SUPPLEMENT

SUPPLEMENT

CRITICISMS THE adverse notices of this book have mainly come from three classes of minds. The first class consists of those who have no idea of a personal God, treat all religion as superstition, reject inspiration in the sense of divine revelation, and see no need of an atoning Redeemer. A reviewer expresses the belief that “one of the uses of this book possibly will be to tend to destroy much of the force of that kind of infidelity which pretends to find all the germs of Christianity in precedent religions and mythologies.” The author has learned of an instance in which the consideration of these presentations was the means of reclaiming a pronounced infidel to faith in the Gospel. The book, therefore, is very much in conflict with infidelity, and has done anything but please skeptics and those skeptically inclined. The second class consists of professed Christians, of the so-called liberal and rationalistic school, the bent of whose philosophy is to contemplate man as a creature of cultivation from a troglodyte or savage, and destined to rise by self-development, perhaps with a little adventitious aid, into ultimate perfection, and who are accordingly very devoted to what they are pleased to call Progress. The whole showing and doctrine of this book is much of a stumbling-block in the way of such thinking, and hence, to minds of this class, it is “wild,” “imaginary,” “a fanciful endeavor to make a prophetic purpose out of the names (?) of the constellations,” “absurd.” The third class consists of certain self-complacent believers, jealous of everything that happens to go beyond the range of their treadmill paths. These are stirred with pious alarm at any attempt to show that the same prophetic Word of God may possibly have another record of its glorious contents in another place and form from the Bible. They cannot favor this book, lest they should encourage a style of reasoning that may bring discredit on the very cause it seeks to advocate. A striking example of such cowardly trembling for the Ark of the Lord is presented in one who deploringly says, “The purpose is so praiseworthy, and the zeal and eloquence brought to bear upon it are so great, that some will doubtless be carried away by the reasoning of the author to a conviction that the heavenly constellations are indeed a previous revelation of vital importance “!

There is, of course, but one Revelation, one Christ, one Gospel, one plan and purpose of Redemption for fallen man., even that which is written in the Old and New Testaments; but why may it not be given in a thousand different modes of presentation, to as many prophets, in different ages, symbolically here and didactically there, in high poetry or in simple parable? And where is the harm or loss to sacred truth, the calamity to souls, the disadvantage to faith, if it should appear that God verily caused His glorious Gospel to be pictorially inscribed on the everlasting stars from the beginning, as well as afterward written in divers forms and languages on perishable parchment? The early world certainly had a revelation of Gospel truth, whether they hung it on the stars or not. Of course, nothing contrary to the written Word is to be admitted as matter of faith, whether from the pictures in the starry heavens or from any other source. We cannot so much as know that these pictures set forth the Gospel, except as they accord with the written Word. But when men deny the inspiration of the written record, and seek to empty it of its sublimest substance by their miserable rationalizing, it is a transcendent gain and advantage, in which every genuine believer should rejoice with thankfulness, to be able to point to a duplicate record of precisely the same glorious things, in quite another form, and in place and time where nothing but the special inspiration and illumination of God could have produced it. Whether we really have such an earlier duplicate of the grand substance of the Gospel in the primeval astronomy can only be decided on the evidences in the case; but it is a super-devotion and a very stupid pietism to deplore the finding of grounds for such a conviction. NO CHAMPION FOR CURRENT THEORIES A NOTEWORTHY fact with regard to the adverse notices of this book is, that not one of the writers has ventured in any degree to champion or defend the current theories respecting the origin and meaning of the constellations. Those who have had the field and the sway hitherto when put on trial have nothing to say. They thus show that they secretly feel they have no case against the showings of this book. They are in the unpleasant plight of having sanctioned a line of thinking which they are at a loss to maintain, and of being confronted with a great, heaven-wide, universal system, as old as the oldest records of the race, and handled every day by all peoples on earth, which they are not at all able rationally, historically, or scientifically to explain; whilst their former thinking is assailed and pressed with a new method of contemplation so reasonable, so dignified, so true to the worthiest records and traditions, so consistent, harmonious, and exhaustive in its explanations of all the multitudinous facts entering into the case, that they do not know where or how to attack it, or how to dispose of it without a radical revolution in their ways of looking at things, to which they are by no means willing to submit.

One writer so feels this embarrassment that he has sought a way out by declaiming against “taking the ignorance of everybody as a basis of knowledge.” But that will not help him. This book does not assert that the constellations are inspired prophetic symbols of the promised redemption by “the Seed of the woman,” because nobody can tell whence else or for what else they came into being. The whole field is diligently surveyed. The entire system as originally constituted is searched out and exhibited. The principal myths connected with each constellation, as well as the figures which mark them, both in themselves and in relation to one another, are carefully analyzed. The names of the chief stars belonging to each group are sought out and interpreted by the light of the best linguistic guides. The whole is closely compared, section by section, with the statements, imagery, and diction of the Holy Scriptures touching the Author and Work of human redemption. A clear and complete correspondence — as clear and complete as that between the parables of Christ and the spiritual truths they were meant to illustrate — is traced out in detail. A vast body of historical, scriptural, traditional, and mythical facts is presented, which not only accord with the theory, but largely demand it as the only right conclusion from them, And there is thus fairly made out a full, legitimate, and independent case, which must, in all just logic, go through, unless the facts on which it rests can be solidly refuted or some equally adequate and verifiable explanation of them can be given. Not on men’s ignorance is the doctrine of this book built, but on evidences which demand to be handled as all other testimony when in honest search for the truth: Nevertheless, when people avow ignorance and inability to make any showing to the contrary, their sneers and jeers are to their own discredit and shame, and their plea against the presentation is itself a disqualification for the giving of any judgment in the matter. THE SOUTHERN CROSS BUT the writer last referred to makes one point of legitimate attack which, if it could be maintained, would be of some weight against the presentations of this book. The following is the statement in full in which this point is made: “Dr. Seiss is not consistent with himself. His theory requires him to stick to the ancient signs. It is only those that issue from the deep antiquity back of the Theban Tables, about which our ignorance is vast enough, to give room to unfold the wings of his spacious argument. The unknown prophet theory will not work for constellations whose recent origin discloses the fact that there was no prophet of any kind in the case. The Southern Cross is one of these. The stars that form it are in the heavens, but there is nothing said about the constellation in Ptolemy or in the Theban Tables. But it is too inviting a constellation for Dr. S. to resist the temptation to use it. Accordingly, he shifts his ground from the map to the heavens, lets the unknown astronomer prophet who impressed the eternal record on the Zodiac go, and proceeds to interpolate the Southern Cross into the record on its own merits.” — N. Y. Independent, Sept. 7, 1882. The author of the above extract also wrote and published an attack on The Gospel in the Stars some months before it was in print — before he had seen a line of it except the statement on the publisher’s prospectus. This is mentioned to show with what sincerity and earnestness he is concerned to get at and set forth the truth on this subject. Still, if he finds a fair objection, it is due that it should have a fair hearing and be fairly met.

