PRIMEVAL MAN

16 PRIMEVAL MAN With the ancient is wisdom. — Job 12:12

AFTER what we have now seen of the presentations and connections of the ancient astronomy, the question of its origin becomes one of great interest and importance. Who framed this system? Who first so accurately observed these features of Nature’s celestial economies, and so sublimely wove them together into one great scheme, at once so true to fact and so full of prophetic and evangelic significance? Whence has all this wisdom come? Our investigations would be left incomplete if we did not now endeavor to gather together what information exists touching these inquiries.

Astronomy is unquestionably one of the most ancient of the sciences. Its history runs back into an antiquity so remote and dim that the greatest of astronomers are unable to tell its source or beginning. Its existence is traceable in all known ages and among all nations, with all its main features settled and fixed from the most distant periods. Learned antiquarians of modern times have searched every page of heathen mythology, ransacked all the legends of poetry and fable, traversed all the religions, sciences, customs, and traditions of every nation, tribe, and people, and used the best sources of historic information the earth affords, with a view to rescue the matter from the heavy mists hanging over it; but with no further success than to trace it back to certain Chaldean shepherds who lived in a very early period of the world; but everything else concerning it and them is left undiscovered and untold. Had they first grasped the real meaning and intent of these primeval inventions of astronomic science, or entertained an idea of its true connections, they doubtless would have been able to reach much more definite knowledge on the subject. THE FACTS STATED

We now have monumental evidence, in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, that a very complete and sublime knowledge of the structure and economy of the visible universe, inclusive of a very exact astronomy, was by some means known to the great architect of that unrivalled edifice, built twenty-one hundred and seventy years before the birth of Christ. It is also a matter of accredited record that when Alexander took Babylon, Calisthenes, the philosopher who accompanied the expedition, found there certain astronomical observations made by the Chaldeans over nineteen hundred years before that time, which was over twenty-two hundred years before our era, and near to the great dispersion of mankind by the confusion of tongues. Cassini refers to Philo for the assertion that “Terah, the father of Abraham, who lived more than a hundred years with Noah, had much studied astronomy, and taught it to Abraham,” who, according to Josephus and others, taught it to the Egyptians during his sojourn in that country. It is well known that the religion of the ancient Babylonians and contiguous peoples, which consisted of the worship of the heavenly bodies, was based throughout on astronomy, astrology, and the starry configurations — so much so that one was an essential part of the other, and the two were really one. But it is now demonstrated, from the recovered remains of these ancient peoples, that the Chaldean religion and mythology were already wrought out in a complete and finished system as early as two thousand years before the beginning of our era, so that a settled astronomical science must necessarily have existed a considerable period prior to that date. The book of Job, so far as we can ascertain, is the oldest book now in the world; and it is a book which, more than all other books of Holy Scripture, abounds in astronomical allusions. Distinct and unmistakable references are contained in it to the constellations as we still have them. We there read of “Arcturus with his sons,” “the sweet influences of Pleiades,” “the bands of Orion,” and “the fleeing Serpent.” We there likewise read of “Mazzaroth,” with its “seasons” — stations, stopping-places — which, according to the margin of our English Bible, the Jewish Targum, and the ablest Christian interpreters, is nothing more nor less than the Solar Zodiac. Astronomy, even as we now have it, was therefore established and well understood in Job’s day. Nay, from the various astronomical references in the book different astronomers claim to be able to calculate the time in which Job lived, which they give as from B.C. 2100-2200. (See Miracle in Stone, pp. 203-206.) On the faith of the Thebaic astronomers Ptolemy records an observation of the heliacal rising of Sirius on the fourth day after the summer solstice twenty-two hundred and fifty years before Christ, which could not have been made if there had not been among men a high degree of astronomical knowledge preceding that date.

