HEAVEN, in popular physical science, means the expanse which surrounds the earth, and which to a spectator on the earth's surface appears as a vast arch or vault, in which are seen the sun, moon, and stars. The earliest idea entertained of this expanse was of a solid vault or hemisphere with its concavity turned downwards (see FIRMANIENT).—In theology, the word " heaven" may be explained to mean that portion of the infinite space in which the Lord of all things, although present throughout all, is supposed to give more immediate manifestations of His glory. Of the belief in the existence of some such special scene of the presence of the Deity, most of the known religions of the world, ancient and modern, present abundant evidence. Aristotle declares that all men, whether Greeks or barbarians, have a conception of gods; and all agree in placing the habitation of the gods in the most elevated region of the uni verse. Plato is equally explicit. Even Epicurus teaches the same doctrine; and one of the treatises deciphered from the papyri of Herculaneum is a treatise by him, in which the position and the other characteristics of the habitation of the gods are min utely discussed. The same may be said of the Persian, the Egyptian, the German, the Scandinavian, and in general of all the ancient religions in which the belief of the exis tence of a supreme being assumes any other form than the pantheistic; and even in the pantheistic religions, although the philosophers may have adhered to the strict pan theistic view, and may have denied that any special locality could be regarded as the peculiar seat of the Deity, yet we find the popular belief and the popular worship even of such religions plainly founded upon the contrary supposition. In addition, however, to the idea of its being the special scene of God's glory, the word heaven also desig nates the place, or the state or condition, of the blessed spirits, and of the souls of just men who are admitted into the participation or the contemplation of the divine beati tude. In the religious system of the Greeks and Romans, none were supposed to be admitted to the heaven of the gods except the deified heroes or demigods; but with them the elysian fields of the lower world held, morally speaking, the same place in relation to the great doctrine of the divine retribution for the good and evil actions of human life. The elysium of the classic mythology is in all essential respects the natu ral equivalent of the heaven of the just. The Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis approached nearer to it in form, for it supposed that the soul, after the purification of successive transmigrations, was elevated to a higher and incorporeal condition in the cosmos. The doctrine of Plato was still more explicit. Although skepticism was rather the rule than the exception, it may be said in general that all the philosophical systems which included the belief of the immortality of the soul, also involved, at least in sub stance, the idea of a state of happiness as the reward of a virtuous life. The happi ness, however, of the heaven of these various creeds differed widely from the spiritual delights of the heaven of revelation, each nation and each class forming to itself its own ideal of enjoyment. The delights of the classical elysium were, at all events in part,
delights of sense. The German warrior had his war-horse and his armor laid in his grave, that he might be able to pursue, after death, the fierce enjoyments in which he had delighted while in the world of the living. The paradise of the Indian hunter is but a richer and more extensive hunting-ground. Still, not only these, hut even the more groveling conceptions of the paradise of other races, must be refmrded as a natu rid manifestation of the same instinct, or as a remnant, however overlaid by error and superstition, of the same primeval revelation upon which the scriptural notion of heaven is founded. Accommodating itself to the popular conceptions of the Jews, the biblical phraseology frequently implies the idea of the solid firmament already described; but the word, according to the common acceptation among Christians, is generally used simply to signify the abode of the Most High, and the special seat of His glory, in which the angels minister to Him, and the blessed spirits abide in perpetual ,Braise and adora tion. This abOde of perfect bliSs is belieVed to hav'c been opened to the just after the passion of our Lord and his ascension into heaven. Out of the just of the old dispensa• tion, only noch and Elias were directly admitted to heaven; the patriarchs, the pro phets, and in general the just, before the new dispensation, were detained in a prepara tory abode, which the fathers call by the name limbus patrum, awaiting the coming of the common Redeemer. The common belief of Christians has been, that, since the coming of Christ, the just who are free from sin are admitted into heaven immediately after death. More than one controversy, however, has arisen on the subject; the most important of are the Millenarian controversy (see MILLENNIUM), the Origenistic (see ORIGEN), and that ou the question whether the just are admitted to the beatific vision of God immediately after death, or only after the general resurrection. The latter controversy arose out of the question as to the nature of the happiness of heaven, a discussion which would be out of place here. The Koran adopts the Cabalistic notion of seven heavens, which arise each above the other like the stages of a building; and it places .the happiness of heaven in the enjoyments of sense. The Cabalistic writers divide these seven heavens according to the successive degrees of glory which they imply. The seventh is the abode of God and of the highest class of angels; the sixth, fifth, fourth, and third, are the successive abodes of the various grades of angels, arranged according to the degrees of dignity. The second is the region of the clouds, and the first the space between the clouds and the earth. One of the apocryphal books of the fifth c., The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, contains a very curious exposition of the same notion. See Fabricius, Codd. Peeudep. Vet. Test. i. p. 545.