Now, it is true that the constellation of the Southern Cross is designated and used in this book (pp. 37-39) as the first Decan of Libra, just as the Northern Crown is given as the third Decan of the same sign; but it is not true that either the one or the other, or any constellation used in this attempted reading of the stars, belongs to those fabrications of conceit, flattery, and self-will which, in more recent times, have been thrust into the celestial charts.

It is also true that the Southern Cross, as a separate constellation, does not appear in the list of Hipparchus repeated in the Almagest of Ptolemy, and that it came for the first time into modern atlases to Royer’s Celestial Chart, published in 1679, whence it has been erroneously ascribed to him as his own invention. These facts had not been overlooked, and it is a very superficial acquaintance with the history of the matter which would take them as proving this constellation one of those which have been obtruded into the celestial maps in modern times. The reason why it does not appear in the list of Hipparchus and Ptolemy is obvious. That list was intended to give only what was verified by practical observation, and none of the constellations are included but such as the makers of it could see and identify in the heavens. But the Southern Cross in their day had sunk by the precession of the equinox so far into the south as to be scarcely visible any more from the latitudes in which their observations were made. Some of the stars of the Southern Cross are embraced in the list, as they could then be seen hanging low down on the southern horizon; but the constellation, as such, was invisible, and so its higher stars, which could be seen, were assigned to the constellation Centaurus, immediately over the Southern Cross, while the Southern Crown was put in to fill out the traditional number in place of the Cross, which these observers could not find.

It is plain, however, that the Southern Crown — Corona Australis — was not one of the great old original forty- eight signs. It is far inferior to any one of them, having no star above the fifth magnitude, and no meaning anywhere to be discovered. It is totally destitute of all mythological place, history, or tradition. It is situated near where the Southern Cross was expected to be, and because that could not be found and identified, this seeming Crown was substituted for it, and the Cross dropped out as mythic and having no real existence. None of the authorities on the primeval constellations mention it, and Aspin says it is an invention of the later times.

Ptolemy himself also confesses that in the tables and charts presented by him liberties were taken to change figures and the places of stars in them. He says

“Multis ego in locus accommodatiora ipsis figuris attribuentes vocabula, priscorum usum immutavimus, sicut, verbi gratia, figuras quas Hipparchus in humeris Virginis locat, nos in costis ejus sitas esse dicimus, quoniam distantia earum ad stellas quae in capite sunt major apparet, quam ad eas quae in extrematibus manuum collocantur, hoc autem sicut et costis accomodatur.”

Two things appear from this statement. The one is that, for aesthetic reasons, changes were made in the figures, etc. of the constellations, and hence that we are not to look to these charts as faithfully presenting in full all the old forms of the astronomical signs. The other is of still more consequence touching the point in question, and that is, the clear and distinct acknowledgment that neither he nor Hipparchus were the inventors of these signs, and that a system of them, covering the whole visible heavens, existed, and was held to be of unquestioned authority, unknown origin, and unsearchable antiquity in his day. Whether, therefore, the Southern Cross belongs to the ancient forty-eight constellations or not cannot be determined from its absence from the Ptolemaic tables, as that can argue nothing for or against the assertion that it does so belong, apart from other showings. THE CROSS ONE OF THE ANCIENT SIGNS

OTHER and more decisive showings, however, are not wanting. Ulugh Beigh, about two centuries before Royer, Aben Ezra, about four centuries before Royer, and Albumazer, about eight centuries before Royer, all three give this south polar constellation as named and designated in the most ancient astronomy as one of the Decans of Libra. Albumazer and Aben Ezra give it with the accompanying statement that, according to the old traditions and accounts, it was in the form of a cross. They likewise give its name as Adom, which means cutting off, the boundary, the lowest limit, as the last letter of the old Oriental alphabets was tau, and always written in the form of the cross. Ulugh Beigh also gives its name in the old Coptic, where he says it was called Sera, which Birch says means victory, triumph by a great conflict. All this quite agrees with the death of “the Seed of the woman” on the cross.

Unlike Hipparchus and Ptolemy, these men were not giving the constellations as then to be seen and identified on the heavens, but as handed down in the most ancient astronomical traditions. If they had been describing from their own observations, they would also have had to omit the Southern Cross from their charts, for it was not visible in their days in their latitudes, and will not be again for thousands of years, until it comes around to its ancient place by the completion of the precessional cycle. They spoke from the ancient records and traditions, which it was their aim to present, and they all claim to give faithfully and truly what had thus been transmitted from the earliest times. Christians they were not, neither had they any liking for Christianity, and there is nothing whatever to induce suspicion that they did not report the facts as they found them.

These authorities ought to be sufficient upon the point; but it is not all to indicate that the constellation of the Southern Cross has come down “from the deep antiquity back of the Theban Tables.”

Calculating back on the precessional cycle for the position of this sign in the period when these signs were invented, we find that it was then conspicuously visible in all the North Temperate Zone at a considerable elevation, rendering it nearly as conspicuous as Orion now. It is made up of four of the most brilliant stars in the south polar heavens. Another so lustrous a group is not to be found in all that field of sky. The pre-eminent glory and remarkable lustre of this group, as then visible from the banks of the Euphrates and that region, put it out of the question that it could or would have been overlooked or left out in the making up of any complete- system, intended for any purpose, embracing all the most illustrious stars then and there visible. And yet it must have been thus overlooked and left out if we are to discredit the clear traditional record of its having been one of the original forty-eight constellations.

Standing as it then did at about sixteen degrees above the horizon at meridian, it gradually sunk toward the South Pole, until its highest star was last visible in the latitude of Jerusalem about the time the Saviour reached the lowest limit of His passion and yielded up His life upon the cross. It cannot be seen now except in latitudes far down to the southward. When Americus Vespucius was on his southern voyages, more than a hundred years before Royer’s chart was made, and his eyes beheld the brilliant stars of the Southern Cross, he congratulated himself on having rediscovered what had been for so many ages lost except to mythic fable, and boasted of having seen what had not been seen by civilized man till then except by the first of the human race. He it was who pointed cut in Dante’s Purgatorio that remarkable passage, which he claimed to be a description of the Southern Cross

“To the right I turned, and fixed my mind On the other pole attentive, when I saw Four stars ne’er seen before save by the ken Of our first parents. Heaven of their rays Seemed joyous. O thou northern site! bereft Indeed, and widowed, since of these deprived!” Cary’s Dante, Purg., canto i.