Dr. Seyffarth claims it as solid truth that in the distribution of the letters in the primitive alphabet, which was essentially the same in all nations, there is a record of the celestial presentations which can occur but once in millions of years, and which designates the year, month, and day when Noah came out of the ark. Our astronomy must therefore have existed in and before Noah’s time. From internal evidences in the particular framework and order of the Solar and Lunar Zodiacs, Bailly was thoroughly convinced of a state of the heavens at the time these Zodiacs were formed which can occur only at intervals of more than twenty-five thousand years, but which really did exist in and about four thousand years before the Christian era. Nouet, on similar grounds, came to the same conclusion. (See also Miracle in Stone, pp. 140 seq.) On the basis of astronomy’s own records, apart from all other testimony, we are thus inevitably carried back to a period within the lifetime of Adam and his sons for the original of the Zodiac, and, with it, of the whole system of our astronomy. THE TRADITIONS. And to this agree the ancient sayings and worthiest traditions of the race. The best philosophers, the most honored poets, and the historians who have penetrated the deepest into the beginnings of humanity unite in commencing man with God and in close and happy fellowship and communion with the Divine Intelligence. Everywhere throughout the world of primitive nations the first of men were the greatest of men, the wisest, the divinest, and the most worshipped; and the first age was the Golden Age.

Plato says: “Our first parent was the greatest philosopher that ever existed.” Baleus says: “From Adam all good arts and human wisdom flowed, as from their fountain. He was the first that discovered the motions of the celestial bodies, and all other creatures. From his school proceeded whatever good arts and wisdom were afterward propagated by our fathers unto mankind: so that whatever astronomy, geometry, and other arts contain in them, he knew the whole thereof.” Keckerman doubts not that “our first parents delivered over to their posterity, together with other sciences, even logic also; specially seeing they who were nearest the origin of all things had an intellect so much the more excellent than ours by how much the more they excelled us in length of life, firmitude of health, and in air and food.”

We learn from Medhurst that “in the early Chinese histories the first man, named Pwan-roo, is said to have been produced soon after the period of emptiness and confusion, and that he knew intuitively the relative proportions of heaven and earth, with the principles of creation and transmutation.” The Vendidad of the Parsis affirms that God conversed with Yima, the great shepherd, the first man, and taught him all the law of Nature and religion. Moreri gives it as the settled tradition that “Adam had a perfect knowledge of sciences, and chiefly of what related to the stars, which he taught his children.” The Jews hold it among their traditions that Adam wrote a book concerning the creation of the world, and another on the Deity. Kissaeus, an Arabian writer, gives it as among the teachings of his people that Abraham had in his possession certain sacred writings of Adam, Seth, and Enoch, in which were “laws and promises, threatenings from God, and predictions of many events;” and it is affirmed of Abraham that he taught astronomy to the Egyptian priests at Heliopolis. From the ancient fragments of Berosus, Polyhistor, and Sanchoniathon, as well as from the lately-recovered Assyrian tablets, we learn of the existence of sacred records which had descended from knowing men of the earliest times, who taught the world all the wisdom it had, and on whose instructions and institutes none were able to improve, but from which there was a constant tendency to apostatize. The ancient Egyptians called all their kings Pharaoh, the Sun, but their traditions make Menes, the first of their kings, the greatest sun, from whom all wisdom and illumination came to them. And Menes was a very near descendant of Noah, through whom the primeval wisdom was brought over from beyond the Flood, and hence from the first fathers of the race. From Adam sprang Seth, who, according to Josephus and more ancient records, followed his father in the pursuit of wisdom, as did also his own descendants. It is said in so many words that “they were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies and their pathe kai symptomata — condition and indications.” Hornius says: “The first mention of letters falls upon Seth’s times; who, being mindful of his father’s prophecy foretelling the universal dissolution of things, the one by the Deluge, and the other by fire, being not unwilling to extinguish his famous inventions concerning the stars, he thought of some monument to which he might concredit these mysteries.”

Enoch is also specially credited with special wisdom and writing, particularly as relating to astronomy and prophecy. Bochart writes: “I cannot but add what is found concerning the same Enoch in Eusebius, out of Eupolemus, of the Jews. He says that Abraham, when he taught astrology [astronomy] and other sciences at Heliopolis, affirmed that the Babylonians attributed the invention of the same to Enoch; and that the Grecians attribute the invention to Atlas, the same with Enoch.” Macinus, Abulfaragius, and other Arab writers say that Enoch was called Edris, the sage, the illustrious, and that he was skilled in astronomy and other sciences. Baleus tells us that he was famous for prophecy, and is reported as having written books on divine matters. The Jews call him the Great Scribe, and say that he wrote books on sacred wisdom, especially on astronomy. That he did record certain prophecies is attested by the Epistle of Jude, which gives a quotation from him. Origen also tells us that it was asserted in the book of Enoch that in the time of that patriarch the constellations were already named and divided. Arab and Egyptian authors make him the same as the older Hermes-Hermes Trismegistus, the triply-great Shepherd — through whom the wisdom of the stars and other sciences were handed down to his posterity.

