f was wrong beyond the
shadow of a doubt. We cannot make it true by modifying it out of all
recognition.

The ascent into Heaven was thought of as a literal ascension of the
resurrected body by the majority of early Christians. We have seen,
however, that Paul did not teach any such doctrine. But even for Paul,
Jesus, as the Messiah, was literally in the heavens directly above the
earth. Into this region Paul is caught up in ecstasy--even to the
third heaven. It is from {103} this region, not very far above us,
that the last trump will sound and the day of judgment dawn. The
account, given by the so-called "Revelation of St. John the Divine,"
which has led to so much foolish controversy among certain protestant
sects, is typical of the apocalyptic literature of the time. No
scholar to-day believes that it was written by an apostle or by any one
in direct relation to an apostle. It is simply an example of the
current religious phantasies of the age just before and after the Fall
of Jerusalem. What factual basis could there be for such myths of the
end of the world? To take this old picture of the days to come as
having anything but historical interest is to live in a mist. Only the
scholar can understand the allusions made and connect the ideas with
the beliefs of this vanished world. It is poetry, a creation of
generations of dreamers steeped in the tremendous idea of a coming
destruction preceded by portents and disasters. We can understand how
it arose in the motley and chaotic press of the Roman Empire in the
East with its memories of oppressions and conquests and changing
kingdoms; but to regard it gravely as a revelation, to be taken
seriously, of the destruction of the world is impossible. The universe
was a small affair for the men of that time and the little planet we
call the earth and live upon was the center of all things. We who
think in terms of light-years, and nebulae in which our solar system
could be lost, and huge constellations far off in the pathless void,
realize that we have outgrown even the imagery of this apocalyptic poem.

Religion was loth to give up the simpler and more child-like ideas of
the universe and to displace the earth from its proud preeminence as
the one foot-stool of {104} deity. Man feels lonelier in the
tremendous spaces and stellar systems which astronomy has revealed to
his eye and mind. But the facts piled up by science in its patient
work of investigation