That have been, and that shall be nevermore ; Four-square in midst of heaven, whose shining walls Whose battlements are crystal and whose ways The majesty of revealed. No astronomer has any expectation of such good fortune as the poet has outlined. But the spacious firma- God is ment, to the study of which he gives his nightly vigils and his daily toils, is the handiwork of the Most High, and continually reveals to the earnest student the majesty and glory of the omnipotent, the ever-living God. The ladder of Many and toilsome have been the steps by which the astronomers of centuries past and present have mounted progress. the long ladder whose base rests on the earth, and whose summit is now to be found among the star-clouds of the Milky Way. The first astronomer was Adam : his observatory was Adam as an one of the flower-decked mounds of the Garden of Eden. astronomer. His two telescopes were fresh from a celestial workshop. What must have been his feelings as the glowing orb of day, which had warmed his body and cheered his spirit, sank in the west and the evening twilight deepened! Was he to be imprisoned in a dungeon of darkness, and the beautiful creation about him to fade into nothingness? Behold! a new light appears in the sky; the silvery moon, which has been appointed to rule the night, stands out in all her beauty, and casts dim shadows of The moon and stars appear. The Milky Adam sleeps and wakens. the foliage on the darkening turf. But hers is not the only light. Here and there, scattered over the broad expanse of the sky, appear the brighter stars, set like jewels as a crown upon earth's brow. They have various colors and degrees of brightness: a multitude of lesser lights gradually come forth, forming strange configurations. Now, for the first time, the solitary observer notices that the moon is following the sun to a grave in the west, and that the stars too are joining in the general movement. Will all at last be lost to his vision, and darkness rule supreme? He faces eastward and sees new groups of stars rising to take the places of those which are passing away. The moon sinks in the west; earnestly he watches the glow on the horizon at the point where she disappeared, until it fades away. Upward again he throws his inquiring glance, and beholds the most wonderful sight of all. Athwart the starsphere a broad river of light pursues its tortuous way. In places it glows as if pent-up fires were about to burst forth; in other places are black rifts, which seem to intensify the darkness of the night. Upon all nature has fallen a solemn hush, broken only by the faint notes of a far-away nightingale. A strange drowsiness creeps over our great ancestor and fills him with dread: in vain he fights against it: overcome he sinks down and is lost in slumber. What visions may have come to him we know not. The hours roll on, and the stars keep silent vigil over the slumberer: at last the aurora of approaching day glows along the eastern horizon. He awakens and feels the pleasurable glow of fresh life and vigor. The stars fade from view, and the first glint of the glad sunshine greets his vision. The sun arises in its full glory, and animate nature is awakened. The man wonders and adores. Surely he will be a lover of nature for life. The majestic revolution of the heavens, the waxing and waning of the moon, the movements of the brilliant planets, an occasional outburst of a comet, all these will continually delight him, and will ever lead to fresh adoration of his Creator. How rudely are our bright expectations of Adam's astronomical joys shattered! For a rationalistic instructor in the domain of theology, the wily serpent, took A step forward. The Josephus. Adam and his companion in hand. Under his tuition they introduced the genuine scientific method of investigation, the method of experiment and observation, into fields theological. Inestimable as may be the value of this method, it brought ruin and desolation to the first experimenters. Brought sharply to his senses by being driven from his beautiful dwelling place, forced to earn his subsistence by the sweat of his brow, burdened with increasing cares and sorrows, Adam's spirit was much broken, and, like Bunyan's man with a muck-rake, he acquired the habit of looking downward instead of upward. We must take a long step forward to find the first glimmerings, more or less historic, of the lamp of astronomical knowledge. We thus emerge from the realm of fancy in which we have disported ourselves for a time into the dim borderland, in which history and myth are interwoven, and we shall press on speedily into the full light of historic fact. Among the first of astronomical allusions are those contained in the writings of the early Aryans, by whom the hymns of the "Rigveda" were written. These writings, however, serve only to reveal to us primitive notions about the earth and the firmament, and do not contain astronomical observations. The earth is represented as a flat surface, on whose broad expanse rests the blue and ever-changing vault of heaven. Below this starspangled vault is the home of the life-giving light. Josephus states that one reason why the lives of the antediluvian patriarchs were prolonged was that they might perfect the sciences of geometry and astronomy, which they had discovered. He also informs us that these primitive scientists had learned from Adam that the world was to perish by water and by fire; fearing therefore that the results of their centuries of labor would be lost, they built two columns, one of brick and the other of stone, which bore inscriptions intended to preserve the knowledge which their toil had wrested from the sky. In case the deluge destroyed the brick column, the stone one at least would come through unharmed. Josephus would have us believe that the stone monument was still to be seen in his day. Herodotus, the father of history, makes the astonishing statement that the Egyptians had made astronomical observations for 11,340 years, and had seen the earth's equator perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. But the present refinement of astronomical theory forbids a belief that the equator and ecliptic have been perpendicular within the memory of man, and lends no countenance to the theory that they ever were. Herodotus. astronomy. A high antiquity is claimed for the beginning of astronomy among the Chinese. Forty-five centuries Early Chinese ago the emperor Hoang-Ti is reputed to have built an observatory, and to have appointed an astronomical board, upon the members of which devolved the duties of regulating the times of the religious festivals. The ancient chronicles also relate that once upon a time the astronomical board, which consisted of two learned gentlemen bearing the rather hilarious names of Hi and Ho, forgot the dignity of its high position, and indulged in riotous living. Meanwhile the moon stole a march on the board, and eclipsed the sun. China was thus exposed to the wrath of the gods, because the eclipse had not been foreseen and the proper religious rites observed. The emperor at once accepted the resignation of the board, by the sword of the executioner. The Chinese astronomical records of the past twenty-six centuries are thought to be fairly reliable; they contain |