HEAVEN, in a physical sense, is the azure vault which spreads above us like a hollow hemisphere and appears to rest on the limits of the horizon. Modern astronomy has taught that this blue vault is in fact the immeasur able space in which earth, sun and planets, with the countless host of fixed stars, revolve. The blue color of the heavens is due to the action of minute particles in the air upon the blue rays in sunlight.
In ancient astronomy, heaven denoted a sphere or circular region of the ethereal heaven.
The ancient astronomers assumed as many dif ferent heavens as they observed different celes tial motions. These they supposed to be all solid, thinking they could not otherwise sustain the bodies fixed in them; and spherical, that being the most proper form for motion. Thus they had seven heavens for the seven planets: the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The eighth was that of the fixed stars, which was particularly denomi nated the firmament. Ptolemy adds a ninth heaven, which he calls the primum mobile. But others admitted many more heavens, according as their different views and hypotheses re q6ired: Eudoxus supposed 23; Regiomontanus 33; and Fracastoro no less than 70.
In theology this word denotes the upper and nobler region of God's universe, in con trast with the earth, the lower part assigned to men for their habitation. Of the belief in the existence of some special scene of the pres ence of Deity, the majority of the known religions of the world bear ample evidence. According to Aristotle all men, whether Greeks or barbarians, had a conception of God; and all united in placing the residence of the gods in the most elevated regions of the universe. This idea runs through the Persian, Egyptian, Ger man, Scandinavian, and indeed all the ancient religions in which the belief in a supreme being assumes any other form than the pantheistic; and even though the pantheistic philosophers may have denied that any peculiar locality could be regarded as the peculiar habitation of the Deity, we find that popular belief and wor ship is evidently grounded upon a contrary opinion. In addition, however, to its being the
special seat of the Deity, heaven also denotes the place or the state or condition of blessed spirits and of the souls of just men either im mediately after physical death or at some certain period subsequent to it. All the religious systems which include the immortality of the soul in volve, at least in substance, the idea of a future state of happiness as a reward for a virtuous life. The delights of the heavens of the vari ous beliefs and creeds differ greatly in kind. The pleasures of .the classical Elysian fields were to a great extent pleasures of sense; the German warrior believed he would be trans ferred to a region where he would be able to pursue his old fierce enjoyments; and the American Indian cherished the notion that he quits this world for a happier hunting-ground. Among Christians the general belief is that heaven is the abode of the Most High, the holy angels and the spirits of just men made perfect; that this dwelling-place is eternal, its joys entirely spiritual; it is believed also by many that the just who are free from sin are admitted into heaven immediately after death; also that the souls of the patriarchs, prophets, and in general the good, were detained, before the new dispensation, in a temporary abode till the coming of the Redeemer. See IMMORTAL also FUTURE Lim.