---
title: 'MacDonald on Heavenly-Mindedness'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-11-13
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-macdonald-on-heavenly-mindedness
---

# MacDonald on Heavenly-Mindedness

“Heaven is a most attractive subject to the Christian mind. The believer knows well that he is not to continue here for ever; he knows that he shall remain in this world but a very short time. Soon, he expects to put off this tabernacle, and then he hopes to be ‘present with the Lord.’ When our pious friends die, we try to follow them, in our thoughts, to that better land to which we believe they have been taken. We try to imagine what are their employments and joys. It would be well if our thoughts were more occupied with heavenly things, and less taken up with the vanities of a fleeting world. How large a place this subject fills, in the inspired writings! Baxter and Howe gave their thoughts much to the joys of heaven; and what they have written is worthy of being often perused and pondered. The more the mind becomes interested in the sacred employments and divine joys of the celestial world, the less it will be fascinated by the fashion of this, which passeth away.” — [**James M. MacDonald**](/authors/james-madison-mcdonald), *My Father’s House; or, The Heaven of the Bible* (1855), p. 14