THE THIRD HEAVEN,

OR

Heaven of Heavens.

T

CHAPTER I.

THE ASTRONOMICAL EVIDENCE.

"Caught up to the third heaven."-2 COR. xii. 2.

HERE are questions of deep interest connected with the thought of the relation which our planet, which

is our present home, bears to that brighter and more perfect dwelling-place to which all Christians look as their final rest, termed popularly as well as scripturally-heaven. Assuming the fact that there is such a place or locality as heaven, adapted for material beings, and therefore necessarily material itself, the question recurs again and again to the thoughtful mind

-What is it? and Where is it? Our Lord, as the Scripture tells us, and as we repeat in our Christian creeds, has "ascended into heaven," not as a Spirit (which, as He himself declares, "hath not flesh and bones" as He had), but as a Man with a body, though not in every particular the same as ours, yet in many points identical, and

certainly material, as He distinctly proved to Thomas. Whither then has He gone? to what material world or distant part of His dominions has He departed? Is it to some vast orb so far removed from our little dusky globe in the dark blue depths of space, that as we think of its distance, and endeavour to realize it to our imagination, we feel almost hopelessly separated from it, like mariners in a solitary ship in mid-ocean, or a boat's crew cast away on a desert island cut off from all companionship but its own? Or, on the other hand, have we reason to think that there is at the present hour, as there always has been, such a real connection both physically (ie. astronomically) as well as morally and spiritually between the two worlds,-between this island-world called the earth and the distant mainland or continent of heaven, the home of God and His holy angels, as well as the "perfected just," that space alone divides us physically and literally, while but the slender plank of death separates us from it individually; and that, as over that dark bridge each moment souls are spanning the gulf, they are admitted at once to its golden light and unfading glory? These are questions which, though science may throw some partial light upon them, Revelation alone can fully answer, and which it is admitted by all who believe the Bible are answered by that wonderful book in the affirmative; fully, though not perhaps as fully as our curiosity may desire; and satisfactorily, at least so far as it is necessary or possible for us with our present faculties to apprehend such a subject.

Among the sciences, astronomy, however, is the only one that can throw even a glimpse of light upon it other

than the Scriptures afford; and though its testimony is indirect and necessarily imperfect, yet it is of considerable value and interest as far as it goes, serving to impart a reality to the statements of Scripture, and thus assist in confirming its truth.

That there is, then, a physical or material connection between our planet and other worlds, though so distant as to be out of our sight altogether, is the first inductive step in the testimony which astronomy affords and suggests as to the inferential existence of a material heaven.

Astronomically viewed, we perceive at once the earth is no solitary island-world, no strange sail in the great sea of space, no mere isolated globe. Belonging herself to the sun, she is only one out of a number of a family resembling herself, that are warmed by the same vast hearth-fire, and, circulating round him, are likewise carried forward with him in his more gigantic, and as yet unmeasured, orbit.

But, our solar system, as it is termed, with its family of worlds, occupying as it does a circle of at least six thousand millions of miles in diameter, dwindles to a mere point in the universe of starry space; and, amidst the millions of bright suns, and clusters of suns, with their attendant worlds, that encompass and surround us here, we find ourselves to be but a microscopic unit, small as a grain of sand in the archipelago of similar bodies that belong to our own astral system, or nebula, as it is termed, bounded as it is thought by the Milky Way.

Vast, then, and inconceivable as are the distances from us, as from each other, of these innumerable suns

and systems that burn and roll around us here, and without leaving the boundary of our own star system, we can at once perceive the physical relation which our planet bears to every other member of the same system, about the centre of which, or nearly so, our sun has been placed by astronomers as its normal position.

Thus viewed, it may be affirmed, everything connected with our globe bears an astronomical relation to others under analogous conditions: its size, its place, its path in the heavens, its relative distance from its own primary or sun, as well as from other suns or planets,—its rate of travelling, as also other circumstances connected with the wondrous arrangements relating to it,-its diurnal or daily, as well as its orbital or annual, motion,-everything has been determined, designed, and adjusted with a view to others, and accordingly with a precision so admirable, and so plainly perceptible, that we know were any one of the conditions under which the earth, or any other planet or sun, exists, now absent or altered, chaos and confusion would ensue instead of the order and beauty maintained in the system, and catastrophes the most tremendous to contemplate would involve the universe of stars to which we belong in utter ruin.

But not only does astronomy thus inform us of our relative physical connection with the more immediate members of our solar system as a unit belonging to it, and even to the more distant suns that we see sparkling around us, and which are within reach of human sight, either unassisted or through the medium of the telescope; but also permits us to infer the mysterious connection of our world with a far more distant part of the universe, quite out of our sight in fact, and beyond even the reach

of the telescope. This great fact has been thus brought to light. It has been ascertained beyond question that the sun, as we have already remarked, is moving onwards in a supposed arc or orbit of vast dimensions, carrying necessarily also his satellite worlds with him on his journey; and the problem has been started for astronomical investigation, Whereabouts does the centre of this great circle lie?—¿e. in what direction are we to look for it? Given the arc or segment of a circle, and provided we have likewise its plane, a simple calculation will tell us where to look for the centre? As, however, little more than the direction towards which our sun or solar system is travelling can be approximated to, and the angle of motion or the curvature of the line in which it is travelling can be as yet little more than suggested (the orbit being so vast as to appear to us almost a straight line), while the plane of the supposed orbit is even still more difficult to ascertain, but little that is positive can as yet be affirmed about it. And the proposition of finding the exact direction in which to look for the centre of the sun's vast orbit is no easy task, and can scarcely be considered as yet fully accomplished. Different positions in the heavens have, however, been assigned-for it, and pointed out by different astronomers as the probable position of the central sun or mass of matter round which our great orb and his companion worlds are circulating. Among the eminent astronomers who have undertaken the difficult problem, Mædler perhaps stands the first. He entered upon this calculation some fifteen years ago, with indefatigable energy and industry, and at length boldly pointed to the star Alcyone (the principal of the group of the Pleiades in