It was the remark of Gale on these and such-like traditions and fragments: “We need no way doubt but that Noah had been fully instructed by Church-tradition from his godly predecessors, Methuselah, Enoch, and Seth, touching the creation of the world by God, and particularly touching the excellent fabric of the heavens, the nature of those celestial bodies, their harmonious motion and order that these celestial had a mighty influence on all sublunary bodies, etc. These and such like considerations, which greatly conduced to the enhancing of the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, we may not doubt were very frequent in the mouths of those sons of God before and after the Flood. And it is the opinion of some that the whole story of the creation written by Moses was conveyed down even from Adam to his time by a constant, uninterrupted tradition to the holy seed and Church in all ages.”

Eugubinus, treating of the succession of doctrine from the world’s beginning, says “As there is one Principle of things, so also there has been one and the same science of Him at all times amongst all, as both reason and monuments of many nations and letters testify. This science, springing partly from the first origin of men, has been devolved through all ages unto posterity. The most true supputation of times proves that Methuselah lived and might converse with Adam, as Noah with Methuselah. Therefore Noah saw and heard things before the Flood. Moreover, before Noah died Abraham was fifty years old. Neither may we conceive that this most pious man and his holy seed would conceal things of so great moment and so worthy to be known and remembered. Therefore from this most true cause it is most equal that the great science of divine and human affairs should be deduced unto following ages, though greatly overcome by barbarism, etc. . . . Therefore, that there has been one and the same wisdom always in all men we endeavor to persuade, not only by these reasons, but also by those many and great examples whereby we behold some vestiges of the truth scattered throughout all nations. Abraham was a Chaldean in whose family the ancient theology and the traditions of the fathers, whereof he was heir, remained. All these things being retained by Noah and his sons — whence also flowed the piety and wisdom of Job — were seen and heard by Abraham, and so passed unto his posterity” (quoted by Gale).

BIBLE REPRESENTATIONS

According to the Scriptures, Adam lived about seven hundred years contemporaneously with his son Seth, and about three hundred years contemporaneously with Enoch, and died only about one hundred years before Noah was born. All these were holy prophets. From Luke (Luk 1:69-70) and Acts (Acts 3:21) we learn that there were inspired divine teachers “from the foundation of the world” — since the world began.” Whoever may be included in the list, Adam, Seth, and Enoch were by far the greatest and the most illustrious of them.

Adam from the first was in perfect fellowship with the Divine Intelligence, and knew all things that came before him by an intuitive divine insight into their whole nature and intention. He needed no instructors, for the light of God shone clear and unclouded upon his soul. His whole being was in most thorough accord with God and with the mind of God, for he was the complete image of God. His wisdom and knowledge were necessarily higher by far than that of any other mere man that ever lived. Even Peter Bayle agrees that it is not contrary to the analogy of faith nor to probability, and very proper to the narrative in Genesis, to believe that Adam came out of the hands of his Creator indued with innate science, and that he did not lose it by sin; as the bad angels are not less knowing since their fall, and as crimes of learned persons do not deprive them of that knowledge they enjoyed before. He also passes it as determined that the speculative understanding of the first man was endowed with all the philosophical and mathematical knowledge of which human nature is naturally capable.

Gale gives it as made out from the Mosaic record that Adam without all peradventure was the greatest amongst mere mortals that ever the world possessed, exactly prying into the very natures of things, and there contemplating those glorious ideas and characters of created light and order which the increated Light and Divine Wisdom had impressed thereon; and thence he could immediately collect and form the same into a complete system and body of philosophy, as also most methodically branch forth the same into the particular sciences. Hornius argues that “Adam, being constituted in this theatre of the universe, was ignorant of nothing that pertained to the mystery of Nature.”

It is also a matter of inspired record that God gave to Adam special revelations. After his fall Jehovah made known to him His purposes concerning the Serpent and its seed and the woman and her Seed. The whole Gospel revelation and promise was therein included, and was given to him, not for himself alone, but to be made known to all his posterity as the great and only hope of man.

