[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...