Heavens

“ Beyond that are two flaming heavens, angels are in them and the breaking loose of winds. I Beyond those an ice-cold heaven, bluer than any blue, seven times colder than any snow, and it is out of that comes the shining of the 1 sun. Two heavens there are above that again, bright like flame, and it is out of them shine the fiery stars that put fruitfulness in the clouds and in the sea. A high heaven, high and fiery, there is above all the rest; highest of all it is, having within it the rolling of the skies, and the labour of music, and choirs of angels. ”

“ What a celestial body has it drawn out from its celestial sphere! Not a star, not the whole visible heavens, not the heaven of heavens itself, but Him Who fills heaven and earth, by Whom all things were created. ”

“ First, Look round to the earth, to the land, to that land that used to be the land of light and the joy of the whole earth, and behold darkness and sorrow, all frightful, all mournful, nothing hopeful. Secondly, Look up to heaven, and there the light is darkened, where one would expect to have found it. If the light is darkened in the heavens, how great is that darkness! If God hide his face, no marvel the heavens hide theirs and appear gloomy, Job xxxiv. ”

“ At which point they both sat down back to back, their arms still locked, and asked and answered the following questions:
What do you see in the heavens bright?
⁠I see the moon and the stars at night.
What do you see in the earth, pray tell?
⁠I see in the earth a deep, deep well. ”

“ Why, but because the heavens have been opened, and the glad beams of heavenly light have begun slowly to penetrate the dark corners of the earth, and to drive to their hiding places the creatures of the night? ”

“ Infinitely more wonderful, however, and transcending in sublimity all that the heavens display to the contemplation of the inhabitants of earth, was the scene presented when the sun himself had risen. ”

“ Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. ”

“ According to the views just presented,—to the eye of the spirit the real heaven would appear as on high, stretched far and wide, in glittering beauty, just as the natural firmament appears to us; and this idea, flowing into our minds from the spiritual world, we receive and involuntarily apply to the firmament above and around us, and call it "the heavens:"—for it does in a manner correspond to and represent the real heavens. ”

“ So brilliant with both direct and reflected light and the values of contrast were the heavens, that when one happened to stand within one of the great shadows it became extraordinarily difficult to make out game on the plains. ”

“ Within the great circle of the heavens, the earth, revolving upon its axis and gliding along its orbit, is but as a very small wheel in the great machinery of the fathomless and limitless universe, while to our short range of view it appears great and wonderful above all others of the worlds which float in the immensity of space. ”

“ Now, with these facts in view, we can draw the analogy which runs through the Scriptures between the heavens and the earth and kingdoms. The father answers to the sun, the mother to the moon, and the children to the stars, constituting the heavens; while the servants answer to the earth, under or ruled by the heaven. Looking at the sun as that in the physical heavens which answers to the fathers in the heavens of these kingdoms, it naturally became spoken of in the masculine gender, while the moon, answering to the mother, was spoken of in the feminine gender, and so we find it among us now. ”

“ We must always consider the heavens as God's heavens; not only as all the world is his, even the earth and the fulness thereof, but in a more peculiar manner; The heavens, even the heavens, are the Lord's, (cxv. 16.) they are the place of the residence of his glory, and we are taught to call him Our Father in heaven. ”

“ A heaven in a gaze,
A heaven of heavens, the privilege
Of one another's eyes. ”

“ All the great aspects of nature wake in us this reverential emotion. A familiar instance is the effect upon us of the starry heavens. The Psalmist thrilled at that sight,—how much more deeply are we moved, knowing what we know of the vastness and the order! Some like effect on us has the unfolding revelation of the whole process of nature. ”

“ AND in these three words: It is a joy, a bliss, an endless satisfying to me, were shewed three heavens, as thus: For the joy, I understood the pleasure of the Father; and for the bliss, the worship of the Son; and for the endless satisfying, [1] the Holy Ghost. The Father is pleased, the Son is worshipped, the Holy Ghost is satisfied. ”

“ This Life’s dim Windows of the Soul
Distorts the Heavens from Pole to Pole,
And leads you to Believe a Lie
When you see with, not thro, the Eye,
That was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the Soul slept in the beams of Light. ”

“ Every part of the landscape is in unison; the same glory of mourning is thrown over the whole; the deep blue of the heavens is mingled with that of the ever-lasting hills, or melted away into the silence of the sapphire sea ”

“ But of all these principles, the Sun was looked up to as the grand omnipotent nucleus, whose all-vivifying power is the vital and sole source of animative and vegetative existence upon this globe—the glorious fountain out of which springs all that man ever has, or ever can call good, and as such, the only proper object of the homage and adoration of mankind. ”

“ The Seven Heavens As to the Seven Heavens that are around the earth, the first of them is the bright cloudy heaven that is the nearest and that has shining out of it the moon and the scattering of stars. ”

“ There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
⁠To me did seem
⁠Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
⁠Turn wheresoe'er I may,
⁠By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
⁠The Rainbow comes and goes,
⁠And lovely is the Rose,
⁠The Moon doth with delight
⁠Look round her when the heavens are bare;
⁠Waters on a starry night
⁠Are beautiful and fair;
⁠The sunshine is a glorious birth;
⁠But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. ”