What Adam knew, Seth would thus also know, and so would Enoch. And living contemporaneously together for more than two, three, or five ordinary lifetimes, there was the sublimest opportunity for them to observe, construct, and mature just such a system as astronomy presents, inwoven as it is with all the great facts, features, and hopes embraced in the promised redemption by the Seed of the woman. In fact, it was the one great and only opportunity in the history of our race for such an accomplishment.

We know from Luke and Acts that every one of these primeval prophets did speak and prophesy of the raising up of ,an Horn of salvation for us,” the coming of Christ to suffer, to bring times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and eventually to work “the restitution of all things.” (Compare Luk 1:67-79; Acts 3:18-26; Jude 1:15.) The Bible tells us especially of Enoch’s preeminent intimacy and life-communion with God, and recites certain of his predictions which run on the precise theme we have been reading from the constellations. And what Adam and his believing children did not know simply as men, they would still know as prophets, which they certainly were.

REASONABLENESS OF THE CASE

Going back, then, to that period of the world to which we must needs go for the origin of astronomy and the first fixing of its great foundation-elements, we find there the men duly capacitated for the work, duly supplied with motive and opportunity to do it, and such real prophets of God that in entering upon it from sacred impulse they would not fail of divine help in the matter, or of preservation from all mistake. Under God, they were the great founders of the world, and were fully alive to the fact. They were the great appointed teachers of the world from the very nature of the case. They were the first great prophets of the world, the original recipients of the revelation of God’s purposes of redemption through the promised Seed of the woman, and as such were under bonds to make known the facts, explain their import, and use every means of recording and transmitting to all men the knowledge of them. They lived nearly a thousand years, and so had ample time for observation, study, and thorough elaboration to bring the work to finished perfection before being required to leave it. And over them were the virgin stars, only waiting to be named and grouped, and hung with the records and symbols of the precious treasures of promise and prophecy on which the world’s hopes depended, that they might become the everlasting witnesses to men of the God-given faith and hopes which shone in the serene imaginations of these great grandfathers of all sacred prophets. Nor can I see why a single shade of doubt should linger in our minds that these verily were the men who drew these celestial hieroglyphics, named and grouped the stars, laid out the Zodiacs and their signs, and made the heavens a picture gallery for all the world, the first and greatest that ever was made, that there mankind might gaze and read the wondrous story of the promised Redeemer, the redemption, and the redeemed. And this, and this only, will account for the sacred reverence in which all the ancient peoples held these starry emblems, and even fell to worshipping them and ascribing to them all sorts of divine and prophetic virtues. If put there by inspired prophets, and explained by them as the symbols of the divinest things of God’s revelation and promises, then can we understand why they were so mach made of in the sacred mysteries, why they were so seriously consulted as horoscopes, and why the early nations lapsed into the idolatry of worshipping them as gods. They are of holiest origin, and relate to the dearest hopes and anticipations of man; therefore have they been so prized in all the ages, and therefore the Perverter of all good set himself to turn them to evil, for which he could have found neither hold nor leverage had not some great and commanding sacredness gone before to seat them in the esteem of men.

CLAIMED TO BE FROM GOD

It was also the common and accepted trine of antiquity that the constellations were divine in origin and sacred in character. They are woven in with all the old ethnic religions. Much as heathenism has perverted them to false worship, it has ever held to the belief that they are from God-manifestations of the one supreme and eternal Deity. Even Pluche agrees that all heathenism is “nothing but the religion of the patriarchs corrupted by extravagant additions, transforming the signs, or the symbolic men and animals, into so many gods, with which their imagination peopled the heaven.” But this assumes and implies that these signs in the hands of the patriarchs themselves were connected with their religion; and their religion being divine, so must these signs connected with it have been. The Greek Sallustius treats of the myths and the constellations as undoubtedly of divine origin, and represents the chief poets through whom they came as prophets — persons to whom Deity was propitious, and who were really theoleptoi — divinely-inspired men. The Roman Cicero affirms that these things were explained in the sacred mysteries as part of a divine instruction how to live in peace and die in hope, and hence as from God himself.

Maimonides states that the old Jewish fathers considered and held these signs in the heavens to be of divine original.

Josephus and the Arabian authors give it as a matter of historic truth that the primeval prophets invented these signs.

