HEA)"EN, literally the sky, or azure vault which spreads above us like a hol low hemisphere, and appears to rest on the limits of the horizon. Modern as tronomy has taught us, that this blue vault is, in fact, the immeasurable space in whieh our earth, (he sun, and all the pi: wets, revolve. In metaphorical lan guage, this space is called the nbode of the Deity, and the seat of the souls of the just in the life to come. In these latter senses, it is sometimes called the empy rean, from the splendor by which it is characterized. It is also sometimes called the firmament. The word which, in the first chapter of Genesis, is translated fir mament, was corrupted, it is said, by the Septuagint trenslators, end should lic rendered expanse or extension. St. Paul speaks of the third hcaren ; and the ori entals always describe seven heavens, or more. The foundation of the doctrine cf several heavens was this : the ancient philosophers assumed there were as many different heavens as they saw bodies in motion ; they considered them solid, al though transparent, and supposed the blue space extended over our heads firm as a sapphire. They could not conceive that otherwise they could sustain those bodies ; and they deemed them spherical, as the most proper form for motion.
Thus, there were seven heavens for the seven planets, and an eighth for the fixed stars. Ptolemy discountenanced this sys tem. He said, the deities (by which name he calls the stars, for they were adored in his time,) moved in an ethereal thihi. It was, however, by very slow degrees that men became acquainted with the true sci ence which instructs us in the laws of ce lestial motion, and the magnitudes, dis tances, &c., of those effulgent orbs which deck the vast expanse. The heavens, then, to follow the.path of the Newtonian or tree system. are filled with a, fluid much finer and thinner than this air, and extending beyond all limits of which we have any conception. There being noth ing visible to us in the remote part of tho heavens, we can only consider them as the places of the stars. We shall have vast idea of this space if we consider that the largest of the fixed stars, which aro probably the nearest to ns, are at a dis tance too great for the expression of all that we can conceive from figures, and for all means of admensuremea. The sun, which in that little space of the hear-' ens that makes the system of which onr world is a part, is in reality nothing more than a fixed star.