer, and, greater than Alexander,
has created them to order; peopling strange islands and unknown planets, or digging, as Bulwer does, into the bowels of
the earth, to find there in its perfection the coming rac~. But
it has been reserved for more recent writers to mount one step
higher, and, ennuy6 with all below, to plant their fictitious characters in a vague and hazy atmosphere which it has pleased them
to label Heaven. The advantages of this new departure are obvious. There is, first of all, the charm of utter novelty; there
is a certain coloring of religion to please the grave-minded, and
an agreeable sense of tampering with forbidden things to attract
more daring spirits; and there is an unlimited opportunity for
the author to give his or her views upon the subject of our
future life.
These views, be it remarked, are not mere suggestions offered
from a novelist's standpoint, but are uttered with all the conscious certainty of an Isaias, and by a host of unthinking readers
are accepted as something very1 nearly related to a revealed
truth. Who does not remember ~he discussions that raged when
~Iiss Phelps first launched upon an unsuspecting public that explosive little volume called Gates Ajar?-a work which, we fear,
must be held responsible for its train of followers. All those
wbo thought it would be charming to play on the piano, to eat
gingerbread, or to "h'ist" gates in the next world, immediately
announced that here at last was a rational and alluring Heaven;
while those who fancied that such entertainments would be apt
to pall when protracted into an eternity combated the book as
vigorously as if it were a new religion preached from the pulpits instead of the idle fancies of a clever woman. Intended
merely as a protest against the dreary Heaven portrayed by Sun.
day-school hymns, it was received as the utterances of a second
Swedenborg; and its success has not only spurred its author
on to wilder flights, but has inspired a whole school of disciples,