Ventura wonders at this description, particularly as the Southern Cross, to which the words and allusions so admirably fit, had not yet been rediscovered in Dante’s time. But Cary very properly suggests that “from long tradition the real truth might not have been unknown to our poet;” and adds that M. Artaud mentions a globe constructed by an Arabian in Egypt, with the date of the year 622 of the Hegira (corresponding to 1225 of our era), in which the Southern Cross is positively marked.” Von Humboldt thinks he also saw this constellation on Arabian globes. It certainly was not transferred from Royer’s chart to these globes, though Royer may have incorporated it from some Oriental source or tradition, confirmed as it had become in his day by various navigators and travellers who had looked upon it and found it to be a reality and not a mere myth.

Dupuis also gives it as an ancient tradition that this south polar constellation was lost, and that whensoever it would again be found it would be found to be in the form of a cross.

Albumazer, in his enumeration of the Decans, including the Southern Cross, says, “They were known all over the world,” and considered of sacred prophetic significance.

Humboldt refers to the fact that the ancient Persians celebrated a feast of the cross a few days before the sun entered Aries, which was the time of year when the Southern Cross was highest and most brilliant in their skies. He also speaks of the modern Persians, Kaswini, and Mohammedan astronomers as searching for crosses in the signs of the Dolphin and the Dragon (the Southern Cross having disappeared below the southern horizon), in order to account for this ancient sacred festival. Restore that constellation to its ancient position and all is adequately explained, as well as the uses made of the sign of the cross and its associations and significations in the mythologies of ancient Egypt, India, Mexico, and of other primitive peoples.

According to Albumazer, the Persians called this Decan of Libra by the name of Arbedi, which carries with it the sense of covering, and so would wonderfully well coincide with the purpose of the death upon the cross accomplished in the fulness of time by the Virgin-born Redeemer predicted and promised from the foundation of the world. From all this it is made amply evident that the author of this book does not at all “shift his ground” when taking in the Southern Cross as part of the grand evangelic record inscribed upon the heavens, and that he does not “interpolate” the primeval constellations, but gives them in their unmutilated integrity, when he gives the Southern Cross as one of them.

DR. SEYFFARTH

ONE writer speaks disparagingly of the author of this book for “taking Seyffarth as his guide in Egyptology.” The assertion, however, has not the slightest foundation in fact. Dr. Seyffarth’s astronomically — founded opinion on the age of the Zodiac (p. 22), and his curious presentation of the astronomical reference in the placement and order of the letters in the alphabet (p. 23), are referred to, but these particulars are no essential part of the argument. They are only coincident with, it. Dr. Seyffarth is not the basis or “guide” for any Egyptological facts or doctrines cited, or for anything else vitally entering into the presentations of this book, although he is no mean authority in matters of archaeological science and astronomical calculations. He has done more solid work perhaps than three-fourths of the men of whom more general notice is taken. Here is an extract from the London Times (Dec. 31, 1859) which may serve to show that he is no fool in these things:

“Professor Mitchell in his lectures on astronomy said that not long since he had met in the city of St. Louis, in Missouri, a man of great scientific attainments who for forty years had been engaged in Egypt deciphering the hieroglyphics of the ancients. This gentleman stated to him that he had lately unraveled the inscriptions on the coffin of a mummy now in the British Museum, and that by the aid of previous observation he had discovered the key to all the astronomical knowledge of the Egyptians. The Zodiac, with the exact position of the planets, was delineated on the coffin, and the date to which they pointed was the autumnal equinox in the year B.C. 1722, or nearly four thousand years ago. Professor Mitchell employed his assistants to ascertain the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the equinox of that year, 1722 B.C., without having communicated his object in so doing; the calculations were made, and, to his astonishment, on comparing the work with the statements of his friend already referred to, it was found that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C., the moon and planets had occupied the exact positions in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum.” This gentleman, so tested and complimented by Professor Mitchell, was none other than G. Seyffarth, Ph. D., D.D., quoted in this book, and so unwarrantably sneered at by the Boston Literary World. THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE AND WRITING

ANOTHER writer argues that the author of this book is quite innocent of “recent researches in philology and paleontology,” and shows “a very primitive faith” in coolly asserting that language and writing are as old as the human family. It is hard to tell what this assailant means, unless he be a believer in what Carlyle calls “the Gospel of dirt,” which considers man a sort of natural evolution from slime and slimy things through all stages of reptilian, animal, and savage life in successive unknown and unknowable ages. If so, the great difference between him and this book is, that it appeals to positive facts, records, and memorials (see Lect. xvi., on “Primeval Man”), whilst he rests on a conceit of agnosticism which has not one positive fact to which to appeal that can at all be admitted as legitimate proof of what he avers and accepts. The Bible and all records and traditions of primitive man attest the beginning of our race with Adam, and show that he was the most divinely favored and the most perfect, intelligent, and divine man that ever did live, save the second Adam, the glorious “Seed of the woman,” the great Redeemer of the world.

There is evidence that Adam spoke and was spoken to, and that things he said and that were said to him were preserved and made matters of transmission to subsequent generations. Then certainly there was language from the beginning, language fixed and comprehensible to others besides himself, the same as language now. To deny this is to contradict the whole record. He did not learn this language from parents or contemporaries, for they did not exist. It necessarily was the gift of God, immediate and direct. Fix it as we will, it was a miracle, the same as his own being. And if God gave Adam the use of spoken language, it was a mere fraction of the wonderful endowment to give also the idea and means of writing what he could speak and so well understood. The very supernatural enlightenment which gave him the intelligent use of language was itself sufficient to suggest to him the writing of it and the making of records of it — the representation of it to the eye as well as to the ear.

We know that Adam called things by names, and those names described the true nature and qualities of the things to which they were applied. What he called them they were and were called. Here was at once the highest science, and the fixed linguistic embodiment of that science. The heavenly bodies came before him the same as creatures and objects on the earth. He must therefore have named them also, and named them as truly as he named other things. Something of astronomy would thus necessarily be born of him. And the evidence now amounts next thing to demonstration that the Zodiac, the constellations, and the naming and designations of the principal objects displayed in the heavens date back to Adam’s time. In this we have recorded pictorial and vocable language, and connected with a perfection of astronomic science which remains as the true and indestructible basis of all that we possess in that department even to this present. How, then, can it be questioned that both language and writing existed in Adam’s time?

All “the recent researches in philology and paleontology” go to confirm the Bible doctrine on this subject; and that doctrine, as old John Weemes has drawn it out (in the second part of his Christian Synagogue, 1633), is, that “God made Adam to have perfect knowledge, both of God and His creatures;” “Plan in his first estate had the first principles created in him of all sciences and liberal arts, whereby he might understand the nature of the creatures here below, and so learn by them. As he was the father of all living, so he was the father of all science; for as he was able to beget children, so he was able to teach his posterity;” “He had the knowledge of all things that might be known;” “Adam knew as much as was in the creatures;” “Man in his innocent estate excelled all that ever were in the knowledge of natural things;” “He had the knowledge of all the liberal sciences;” “Adam knew all arts and sciences; therefore Philosophy is not an invention of the heathen, for it came first from Adam to the Patriarchs, and so hath continued still” (pp. 91-96).

