Innumerable figures of speech have been brought into requisition to convey to the imagination the import of the terms "Heaven" and "Nirvana." None of these, taken either separately or collectively, can be held to include all that is indicated by the above expressions. To speak of reaching Heaven, or Nirvana, is somewhat misleading; no measurement of space is applicable to them; no phenomenal expression in itself will pass muster. A later and more material aspect of heaven, known as the Western Paradise, and only referred to, I think, in the Mahāyana, has been provided, it would seem, for the satisfaction of those who require a temporary halting-place for thought before moving on to more abstract conceptions. This heaven is illustrated with all those inimitable colours and touches which oriental inventiveness uses with such alluring effect. It is naïvely located ten millions of miles to the west. There, in a light that never was on land or sea, where lotus flowers of every imaginable hue vie with each other to cluster at his holy feet, sits enthroned the Buddha of Infinite Light, the Compassionate, the Perfect One. The sweet radiance of his pitying smile pervades the heavens for thousands of leagues. The beautiful expressions of his countenance cannot be numbered, for they are as countless as the sands of Gunga's sacred stream; nor can his compassion be measured--it is illimitable as a shoreless ocean. The magical grace of his form is compared to the "moon on high when she marches full-orbed" through the unclouded expanse of the Empyrean. If ever so "gentle a zephyr blows amid the trees," the atmosphere vibrates with all delicate and enticing melodies. The voices of the Devas are heard chanting his praises. An aerial choir, the birds of Paradise, answer back with antiphons of rapturous song as they soar above in the gilded air which fills the pavilions of the Blest. Such, and much more, is the "Pure Land," the land of Amita, the Buddha of Infinite Light. The introduction into the picture of pavements of gold, crystal streams, precious stones, jewels, and many of the paraphernalia which the pageantry of this nether world demands for its embellishment brings to remembrance the splendours enshrined in that final revelation of things to be, which was delivered to man in the person of St. John the Divine. Nirvana has been called "The Imperishable," "The Infinite," "The Eternal," "The Everlasting," "The Transcendent," "The Serene," "The Formless," "The Goal," "The Other Shore," "Rest," "The True," or "The Truth." It has been compared to an "island which no flood can overwhelm," to a "City of Peace," "The Jewelled Realm of Happiness," "An Escape from the Evil One."[AL] For the Christian Heaven, in like manner, a great variety of metaphors abounds. [AL] Taken from _Buddhism and its Christian Critics_, by Paul Carus.