Gale lays it down as quite certain that “the first human institutors or authors of philosophy were indeed divinely illuminated; so that the wisdom we find scattered up and down among the pagan philosophers was but borrowed and derived from those divine lights who were enlightened by the Divine Word — that Life and Light of men which shined in the darkness.” He also adds that “both Albertus and Sixtus Senensis collect that our Saviour was in some manner adumbrated in the Gentile fables and figures,” implying that they certainly were originally from the Spirit of prophecy. The sacred Bundahis of the Parsis gives an account of the formation of the Solar and Lunar Zodiacs, and mentions by name the twelve signs of the one, almost entirely as we now have them, and the twenty-eight divisions of the other, together with their Zend names, and asserts and claims that both, together with the assignment of the stars to each, were the work of Auharmazd, the Creator, “supreme in omniscience and goodness and unrivalled in glory;” and says that such was the teaching of Zorathost, the great traditional prophet of God. The same is asserted and claimed in the Chaldean tablets of late recovered from the ruins of ancient Assyria and Babylon. Fragments of a whole library of books written on tiles or tablets of pottery, now in the British Museum, have been brought to light, and their cuneiform records deciphered. Among them is a poetic legend of Izdubar, supposed to be the same as Nimrod, which is framed throughout to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, proving that the Zodiac existed and was most highly prized when that legend was written, certainly not less than two thousand years before Christ. But more important than this is a series on the six days of the Creation, called “the Chaldean Genesis,” almost the same in substance with the Mosaic account, and certainly dating beyond two thousand years before the Christian era. Smith and Sayce state concerning this series that “the fifth tablet relates how GOD created the constellations of the stars, the signs of the Zodiac, the planets and other stars, the moon and the sun.” The whole record runs thus:

“Anu [the supreme and ever-living God] made suitable the mansions of the (seven) great gods. [The signs of the Zodiac were always considered by the heathen nations the Mansions, stations, or resting-places of the seven planets, deemed the great gods.] The stars He placed in them. The lumasi, their animal appearance [figures], He fixed. He arranged the year according to the bounds, the limits [of the Zodiac], which He defined. For each of the twelve months three stars, or rows of stars [Decans], He fixed. From the day when the year issues forth unto the close He marked the mansions [Zodiacal stations] of the wandering stars (planets), to know their courses, that they might not err or deflect at all.”

There can be no question of the reference in this extract to the Zodiac, its twelve signs, and the system of the constellations in general, including their figures. It answers to the declaration in Genesis that God placed the starry lights in the firmament, and said, “Let them be for signs.” And the remarkable point in the case is, that it was the sacred opinion and settled belief of those who originally composed what these tablets record that the Zodiac, with its twelve signs, and the three extra rows of the constellations and the pictures designating them, were all the work of Almighty God himself by inspiration, impulse, and direction of His Spirit. It is indeed nothing more than we read out of Job, who wrote about the same period or a little earlier; but it is as if old Babylonia had risen up from its grave of ages to corroborate and attest the meaning which we took from the patriarch of Uz, where he gives it as part of Jehovah’s glory that “by His Spirit He garnished the heavens,” and that “His hand hath formed the fleeing Serpent,” and hence all these celestial emblems (Job 26:13). [The ordinary explanations of the origin of these ancient pictures extend very little further than the Zodiac; but even as to that our men of science have nothing to give save a few jejune imaginings, lame and absurd in themselves, and without the slightest show of fact on which to lean.