All this necessarily involved the use of language — how to speak it, how to embody thought in it, how to represent it to the eye as well as to the ear, and hence how to make records of it. We know positively, from the inscriptions on stones, tiles, cylinders, and seals recently exhumed in Chaldea and Assyria, that alphabetic writing, engraving, and the preservation of knowledge in phonetic signs not only existed, but were in a high state of cultivation and common use, full two thousand years before Christ, and date back close to, if not within, the lifetime of Noah. Some of these exhumations are parts of dictionaries, grammars, and presentations with regard to the science of language, as well as accounts of the Creation, of the facts in the earliest history of the race, of the Zodiac and its accompanying circles of other constellations, of the Flood and the Babel disaster, of the forms of agreement and contract respecting lands and chattels, and the recording of them as well as elaborate poems. And with this demonstration before our eyes, and these records in tangible and readable form in our possession from such indisputable antiquity, there is no escape from the conclusion that alphabetic writing dates back to the lifetime of Noah, and that, existing and employed in his day, it must have come with him from the other side of the Flood. Noah lived and conversed with Methuselah, and Methuselah lived and conversed with Adam; so that there was but one lifetime between Noah and Adam. And if Noah used alphabetic writing, as we may be sure he did, then there is every reason to believe that he brought it from the time of Methuselah, who lived before the death of Adam, from whom all the race has most likely received it, as he, through his pre-eminent illumination, from God. The learned George Stanley Faber, in the second volume of his Origin of Pagan Idolatry, devotes a chapter (v.) to the many, widespread, and almost universal early traditions of certain sacred books and writings made by the antediluvian Patriarchs, and one way and another preserved during the Flood for the instruction of the descendants of those elected to survive it. He thinks these traditions certainly traceable to a period anterior to the building of the Tower of Babel, and that they attest a common belief at that time in the existence of writings as old as, or even older than, the Deluge, a belief which could hardly have found entrance into men’s minds if there had been no basis of truth at the bottom of it. There must have been writing then, or there could have been no thought of writing done before the Flood; and if there was writing then, there is every reason to conclude that there was writing from the beginning, and that it came to the first man from God among the rest of his equipments for the commencement of a high, civilized, and perfect human society and life. And with all this before us we ought to be prepared to have some respect to Dr. Seyffarth’s summation of the results of modern archaeological investigations when he says: “It is currently maintained that our alphabet was not invented until 1500 B.C. by the Phoenicians; now, it has been clearly proved that there have existed an alphabet and books since the time of Seth, more than a thousand years before the Deluge; that all the alphabets in the world had their origin from one and the same primitive alphabet; that our alphabet was transmitted through Noah, and so arranged as to express the places of the seven planets in the Zodiac at the termination of the Deluge. — According to a very generally received opinion, the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or the cuneiform characters of the Persians, Medes, and Assyrians were the first of all written characters; now it is ascertained that all these and similar written characters have the Noachian alphabet of twenty-five letters for their basis. Hitherto a great number of Indo- maniacs have maintained that the original language had been the Indo-Germanic, a sort of Sanskrit; now it is known that all the languages in the world are derived from the old Hebrew original language, as the very names of the antediluvian letters among the different nations, and the language of the ancient Egyptians, prove. According to Letronne and others, our Zodiac had its origin only five hundred years before Christ; now we know that it is as old as the human race, and that it passed through Noah to all the nations of his posterity. Hitherto it has been supposed that the earliest and innumerable astronomical observations of the ancient Egyptians, referred to already by Diodorus Siculus, had utterly disappeared from the sphere of human knowledge; now we know that several hundreds of them, extending down to the Roman emperors and back to Menes, 2781 B.C., have been preserved upon the Pyramids, in temples, on sarcophagi, stellae, and papyrus scrolls.” (See his Summary of Recent Discoveries, New York, 1857.)

It may also be added, in passing, that an enormous ship, greater than the Great Eastern, was built before the Flood. It was one hundred and twenty years in building. It served to weather the turbulence of an ocean world. But how was it possible practically to carry out the work of constructing such a vessel without the use of a fixed system of measures, or without the use of figures, drawings, and an established and comprehensible order of notations which the workmen could read and refer to? Will those who deny the existence of writing before the Flood give the solution of the problem? The successful building of such a structure is itself a demonstration that Noah could write and that the antediluvians could read.

SCIENCE AND THE CONSTELLATIONS THE question has been put: “If this theory be true, how is it that the inspiration does not fit in with the Copernican centre instead of the Ptolemaic?” It has also been objected that “the indisputable facts of science are obstacles to such a belief as that of Dr. S. — obstacles which he has scarcely made an attempt to overcome, and to which he is very likely indifferent.”

It may be laid down as an ethical axiom that no man has the right to be indifferent to “indisputable facts,” whether of science, religion, or the common affairs of life. Nor is the author of this book indifferent to any “facts of science” having in them the element of settled truth. But no such facts are known to him to impose a bar to the acceptance of his explanation of the origin and meaning of the ancient constellations, or to negative the astronomy on which they are based. Any objection to be raised on the ground here indicated can be raised with equal force against the Scriptures and against the popular almanacs which modern science itself puts forth for the use of mankind, and which are accepted on all hands. The astronomy of the ancient constellations is all embraced in the astronomy of today, and belongs to the fixed verities of that noble science. There is nothing in the astronomy of the primitive constellations at variance with the truths of the so-called Copernican system, or else it would be impossible for the Copernicans of today to accept and embody it in their science, as they all do. Neither is there anything in this primitive record to identify it with the elaborate and exploded errors of the Ptolemaic system, or any other which failed to accept the present doctrine of centres of gravitation and that the earth and planets revolve around our sun. And if it notes the sun as one of the exalted travellers that seem to move across the face of the sky, and to connect notations with these apparent motions, it is in full accord with universal observation, with all the almanacs, with the diction of the Bible, and with the ordinary statements of astronomers themselves. We all accept the same in our common language every day. Although we know the scientific facts, that does not alter the appearances to the eye or our way of speaking, or furnish a basis for any better popular representation. Only for the sake of the manifestation to the eye of the beholder is the sun thus numbered with the other travellers in the pictorial readings attached to the heavenly orbs. And it is the only way, indeed, in which the sun can be used for such a purpose, no matter what the scientific facts may be.

Neither does such a notation of the apparent motions of the sun to an earthly beholder argue ignorance of the real astronomical truth. It is a great error to suppose that no true knowledge of the real structure of the solar system or of the universe existed before the time of Pythagoras, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. On this point hear the testimony of Sir William Drummond.

