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. § 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 of flashing emerald and jasper, and the wearing of crowns and the singing of Psalms over and over again through all the ages of eternity. What is the fault in all such? That they do not understand what Heaven really means. They think of it as a something outside them which anybody could enjoy if he could only get there. They do not understand that Heaven means the joy of being in union with God--that the outward Heaven has no meaning till the inward Heaven has begun in ourselves. I need not point out to you that our immortal spirits would find little happiness in golden pavements and gates of pearl. People on this earth, who have their fill of gold and pearl, do not always gain much happiness from them. They are mere external things--they cannot give eternal joy, because that comes from within, not from without. It depends not on what we have, but on what we are, not on the riches of our possessions, but on the beauty of our lives.