[Margaret Laurence] often casts a gently ironic eye upon the more fundamental absurdities of the human condition, particularly the discrepancy between the idealized and the actual. In … "The Merchant of Heaven," her wry humor is apparent in the contrast between the glorious mission field of Brother Lemon's apocalyptic imagination and the trying reality of his day-to-day existence as an apostle for the Angel of Philadelphia Mission. Yet, in the largest sense, "The Merchant of Heaven" also suggests a distinction between the literal Biblical word and the true spirit of Christian belief, a contrast which is developed through the distinction between the heavenly new Jerusalem of Brother Lemon's literal interpretation of Revelations, "where the walls are of jaspar and topaz and amethyst, and the city is of pure gold" and the new Jerusalem of the spirit implicit in the narrator Kitteridge's final vision. (p. 43)
The books of Jeremiah and Revelations as suggested by Margaret Laurence's African stories (The Tomorrow-Tamer and Other Stories, 1963) may appear at first glance to be a rather exotic locale … yet here, as in her prairie fiction, Laurence's affinities with Sinclair Ross are apparent. It is not just that there are often slight echoes of Ross throughout Laurence's work…. [As] demonstrated by "The Merchant of Heaven," Laurence and Ross share a central vision—a sense of the ironic discrepancy between the spirit and the letter of the religious dispensation, a discrepancy which is often explored through an essentially psychological analysis of character (particularly through the interior monologue) with reference to Biblical myth. (p. 44)
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