“The fact is certain,” says he, “that at some remote period there were mathematicians and astronomers who knew that the sun is in the centre of our system, and that the earth, itself a planet, revolves around the central fire; who attempted to calculate the return of comets; who indicated the number of solar years contained in the great cycle by multiplying a period (variously called in the Zend, the Sanskrit, and the Chinese, Ven, Van, and Phen) of one hundred and thirty years by another of one hundred and forty years; who took the parallax of the sun by a method superior to that of Hipparchus, and little inferior to our own; who fixed with considerable accuracy the distance of the moon and the circumference of the earth; who held that the face of the moon was diversified with vales and mountains; who asserted that there was a planet beyond Saturn; who reckoned the planets to be sixteen in number; and who calculated the length of the tropical year within three minutes of the true time. All the authorities for these assertions are stated in my Essay on the Science of the Egyptians and Chaldeans.

“There is nothing, then, improbable in the report of Josephus when he says that the descendants of Seth were skilful astronomers, and seems to ascribe to them the invention of the cycle of which Cassini has developed the excellence. The Jews, Assyrians, and Arabians have abundance of traditions concerning the antediluvian astronomical knowledge, especially of Adam, Seth, Enoch, and Ham. It was asserted in the book of Enoch, as Origen tells us, that the constellations in the time of that patriarch were already named and divided. The Arabians say that they have named Enoch Edits, on account of his learning.

“That the invention of the Zodiac ought to be attributed to the antediluvians may appear to some a rash and idle conjecture; but I shall not renounce this conjecture merely because it may startle those who never thought of it before. Tradition has told several of the Oriental nations that the antediluvians were eminently skilled in astronomy; and tradition has generally some foundation in truth. When Bailly undertook to write the history of astronomy, he found at the outset certain fragments of science which proved to him the existence of a system in some remote age and anterior to all regular history, if we accept the fragment in the book of Genesis. As all the emblems in the similarly divided Zodiacs of India, Chaldea, Bactria, Arabia, Egypt are nearly alike, it would seem they had followed some common model; and to whom should we attribute its invention but to their common ancestors?” (On the Zodiacs of Esne and Denderah, pp. 38-40.)

Drummond was once a skeptic. In his earlier work, Oedipus Judaicus, he treated the Scriptures with much disrespect. But when he came to search into the originals of human history and science, and to investigate the remains of early antiquity, he came to the convictions above expressed, and in the essay quoted gives full confidence to the biblical records. And the conclusions to which he came respecting the mathematical and astronomical knowledge of the ancients have since his time received abundant confirmation.

Goodsir, in his Homilies on Ethnic Inspiration, takes the ground that, as it is unnatural and rash to suppose that God never taught any of the human race, nor led any of them to see, during those early generations, the scientific truth respecting these wondrous creations of His own that shine in the heavens, so there is solid reason to believe that some were so led, and were taught supra-scientifically those things, and that there is proof of it now which all who are willing to investigate will find as clear as the noonday sun.

One part of this proof he finds in the great Pyramid of Egypt, the first, greatest, most perfect, and most scientific building now upon the face of the earth, and constructed certainly more than four thousand years ago. By the scientific labors of many within the last twenty years it has been ascertained and clearly demonstrated that there is in the measures, pointings, form, and features of that great primeval monument, whosoever built it and for whatever purpose, a massive and indestructible stone memorial of a complete and faultless knowledge of the structure of the universe, of the exact and physical sciences both terrestrial and cosmical, a determination of a perfect system of weights and measures scientifically conformed to what the Opifex Mundi fixed in things when he fetched a compass round the worlds and weighed the hills in balances. Scientific investigation on the part of different men competent to the task have made it clear that there is built into that edifice a record of the condition of the starry heavens at the time of its erection which gives its age by astronomy in full accord with all external indications and evidences; also a record of the size, form, and weight of the earth and its relation to and distance from the sun, the true length of the solar year, the number of years in the precessional cycle, the average temperature of the habitable world, together with multitudinous cosmical facts and mathematical formulas and proportions no better told by any science now existing among men. Nay, more, says this author: “The unquestionable and remarkable coincidences between the structure of the Great Pyramid and astronomical facts find an exact place amongst, and give consistency and form to, what may be called a collection of astronomical and physical traditions, the whole of which, in the result, corroborates the standard chronology and history of the race.” (See my book, A Miracle in Stone.) The demonstration is thus before our eyes, open to every one’s examination, that there was a true scientific astronomy anterior to Herodotus, the father of modern history, and before Hesiod and Homer, which took the Zodiac and the constellations as an essential part of it, whose teachers and professors were no more Ptolemists or Jasperites than the Newtons and Herschels of modern times, and who possessed, and could architecturally embody for the reading of the long after ages, as pure and sound a knowledge of the heavens as any who have lived since our astronomy has cast off the swaddling clothes of its babyhood. The evidence is here that those who invented the constellations and made the most of them, and noted the apparent motions of the sun with other travellers of the circuit of the heavens, were as good Copernicans as Copernicus himself thousands of years before Copernicus was born, and who were favored with a vastly broader and deeper insight into the economy of the universe than Copernicus ever dreamed of. No power or intelligence of man to-day can convict them of ignorance in any point as to any “indisputable facts of science.” “Their work has come down to us through long intervening ages of darkness, superstition, and apostasy, so superior to the after intelligence of the race that it was no longer in human power so much as to understand it until the, advances made within the last few centuries. And just in proportion as solid science grows and comes to fixed results do these primeval lights loom up as the very kings of mind, whose sublime comprehension of Jehovah’s works we are only beginning to approximate. In five thousand years the world has not been able to go beyond them in these matters. They knew “the indisputable facts of science,” and with that science and to that science they framed the constellations, whatever else they meant to record by the names, figures, and explanations which they attached to them as they present themselves to human observation. THE BIBLE AND THE CONSTELLATIONS.

ONE reviewer just quoted makes the further point: “If these constellations, in their names, etc., with all their mythological associations, mean what the author claims for them, how strange that we have no intimation of it in the Scriptures!” This exclamation is meant to indicate an argument, but it is an argument which makes unwarranted assumptions, and rests on a non sequitur for its conclusions. If there were no mention at all of the constellations in the Bible, that silence might perhaps still admit of explanation, and, whether explainable or not, it still would not follow that inspired men had nothing to do with them. But it is not true that the Scriptures are totally silent touching the existence, origin, intent, and meaning of the constellations, as will presently be shown, although direct biblical allusions to the subject are not numerous.

Approaching the matter solely from the side of what we rest on as the record of all that God has revealed concerning His plan of grace, it is natural to feel a little surprise that the Bible does not more appeal to and rest on the older record of the same things in the constellations. But a closer contemplation of the peculiarities of the case shows that we should not be thus surprised even though the theory of this book be thoroughly and unmistakably true.

