he phenomenon of the night sky on the ignorant senses and
imagination that the stars are set in a firm revolving dome, has
widely prevailed; and the thought that heaven lies beyond that
solid arch, in the unknown space is a popular notion lingering
still. The scriptural image declaring that the convulsions of the
last day will shake the stars from their sockets in the

19 In Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. cap. xi.

20 Ibid. cap. xii.

21 Augustine, De Natura Boni, cap. xliv.

22 De Paradiso Eden, Sermo I.

heavenly floor, "as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she
is shaken of a mighty wind," although so obviously a figure of
speech, has been very generally credited as the description of a
literal fact yet to occur. And how many thousands of pious
Christians have felt, with the sainted Doddridge,

"Ye stars are but the shining dust Of my Divine abode, The
pavement of those heavenly courts Where I shall see my God!"

The universal diffusion in civilized nations of the knowledge that
the visible sky is no substantial expanse, but only an illimitable
void of space hung with successive worlds, has by no means
banished the belief, originally based on the opposite error, in a
physical heaven definitely located far overhead, the destination
of all ransomed souls. This is undoubtedly the most common idea at
the present time. An English clergyman once wrote a book,
afterwards translated into German, to teach that the sun is hell,
and that the black spots often noticed on the disk of that orb are
gatherings of damned souls.23 Isaac Taylor, on the contrary,
contends with no little force and ingenuity that the sun may be
the heaven of our planetary system, a globe of immortal
blessedness and glory.24 The celebrated Dr. Whiston was convinced
that the great comet which appeared in his day was hell. He
imagined it remarkably fitted for that purpose by its fiery vapor,
and its alternate plunges, now into the frozen extremity of space,
now into the scorching breath of the sun. Tupper fastens the
stigma of being the infernal prison house on the moon, in this
style:

"I know thee well, O Moon, thou cavern'd realm, Sad satellite,
thou giant ash of death, Blot on God's firmament, pale home of
crime, Scarr'd prison house of sin, where damned souls Feed upon
punishment: Oh, thought sublime, That amid night's black deeds,
when evil prowls Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners
well, Glarest o'er all, the wakeful eye