“ Thirdly, The heavens are wonderfully stretched out to an incredible extent, and it is by his discretion that they are so, and that the motions of the heavenly bodies are directed for the benefit of this lower world. ”

“ Three themes in particular are dominant in the most primitive celestial tales: the ascension of man into the heavens, his descent from heaven, and the devourment of the great heavenly bodies, in particular of the sun, at sunset. ”

“ The apostle Paul speaks of God as "dwelling in light, whom no man hath seen, nor can see, whom no man can approach unto." These testimonies show that heaven is a place, location, and can be thought of and spoken of separately from the earth and other parts of the universe. Heaven is generally spoken of from our standpoint as being up or above. The literal meaning of the word is "that which is heaved up," that which is above, which is high. "Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool," it is said, in which figure of speech it is represented as above the earth. ”

“ But the heavens declare the glory of God more emphatically, when we reflect that the stability of the whole solar system is wondrously related to the life and enjoyment of the minutest animalcule seen by the microscope, and that the heavenly hosts are a theme of devout adoration to myriads of intelligent worshippers. ”

“ Just so he thinks the heavens contain worlds, some old, some dead, some young and vigorous, and some in the act of being formed. The nebulæ are these latter, and the nebulous stars are a further stage in the condensation towards a sun. ”

“ To minds early familiarised with true philosophical astronomy, the heavens declare no other glory than that of Hipparchus, of Kepler, of Newton, and of all those who have aided in establishing their laws. ”

“ By earth is meant the people of God, as creatures; hence the promise, “He shall smite earth with his rod:” this is done when the word comes home with power to the heart.—Again, “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord—Give ear, O heavens, hear, O earth the words of my mouth—I will hear the heavens; they shall hear the earth ”

“ Eye hath not seen nor ear heard the glory of this paradise, kingdom, or new heaven: it has only been revealed as fully as frail and finite man can comprehend it. WHY HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE USED FIGURATIVELY In the natural world we have heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars. God created the sun to rule by day and the moon to rule by night. The Bible being a revelation to this planet, our range of view is limited to the relation of the heavens, sun, moon, and stars to this earth. Here is the earth beneath, or under the heaven, as we are compelled to speak of it ”

“ The Heavens and the Earth, Old and New
Frequently people say when the views set forth herein are presented to them "Then you do not believe in a heaven." Of course for a person to say he does not believe in a heaven is to deny the greater part of the Scriptures. That there is a place called heaven, no one who believes the Bible can doubt, and that heaven in its highest sense is God’s holy and glorious habitation is abundantly shown. ”

“ Our fellow-planets like the earth are guided and held in their ever-circling way by the attraction of the sun, while they are also illuminated by the light which he pours forth with such liberality, and warmed with the rays of heat which he sends them. ”

“ Heaven is, therefore, a reality, a real place, God’s dwelling place. For Christ to leave the earth and go to heaven he had to ascend; he was taken up into heaven before the gaze of his anxious disciples, upon which occasion the angels said: "Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? ”

“ And perpetual gladness shall crown their heads. Joy and gladness shall they obtain; And sorrow and sighing shall flee away. LOCALITY OF THE NEW HEAVENS It is frequently the case that the change of heavens and earth is spoken of in the Scriptures in connection with Mount Zion. ”

“ a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the heavens. ”

“ Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens through Thee are fresh and strong. ”

“ In one sense, then, we call 'heaven' the substance of the extreme circumference of the whole, or that natural body whose place is at the extreme circumference. We recognize habitually a special right to the name 'heaven' in the extremity or upper region, which we take to be the seat of all that is divine. ”

“ THE MARVELOUS UNIVERSE There is but little revealed to us of the greatness and grandeur of the vast expanse above and about us, the Bible not being a revelation for that purpose, but is fitted to the needs and necessities of only our own planet, which is as a mere speck in the great and marvelous universe. ”

“ Hitherto the sidereal heavens have, not inadequately for the purpose designed, been represented by the concave surface of a sphere in the centre of which the eye of an observer might be supposed to be placed.... ”

“ Those who receive influx from the middle or second heaven, which is the spiritual heaven, are called spiritual-natural; and those who receive influx from the third or inmost heaven, which is the celestial heaven, are called celestial-natural. The spiritual-natural angels and the celestial-natural angels are distinct from each other ”

“ The heavens and the firmament, the linked chorus of day and night, are heralds of God's glory, with silent speech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. And as he looks, there leaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northern lands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom from the bridal chamber, like some athlete impatient for the course. ”

“ No doubt the theory of probabilities has nothing to say against Alcyone in comparison with any other star visible in the heavens, but what it does say is that it would be utterly preposterous to imagine that any one of the stars in the visible firmament could be the central sun around which all the bodies in the universe revolved. For summon up to your imagination the most distant star that can be seen with the unaided eye. ”

“ The flower could not thrive in a world which attracted more or less. A slight change in the constitution of the atmosphere, or in the alternation of night and day, would be fatal to many forms of life. ”

“ Every spot of this low earth is smiled upon by that serene apocalypse of the loving will of God. No lane is so narrow and foul in the great city, no spot is so bare and lonely in the waste desert, but that thither the sunlight comes, and there some patch of blue above beckons the downcast eye to look up. The day opens its broad bosom bathed in light, and shows the sun in the heavens, the Lord of light, to preach to us of the true light. ”