It must be remembered that all the books of the Bible, with the exception of the book of Job, were primarily and most immediately intended for the children of Israel, as the giving of these books was exclusively to and through that people. The entire calling and mission of Israel, its peculiar and emphatic segregation from all other peoples, and its special training and development for a particular purpose in the divine plan, thus necessarily come into the question and furnish an important element in reaching a correct answer to it. Whatever might tend to obscure or diminish the broad lines of separation between Israel and the other portions of the human family, was against the call of Abraham, and hence was to be avoided by all true Israelites. In every possible direction we observe the utmost precaution to keep Israel in complete isolation. Not only in religious observances, but in the entire law, ceremonial, civil, domestic, even to the minute details of dietetics, there was a studied fencing off of this people from all other inhabitants of the earth. The observance of these laws, the worth of which in some instances cannot otherwise be traced, was the test of their loyalty. Nothing in common with the rest of the world was regarded with favor or could lawfully be.

Now, it is a matter of scriptural record that there was a primeval revelation of the Gospel made to man immediately after the Fall. It must have been a very clear and full revelation, or it could not have sufficed for the comfort and saving of the early patriarchs. The New Testament is specific in telling us that there were inspired prophets from the very foundation of the world, and that what they taught and prophesied was precisely that which has been or is yet to be fulfilled in and through Christ. (See Luk 1:69-70 and Acts 3:21.) This Gospel necessarily went abroad with the multiplication of the race, first through all the antediluvian generations, and then through and from Noah to all his descendants. Above all, if the first prophets — Adam, Seth, and Enoch — did connect the truths of the primitive revelation with astronomy, and hung the full record of the Gospel promise upon the stars by means of the pictures and names in the constellations, it necessarily was the common possession of all the early nations, as we find from the traditions and records which have been preserved that the constellations were. There was then what we might call the primitive Ethnic Revelation — the original divine Gospel — whose line went out through all the earth for all people alike.

Through the working of the depravity, perverseness, and consequent deterioration of the descendants of Noah that Gospel became greatly obscured and lost. Even the records and illustrations of it which the ancient prophets had inscribed upon the sky, through the evil genius of Nimrod and the seductions of the great enemy of souls had become almost universally prostituted to idolatry and degrading superstition, just as the brazen serpent, which Moses made by divine direction, was prostituted among the Israelites. Sabaism, the worship of the figures of the constellations, and the turning of these celestial signs into instruments of fortune-telling and an impious astrology, had arisen upon what holy hands by sacred impulse had connected with the stars as God’s promise of salvation through the Seed of the woman. The very sacredness of the thing was a power to help on the accursed perversion. And thus in the wisdom and goodness of God it was ordained to select and train a separate and distinct people to be the depository of a re-enunciation of His plan and promises of grace, and out of whom to develop the chosen Servant of God who was to bring the great salvation. That people was Israel, and that Servant, the inmost centre of Israel, was the Christ. In this new start of the kingdom of God it was needless — and would have really been a weakening of the whole procedure — to appeal to the old ethnic records which had become so abused and perverted to that very state of things which the new start was meant to offset and remedy. It was enough to take the old promise as it had been given at the first, to recognize the prophetic character of those to whom it was given, and who found in it their hope and their salvation, and to reannounce and re-embody that promise in special forms among a people chosen and separated for the purpose. And just this is what was done, in which there was no occasion whatever to make appeal to what the heathen had, and had so terribly perverted, or to mix up the common possession of the world with the training of a people called to be separate in all things from all others. As we cannot conceive of Christ enforcing His teachings by appealing to the sayings and opinions of heathen sages who lived before Him, however true they may have been, and as we would feel it strange if Moses had sought to intensify faith in his laws and precepts by showing that they accorded with “all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” so it would have been incongruous in the Israelitish prophets to appeal to the Chaldean astronomers to supplement or support their predictions of “the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow,” however truly the same things may have been set forth in the constellations. The Jewish people were, moreover, so prone to take up with the worst idolatries of the nations around them, even with all the precautions and stern laws to prevent it, that it would have increased and facilitated that proclivity had their sacred prophet mixed up with their instructions any prominent references to what was so deeply interwoven with all the living idolatries of the time. For this reason it perhaps was that, in the Jewish Zodiac, all the figures were expunged and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet substituted in their place. It was to guard against ethnic idolatries, all of which were more or less connected with the constellations, which the nations had utterly perverted from their true meaning and intent. The whole condition of things in the general world, and the whole intention with regard to the Israelitish people, thus come in to show that, however truly the Gospel may have been set forth in the original invention of the constellations, it would have been a hazardous and very unfitting thing for the Hebrew prophets to make their appeal to the ancient astronomy, which, by the depravities of men, had become the chief foundation of the idolatries, false worships, auguries, and astrologies then so dreadfully debasing the entire world around them. So far, then, as respects the sacred books issuing from the Jewish prophets, there is every reason to expect little or no reference to the ethnic records of the primeval revelations. The simple absence of any condemnation of the constellations, then held sacred by all the nations, and so much perverted by them, is more marvellous than the absence of appeals to them as records of the original promise of a Redeemer to come. It argues that in the mind of the Spirit there was still some reserve with regard to that system as not a thing of mere human invention or to be denounced with heathenism in general. The particular purpose of the call of Israel had no special use for that system, and too much regard to it would have so militated against that calling that the wonder is that the Jewish prophets never once assail it or speak one word against it, even while burdened with messages of the wrath and punishment of God upon heathenism and idolatry. Had that system been nothing but an outgrowth of the wild imaginations of man, incorporated as it was with the false religions then dominating over all the world, it is next thing to impossible to explain why it was not pre-eminently singled out for prophetic malediction; and any recognition of it at all in the prophetic books, as connected with a proper understanding of things, is a powerful consideration in favor of its prophetic origin and sacred intent. THE BOOK OF JOB THE book of Job, however, did not originate with the Jewish prophets. It was written before Israel’s time and outside of the Israelitish race. Though by inspiration adopted into the list of the Hebrew canon prepared by the special inspiration of God, it belongs to the ethnic records of the primeval revelations, and embodies the sacred light and truth of those revelations as received, held, and exemplified in its time by the purest and truest of the ethnic believers. It is a sort of encyclopedia of the faith, life, thinking, worship, and wisdom of God’s people before Moses and outside of Israel. As an ethnic book divinely inspired we would expect to find in it references to whatever belonged to the ethnic records and teachings respecting the true God and the Redeemer that was promised, including the system of the constellations, if indeed that system was of primitive prophetic origin and meant to record and illustrate the Gospel as first revealed to man. In such a book, from such a source and age, and with such an object, we would certainly expect to find allusions to these frescoes on the heavens if they be what is affirmed of them in these Lectures. Nay, the absence of such allusions here would necessarily argue either that no such system as that of the constellations existed in Job’s time, or that, if existing, it had nothing whatever to do with the revelations and promises of God. In this particular instance the argument suggested by our reviewer would apply in full force, and would be next thing to conclusive against our theory, if there were no intimations in the book of Job as to its reality. But what we hardly should expect in the Jewish prophets we do find here in this exhibit of the pure ethnic faith and piety. At least five of the principal constellations are referred to by name in the book of Job:

1. “Arcturus” (Aish), which nearly all the best commentators, Jewish and Christian, take as denoting the north polar constellation now known under the name of Ursa Major, the Great Bear (Job 9:9 and Job 38:32).

