THE QUIET HEAVEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17459, 1 May 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE QUIET HEAVEN.

VALUE OF SILENCE. BT FRANK MORTON. I am constantly meeting people who assure me that they are going to heaven, but there few "Indeed ready with any precise indication of the sort of heaven they expect. For my own part, I have no doubts whatever; heaven must be a blessedness of quiet, a place where the soul can sit in silence and find rest, a refuge in which there is no chattering for the Bake of chattering. lam beginning to hate empty noises more than I ever expected that I could hate anything. How silly and wasteful and exasperating it is, our modern rape of talk. If one gets into a tram with a man, or meets him, aboard a steamer, or encounters him in a restaurant, be will straightway begin to talk and make a. nuisance of himself. He will sometimes begin talking even though he is a. complete stranger which is the last impertinence. The great thing the world has yet to discover is that there is no sense in saying anything unless one has something of moment to say. Soecialists tell me that men and women are all nervy at this time, that nervous breakdown is astonishingly frequent among quite young people, that normal and well-balanced men and women are becoming most uncommon; and 1 think the reason of it all is that everybody talks too much just for the sake of talking. There is no more conversation. J here is nothing but heartbreaking persistent gabble, and you will invariably find that the men who talk worst, talk most. When I can get away in a room by myself, and there sit down with a book or mv own thoughts, with reasonable certainty "of not being disturbed, I am happy. I begin to think that life has no purer happiness than that.

The Itch tor Gabble. The most interesting people one meets are the quiet people. You would all realise that, if you had an occasional hour's solitude to" think it out in. But the itch for gabble has impaired our sense of values. Surely, if the fulsome clatter of a vulgar Jew with all, his wares in the window is wit, a ti-sy cheap jack must be the wittiest creature on the planet. If noise is wisdom, Pascal was a fool. I don't think that noise is wisdom, mind yon. You must bo still before you can know that God is God.' I have gone into the heart of great mountains, but it is when I lie in the dark and hear my own heart beating that I get a true tense of the Immensity of creation. Talk of mystery—what more mysterious than the approach of one'* self when one is quiet? The greatest thing yet covered is thisi Whit has become ,of the follow who walked down the street and wu Me, w longer mo than yesterday! Whit ttttntUii still separate mi from the Mb« who will be mo, it may be, And w*!ia these same streets in a year's time! And if, should Ino longer be here then, I shall be wandering a freed spirit eomewhms beyond .the start, how marvellous I these are not the thoughts that our expresses amid the noise of what nowadays passes for human intercourse. Should one My inch thing* one would be straightway put down as (what i» their charming phrase?) a blithering idiot. But to follow these thoughts till they bring one within light of truth, to let* pious speculation l*a<l one to the rery glowing presence of Omniscience— that Is life, if life is anything worth while. I have talked to one or two rife soldiers who have spoken of »lfan» thing* in the battle «one, ouei in the desert of furious sound, strange deeps of lilence behind the clamour of the guns. I think I understand. So with those TrappUts. People hate called them mad, and worse, because they do not speak to each other. To me it seems much more probable that by not speaking they late themielm from madness and lire able while Mill on earth, and In these bonds, to lave their tired spirits in the Glassy Bel. I dream of heaven as a place where sauls dwell togetner In Mich perfect sympathy that no speech l« needed. I was reminding you a little while ago that the men who talk worst talk most. I sttnnose 1 wet thinking of the politician!. They are always with us. and the moment they betray some original quality, some Individual goodness and honesty, we begin to suspect them, Let us hasten away from all such disagreeable subjects. ' The Silent Friend.

The beauty of birds and the simple beasts is that when they say or tins Anything they Illustrate the silence without breaking it. The trumpeting of an elephant in the night is snlendid; the screech of a steam siren is like a howl .from hell. The note of a bird is pure golden ; but the shriek of an average soprano is dinted brass with a crack in it. When I like a man so well that I love to sit in his company and say nothing. 1 know that I have found a friend. Speech comes then as a harmonious reply to unspoken but comprehended thought. Among all real people, that, and that only, is what speech is for. Poetry owes its rare consoling beauty to the fact that it is the silent speech of a soul to a scjl responsive, and prose is only beautiful when it is somehow poetic. All the rest is journalism. Whenever lam humble enough to remember that I am _ a journalist I blame myself for the noise I make. When I get away from journalism (as now) and say honestly what I feel, I know that I am on the threshold of perceivinc something. It is on that threshold that one meets the elect souls and gets their heartening smile of greeting as they pass. Marcus Aurelius was a prig, but he wandered near the threshold. Closer still came Montaigne. Always you shall find Shakespero there. There now and again stands Kit Marlowe and sounds his pealing note of splendid frenzy. Milton is there when he is least irritable and didactic. Pascal sits there mooning all the time. And there dusk Sappho has come crooning up to lean against my shoulder.

Men's Tongues and Women's Tongues. You never meet the true immortals in any noisy place. Commerce, the controversy of materialism, gettine-on-inthe-world—all .these things, ana alB such things as these, arc poison to them. Useless to loiter in any crowded and miry place, if you want to hear the angels sing. It is only when we are quiet that our hearts open to the eternal and the benign. There is, of course, no death. That is one of the things, perhaps the greatest, that quiet teaches. There is no end of anythine Life is a great progress in which this earthly experience is only a phase or a stage. To waste opportunity in a weedy wilderness, of noises— foolish that "is' Quiet would be delightful and well worth while, were it only for its own dear sake. There is no true comfort or enjoyment amid the everlasting clatter of foolish people. But one may degrade one's humanity to sorry depths. There are millions of people who love this incessant noise, this crackling of thorns under a pot, this din that results from knocking empty heads together. But these too shall God save in his pity, maybe. Let us be honest and admit that silly chatter is no mere woman's voice. Men waste just as much good time in profitless talk, and their talk is dingier than women's I have heard ineffable male bores gibe at the activity of women's tongues. The second great tragedy of life is that no man can stand off and see himself as others see him ; but if he learns to lrve quiet, sooner or later he shall have his moments of such true vision. In the meantime he may comfort himself with the reflection that noise is in any case a vain" stupidity.