It is said that herdsmen used to take great delight in their sheep and cattle as they led them forth in spring-time, and in the mating and nesting of the birds as the summer drew on, and so they gave the signs of a Ram, a Bull, and two entwined youths to the months of March, April, and May! Men saw, we are told, that toward the end of June the sun began to come down from the north toward the south, which for some unknown reason they likened to a backward movement, and so gave that month the sign of the Crab, because the crab is apt to move backward! The heat in July became fierce, and then, we are assured, the lions used to come to the river to quench their thirst, and so that month obtained the sign of the Lion! Then in August, it is supposed, the people began to harvest or to sow their fields, and so they gave that month the sign of a prostrate young woman with sprigs of wheat in one hand and a branch in the other! In September, it is said, they found the days and nights nearly equal, so they drew for that month the sign of the Scales, though the same thing in March had no sign, and these equal balances, unfortunately for the myth, have one side up and the other down! October, it is said, was plentiful in fruits, and many people got sick, so they marked that month with the sign of the Scorpion! November, it is said, was the month for hunting, and so they marked it with the sign of a Horseman with bow and arrow. In December, we are told, people noticed the sun again ascending toward the north, and so they marked that month with the sign of a Goat, because goats like to climb rocks! January was found to be a wet and dreary month, so they gave it the sign of the Waterman! And in February we are told that people went a-fishing, and so that month received the sign of the two Fishes! This is the philosophy of the twelve signs as given in our books of science. But then how came these signs to be the same in all parts of the earth in all the ages through? And how comes it that there is not a country under the sun where these interpretations all fit? And how did men know to name these months or to place these figures if the sphere had not been previously defined and fixed? And what of the thirty-six remaining constellations and their equally conspicuous figures? Where did they all come from, and what do they mean? The Greek myths on the subject are out of the question here. These extra-Zodiacal constellations are as old as the Zodiac itself, and everywhere, in the earliest records as in the latest, appear along with it. And what of the names of the stars, ;which, for the most part, are as old as the signs, but tell quite another story from anything that men have thus given as the rationale of these celestial hieroglyphics? And then, again, how did it happen that the people who thus fancifully characterized the months immediately wheeled about anti began to consult as oracles anti to worship as great divinities the very figures which they had themselves hung up? Such philosophy will not hold together. It is simply amazing that learned men should have the face to put it forth for rational acceptance. It is so purely fanciful, so feeble, and so manifestly untrue, that it needed no Montucla to demolish it utterly.] THE STAR-RECORD ITSELF. And the story which these astronomic signs and pictures tell is in all respects so worthy of a divine origin, and so much above man’s science, that we may well consider the whole thing divine. It is precisely the same that we find in the Word, about whose divine source we have no question. And if it was a fitting thing for the great Lord of all to employ His Spirit to cause these matters of salvation to be authentically recorded in the books committed to His later peoples, why was it not equally befitting His gracious almightiness to do the same in the case of His primeval prophets, that all mankind in all the ages might ever have before their eyes the abiding testimony of His pristine revelations concerning that same Messiah “° of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write”? And what if the key to the showings was afterward lost, and men only misread and perverted what was so sublimely recorded? The same has occurred again and again with the scriptural records; and why should the apostasies in the one case argue differently from what they do in the other? The failures and sins of men do not unmake the truth of God, neither do their misuses and perversions of His gifts disprove their divine source or good intent. The turning of Israel’s calling and sacred institutes into a hypocritical, murderous, and depraved Pharisaism, which killed the Son of God and slew His holy Apostles, did not unmake the divine legation of Moses nor the heavenly inspiration of the holy prophets who spent their lives building Israel into a kingdom for the Lord. The perversion of Christianity into an imperial popedom, an Antichrist, and a tyrannous persecution of the saints of God by His own alleged vicegerent did not prove Jesus of Nazareth an impostor nor the testimony of His Apostles undivine or untrue. And if men in like manner have perverted these primeval records in the stars, and turned the showings of promised salvation into an instrument of damning superstition, and twisted a divine astronomy into a devilish astrology, and developed a bloody paganism out of a primitive evangelism, what is it else than the depravity of man and the trick of the great Deceiver belying God, but by no means discrediting or unmaking the divinity, the mercifulness, or the gracious ampleness of good intent in the sublime original?

Volney insists, and with good reason, that everywhere in antiquity there was a cherished tradition of an expected Conqueror of the Serpent, who was to come as a divine person, born of a woman; and that this tradition is most clearly reflected in the constellations and in all the heathen mythologies throughout the world. Dupuis has collected numerous ancient authorities, abundantly proving that in all nations this tradition, with singular particularity of details, always prevailed; that this divine Person, born of a woman, was to be a great sufferer in His conflict with the Serpent, but would triumph gloriously at the last; and that this tradition is represented and recorded in the constellations. By a world-wide testimony we are thus assured that this is verily the inwoven mystic essence of the primeval astronomy, the same that constitutes the essence of all that is written by inspiration in the books of the Bible. And to the external testimony the internal substance and conditions correspond. In three grand parts or books, each with four grand chapters, and each chapter divided into four distinct sections, is this record given. Set out in brief, the contents would run thus:

BOOK FIRST — THE REDEEMER PROMISED CHAPTER FIRST — VIRGO:

1. The Seed of the woman

2. The Desire of nations

3. The Man of double nature in humiliation

4. The exalted Shepherd and Harvester

CHAPTER SECOND — LIBRA

1. Price to be paid

2. The Cross endured

3. The Victim slain

4 The Crown purchased CHAPTER THIRD — SCORPIO:

1. Cleft in the conflict

2. The Serpent’s coils

3. The struggle with the Enemy

4. The toiling Vanquisher of evil

CHAPTER FOURTH — SAGITTARIUS:

1. The double-natured One triumphing as a Warrior

2. He gladdens the heavens

3. He builds the fires of punishment

4. He casts down the Dragon

BOOK SECOND — THE REDEEMER’S PEOPLE CHAPTER FIRST — CAPRICORNUS

1. Life out of Death

2. The Arrow of God

3. Pierced and falling

4. Springing up again in abundant life

CHAPTER SECOND — AQUARIUS:

1. Life-waters from on high

2. Drinking in the heavenly flood

3. Carrying and speeding the Good News

4. Bearing aloft the Cross over all the earth

CHAPTER THIRD — PISCES

1. Swimming in the heavenly waters

2. Upheld and governed by the Lamb

3. Head over all things to the Church

4. The intended Bride bound and exposed on earth

CHAPTER FOURTH — ARIES

1. The Lamb entered on dominion

2. The Bride released and making ready

3. Satan bound

4. The Breaker triumphing

BOOK THIRD — REDEMPTION COMPLETED CHAPTER FIRST — TAURUS

1. The invincible Ruler come

2. The sublime Vanquisher

3. The River of judgment

4. The all-ruling Shepherd

CHAPTER SECOND — GEMINI:

1. The Marriage of the Lamb

2. The Enemy trodden down

3. The Prince coming in glory

4. His princely following

CHAPTER THIRD — CANCER

1. The Possession secured

2. Lesser Fold, the first-born, the rulers

3. Greater Fold, the after-born

4. The Heroes landed from their expedition, their toils and trials over

CHAPTER FOURTH — LEO:

1. The King aroused for the rending

2. The Serpent fleeing

3. The Bowl of Wrath upon him

4. His carcass devoured

Here is a marked order and symmetry of construction, a thoroughness of digestion, an assortment of elements, an evenness of balance, and an exhaustive comprehensiveness, not excelled by the highest inspired genius whose writings have come to us — an order befitting the God of order, and bearing in itself, in its three and fours, the expression of eternal Godhead moving and doing with reference to earth and man; whilst every topic in the twelve and twelve times three is a genuine Gospel topic, handled exactly as we find it in the writings of the Prophets and Apostles. There is nothing added and there is nothing left out. The whole story is complete — more complete than half the ministers in Christendom can tell it to-day with the whole volume of both Testaments before them, and after all the prophesying and preaching and fulfilling that has occurred in the five thousand years and more since these star-pictures were made.

INEVITABLE INFERENCES

“What shall we say, then, to these things?” Was primeval man a gorilla, a troglodyte, a brutish savage, a wild man without knowledge? The Zodiac and the constellations as arranged upon the ancient sphere furnish the foundations of all astronomy. No man since they were made has been able to improve upon them. All subsequent touches of them have been bungles and absurdities. They stand to-day securely planted among the profoundest stabilities contained in human science. And yet the evidences are that they have come clown to us from that selfsame primeval man. Then primeval man knew the visible starry heavens as well as any other man since. Then primeval man could draw maps, and make pictures, and write books, and teach wisdom, and transmit thought and intelligence, just as successfully as the remoter progeny sprung from his blood. Then the doctrine that modern man is a mere evolution from savageism, the result of a self-moved activity to become, his makership his own, his intelligence a mere self efflorescence, is a lie. Our particular ancestors of two thousand years ago may have been but semi-civilized, having been long and remotely separated from the chief centres of population and enlightenment, and so it may have been in part with the progenitors of the Greeks and Romans; but the agencies and influences by which they were lifted, and their descendants brought to the heights of which we boast too much, were not originated and evolved from among themselves, apart from what they got from the more knowing world outside. Egypt, Phoenicia, Arabia, Assyria, Chaldea, India, and China of the olden times never were savage or uncivilized. Government, society, law, arts, and sciences go back to the beginnings of their history, and from them all later peoples have learned. As far as we have any traces of man’s existence — and those traces go back as far as Adam — we have evidences of enlightenment as high and as true to Nature and fact as anything we know, and which is to this day the very backbone of much of the world’s best and highest wisdom. The weight of the showing is, that primeval man was the truest model and representative of man, and that all human progress since, though upward in some things, has been in the main an unceasing deterioration.