2. “Orion,” so named by Homer hundreds of years before the time of the earliest Greek philosophers, and called Kesil in Job 9:9 and Job 38:31.

3. Taurus, by its centre and chief mark, “The Pleiades” (Kimah), the Seven Stars (Job 9:9 and Job 38:32). The Arabians, according to Hafiz, considered the Pleiades the seal or seat of immortality. Maedler, in modern times, from observations of the motions of the so-called “fixed stars,” has pointed out the centre of this group (Alcyone) as the great central Sun of the universe, around which all others revolve. In all the ancient myths and traditions this group of stars plays a most conspicuous part, and is ever associated with benignity and blessedness. And “the sweet influences of Pleiades” are here referred to after the same manner, as perhaps embodying the universal centre of gravitation as well as ushering in the genial spring.

4. Scorpio, the constellation directly opposite to Taurus, described in the English version as “the chambers of the south (Job 9:9). That the reference is to some asterism of the same sort as the three with which it is named it would be arbitrary to doubt. Some think it refers to such of the constellations as were hidden below the southern horizon — in the time and latitude of Job; but the definiteness in the three preceding references would seem to require that we should take this as equally definite. The mention of a house to the south, over against the Pleiades, would call for a particular Zodiacal constellation, which would necessarily be Scorpio. Aben Ezra, E. S. Poole, and others translate it Scorpio, and so Dr. Hales, Dr. Brinkley, President Gouget, and M. Ducoutant take it, and calculate the age in which Job lived from these notations.

5. Hydra, “The Fleeing Serpent” (Job 26:13). The best interpreters agree that the reference here must be to one of the constellations; and of all the stellar serpents there is no one to answer the description so completely as the vast constellation of Hydra.

This gives two signs of the Zodiac and three other constellations. But the Zodiac as a whole, with its succession of signs and seasons, is recognized and spoken of: “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?” — in the margin, “The Twelve Signs.” Rosenmuller, Herder, Umbreit, Gesenius, and many others, with the Jewish authors at their head, understood by it nothing more nor less than signa celestia, the celestial signs — “The Zodiac.” The word means the separated, set apart, divided, apportioned, as the spaces given to the twelve signs in the circle of the Zodiac, and which mark the successive seasons in the year. Selden informs us that in later Jewish writings Mazzaloth are the signs of the Zodiac, and the singular, Mazzal, is used to denote signs singly. Mazzaloth is the same in later Hebrew that Mazzaroth was in the more ancient forms. Everything about it goes to confirm the rendering in the margin of our English Bibles, and to prove that the Zodiac with its twelve distinct spaces, signs, or houses, bringing forward the seasons in their succession, is what is meant. And with the twelve signs of the Zodiac recognized, and three of the Decans besides, the whole system of the constellations is necessarily implied and included, while the entire showing is directly associated with the work, majesty, and glory of God.

Nay, the book speaks of a general garnishing of the heavens, which would imply that there was a dividing off of the whole face of the sky into groups and pictures, just as we find in the ancient constellations (see Job 26:13).

Barnes finds in this garnishing the “pictures of the heavens, with a somewhat fanciful resemblance to animals, etc., one of the most early devices of astronomy still continued as aiding in the description of the heavenly bodies.” Nor is there any adequate reason for taking the reference in any other way.

Thus it clearly appears that the constellations were known and determined in Job’s time, and that they were well understood and much in view in the sacred contemplations of the believers of that age. But the record goes still farther. This garnishing of the heavens, this grouping of the stars in pictures on the face of the sky, is here affirmed and claimed to be the work of God Himself by His Spirit. The declaration concerning the Lord of Creation and Providence is: “By His Spirit He garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the crooked [fleeing] serpent” (Job 26:13). There is here the ancient poetic parallelism, giving the general statement in one line and the repetition of the same in particular in the next. The intimation is not that the forming of the fleeing serpent — Hydra — is a thing separate and distinct from the garnishing of the heavens, but that it is a specimen of that sacred garnishing, that we may determine and know from a specific part what is the true character of the whole. The subject is the formation and arrangement of the figures of the constellations; and that work is unqualifiedly ascribed to the Spirit of God, to prophetic inspiration — the same as the biblical records are ascribed to the Holy Ghost. This gives us scriptural evidence that the most approved and pious of the old ethnic believers considered and interpreted the constellations as from God, and as containing a sacred record of great consequence and worth in connection with their faith and hopes. And it is thus more than likely that from the stars, as much as from any other records and traditions, Job derived that triumphant evangelic confidence: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me” (Job 19:25-27).

Now, this book of Job, with these presentations in it, has become a part of the canon of Holy Scripture, certainly not without inspired sanction. The same Spirit which moved the Hebrew prophets has thus recognized the ethnic inspiration, and hence also these claims with reference to the constellations. It is therefore a false assumption to say that “we have no intimation in the Scriptures” of what is sought to be shown in these Lectures. THE HEBREW PROPHETS But even the Hebrew prophets, being moved by the same Spirit which was in the ancient ethnic believers, have not been totally silent touching these uses of the stars. The book of Genesis is largely made up of early records held to be sacred, distorted fragments of which have come down through all the more ancient peoples; and the quotations of those records in the foundation-book of the volume of inspiration appear in the Bible with precisely the same allusions which attend them everywhere else.

Thus, in the very first chapter of Genesis, in the account of the creation of the celestial luminaries, there is a distinct statement of their appointment and uses, including and specifying one which can in no possible way be satisfactorily and adequately explained in fidelity to the divine Word without admitting what we claim for the ancient system of the constellations. It is there written that “God said, Let there be lights [luminaries, light-bearers] in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for SIGNS, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: …and it was so” (Genesis 1:14-15)

Whatever this being “for signs” may mean, it is here affirmed to be one of the intended uses of the heavenly luminaries. It is also included in the statement that God is the author of that use, that it was instituted and established by Himself, and, further still, that said use was a matter of fact at the time this record was made; for it is added, “It was so.” It has been one of the standing perplexities of commentators to explain what this making of the heavenly orbs into “signs” can mean, apart from “seasons,” “days,” and “years” which depend upon their natural revolutions. Admit into the case the divine formation of the primeval constellations and the whole statement takes on a grand meaning, worthy of so solemn and magnificent a record; but let that out, and our expositors are all at sea, without chart or compass, and without the possibility of suggesting anything worthy of the record or of themselves. In other words, they can do nothing with it deserving of serious respect, and the whole thing in this grandest of all narrations, in which every word is overflowing with the profoundest meaning, evaporates into a bundle of puerile, contradictory and unverifiable human conceits.

