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 were too strong to be ignored, and religion had to modify its teaching by at least a passive acceptance of the new world outlook which would have been so strange to Jesus and Paul. It is evident that this involves the quiet giving up of the truth of the story of creation, as well as the doctrine of a day of judgment. When we once realize that the earth is a pin-point in the physical universe, these stories, woven in days when it was regarded as the stable center of things, are seen to be outgrown myths.