All the world that came next after primeval man honored, and even worshipped, their first fathers as very gods of light, knowledge, and greatness. They pushed their veneration to a base idolatry indeed, but there was reason and deserved gratitude at the bottom of it. The world now-a-days regards such reverence as a weakness and a fault, and has swung off into a far meaner and baser idolatry of self, glorying in its earth-born gaslight as the superlative illumination, and floundering like the dazed moth around the flickering smoke flame, as if the sun in the heavens were not half so bright and beautiful. Could Adam and Seth and Enoch and Noah appear among us, and take an inventory of our prevailing philosophies, the ways in which modern thinking practically runs, and the atheistic stuff which many would baptize with the name of wisdom, how would those venerable patriarchs sigh and lament and sicken over the degeneration of their posterity! What if we have found out that a wire magnetized at one end is instantly magnetized at the other end also? What if we have discovered that there is power in boiling water to push against confinement, and so to drive pistons and turn wheels? What if we have made up shorthand ways of putting lettering on paper and of multiplying impressions like autumn leaves? What if we have succeeded in making war guns and implements of death such as they never saw and never wished to see? From the high standpoint of those primeval sages Noah would have to write again: “° Behold, the earth is corrupt, for all flesh hath corrupted its ways.” Intenser than ever would Enoch fulmine his ancient commination: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints to execute judgment upon this convict population, full of ungodly deeds and ungodly speeches, traducing the things which it knows not, and following only what it knows naturally as brute beasts.” Whilst Adam’s thoughts would needs turn inward with all the deeper self-reproach for having with open eyes started the spring whence has come all this earthiness and apostasy.

“What shall we say, then, to these things?” God certainly did not make man without at the same time beaming into him all the light and intelligence to equip him fully for all the requirements of the highest perfection of his being in his sphere, and for the intellectual and physical mastery of the whole earthly creation at the head of which he stood. That first man fell, but that fall did not obliterate from his intellect the knowledge which his Maker had previously shined into it. An apostate from Christianity does not thereby lose the knowledge he possessed. Judgment came upon Adam, and hard necessities, by reason of his transgression, but there was no obliteration of his intellectual treasures or his intellectual powers. Much as they have depreciated in transmission to his posterity, they were not blotted out of Adam himself. Neither did God cease to speak to him, or refuse to open up to him new and richer fields of wisdom to meet his condition as a sinner. Fallen Adam was still capable of redemption, and that redemption God meant to accomplish in the course of the ongoing ages and generations of the race. To save Adam it was necessary that Adam should know of it, and to save his posterity it was necessary that the same knowledge should be transmitted to them also. And as from him human life was multiplied, so to him it pertained as the great father to teach and transmit his sacred and saving wisdom with the multiplication of himself. In the nature and necessities of the case he was God’s prophet to those born of him. Of all knowledge, the knowledge of the promised Redeemer was the most important and essential. Therefore God would not leave him in any ignorance as to that promised Redeemer, the nature of His work, and the results of His administrations. The whole Gospel, or none, he needed to know. The whole Gospel, if any, he would be most anxious to comprehend. The whole Gospel, as he got it from God and hoped and rejoiced in it himself, he would be most concerned to teach to his children and to have securely recorded for all coming generations. Such devout and active fidelity was his interest and duty as a man and a prophet, and what God, according to all His word and promises, would certainly approve and bless and help. It would be in the line and spirit of all His subsequent inspirations vouchsafed to men that He should do for Adam in such a case even more than He did for Moses and Samuel and Isaiah and Daniel. And here in the records and emblems of the stars, demonstrably dating back to Adam’s time, and linked in with a true and admirable astronomy, we have what in every particular best resolves itself into a pictorial memorial of that promised Redeemer’s character and achievements as then looked for and believed in. The things thus symbolized could never have become known from natural reason, neither could unaided man ever have made for them so perfect and sublime a record even after they were known. Then certainly God’s hand was in it. Then divine revelation is a demonstrated reality. Then inspiration is an indestructible fact. And then these glorious stars take on the holier brightness as the sublime underwriters of our Scriptures and as God’s witnesses from beyond the gulf of ages to assure us there is no mistake in building on Jesus of Nazareth as our hope and our salvation. Well, then, might Zacharias sing: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an Horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David; as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began!” Luk 1:68-70.