There is in the sacred statement an element of historic fact overlooked by our commentators, but presenting some clue to the real meaning. It is affirmed that at the time of the making of the statement the use of the heavenly orbs as “signs” existed. The record is plain: God said, “Let them be for signs.... AND IT WAS So.” The record itself dates far back beyond Moses, for the same, in almost the same terms, has been found in the cuneiform writings made more than two thousand years before Christ. The same is also found in some sort traditionally preserved among all the primitive peoples, who must have derived it from one common source antedating the Babel dispersion. It certainly belongs to the time of Noah, who perhaps was the prophet of God who originally wrote it, and from whom the world after him received it. Was there anything, then, in Noah’s time of such note and sacredness as to answer to the statement of the actual use of the heavenly bodies as a system of “signs”! Unquestionably there was, and that system was the system of the constellations. This is not a matter of guess or inference, but a matter of positive record dating back to Noah’s time, and now brought to light in the exhumed remains of the ancient Assyrians and Chaldeans. Nay, among those remains there has been recovered a written account of the Creation answering in every vital particular to the account in Genesis, and furnishing what may be regarded as the primeval commentary on the biblical account of the creation of the heavenly orbs, especially with reference to the particular statement touching their divine appointment as “signs.” A translation of this tablet-record is given at page 407, as furnished by Smith and Sayce, who add that it tells about “the constellations of the stars, the signs of the Zodiac,” etc., as God’s creation, and that it occupies the place of, and is equivalent to, the phrase in Genesis which speaks of the forming of the heavenly orbs into “signs.” Even the whole system of the constellations is given in detail in these tablets, and ascribed to the great God as His work at the beginning. This is the oldest paraphrase of the words in Genesis known to man. It was made more than four thousand years ago. It agrees with all the old ethnic traditions and beliefs. There is nothing whatever to show that it is at all at variance with the truth. It harmonizes with the literal sense of the words of the Bible, and corresponds with every point they contain or suggest. And it must needs go very far to fix the meaning of the sacred record on this particular item to be, that in appointing the celestial orbs “for signs” God instituted a system of symbols and indications by means of them from which mankind might ever read the revelations of special divine importance, and that this system is nothing more nor less than the system of the constellations, everywhere and always called “the signs.”

Here, then, among the fundamental presentations of the Scriptures, we have not only “intimation,” but something of a positive assertion, that the astronomic system of the constellations is of divine origin, and that it has in it the record of divine revelations. Delitzsch agrees that the statement, in part at least, refers to the astronomic signs, the constellations. A less direct, but an equally striking, indication of the same thing appears in the vast range of vivid coincidences between the imagery, symbolism, and general diction, the doctrines and the prophecies, of Holy Scripture, and the pictures, names, and images which appear in these ancient “signs.” So largely and so completely does the one answer to the other that infidels have seized upon this correspondence to prove that Christianity has been derived from the myths of the constellations. No one can look at the texts cited in this book in connection with the constellations, one after the other, without being struck with the marvellous analogy throughout. But how could all this have been, or hold good through so vast a system, except on the admission that the same God who has given us the Gospel was equally concerned in the making of the constellations as a grand prophetic record of what, in the fulness of time, should be accomplished by “the Seed of the woman”?

See also what is said (p. 12-13) on the nineteenth Psalm, which certainly cannot be fairly gone through with without finding intimation of a sacred voice and record on the starry heavens beyond what the celestial orbs can naturally tell apart from the system of the constellations. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND even in the histories of the New Testament St. Matthew narrates a case of practical demonstration that the sublimest elements of the Gospel revelation could be learned from the stars, and were so learned by the Wise Men in such clear and convincing perfection that they undertook a long and expensive journey to pay their adoration to the newborn King of grace and salvation. Commentators talk of the diffusion of what was written by the Hebrew prophets, and have racked their brains and exhausted their erudition to find out possibilities as to how these Wise Men came to the amount of evangelic knowledge and faith by which they were moved; but it is, after all, nothing but guesswork, and an obtrusion into the record of what it does not at all embrace or warrant. The account is that the Magi came to Jerusalem led by astronomical indications; hence the suggestion of anything else is impertinent and contrary to the inspired statements. It is possible that they may have had some extraordinary illuminations of the Spirit of God in connection with the matter of their coming, as they had in connection with the way of their returning; but the record says that they had their convictions and guidance from the stars, and we have no right to interpolate anything else. And if the stars could so evangelically enlighten and lead them as to the coming of the Saviour, His birth as a child, His worshipful nature, the time and neighborhood of His advent, and His claims upon the faith of mankind, then the stars must have upon them an evangelic record capable of being read, and of conducting men to faith in Him who was born at Bethlehem, crucified on Calvary, and ordained Captain of salvation to bring many sons to glory. How the stars were made to fulfil such an office is shown in detail in this book; and that they actually did it in the case of these Magi we have from the pen of an inspired apostle of the Church.

There is, then, no such silence of the Scriptures touching the origin and meaning of the constellations, or of the connection of evangelic prophecy with astronomy, as to make us wonder at the doctrine set forth in this book or to raise a reasonable suspicion against its truth. THE STAR BIBLE

IT is a matter of interest to one who has entered an uncultivated field, and who has come to important conclusions which some, for want of better information, regard as wild and foolish, to find serious thinkers entering the same field and boldly enunciating similar convictions. No man can advance far in the study of the mystery of the constellations without being convinced of the richness and importance of the subject, or without a feeling of wonder that so little attention has been bestowed upon it. But antiquarian research has been showing such brilliant results within the present generation that it is impossible for this territory to be left uncultivated much longer. To show that it is worthy of exploration, and to enlist Christian thinking and scholarship in the grand possibilities which its proper investigation is likely to develop, have been among the chief objects of this book; and the author has been gratified to find that a venerable German pastor was engaged in a like effort contemporaneously with himself.

There has very recently come to hand a volume, published in 1,983, entitled The Chaldean Star-Bible; or, The Starry Heavens according to the Seven Sages of the Mithras-Mysteries in Seven Spheres as the Way to Completion for Time and Eternity, again after centuries presented anew, by Rev. George Karch. [DIE CHALDAISCHE STERNENBIBEL, oder der Sternenhimmel nach den 7 Stufen der Mithras-Mysterien in 7 Gebieten als der Weg zur Vollendung fur Zeit and Ewigkeit wieder nach Jahrhunderten neu dargastellt, von George Karch, Pfarrer. Wurzburg, Druch von J. B. Fleischmann, 1883.] The method adopted by this writer differs materially from that pursued in The Gospel in the Stars, and is quite too indirect to produce satisfactory results; but it nevertheless develops much the same conclusions. Believing that the constellations stand in vital connection with the primitive divine revelations, and with the purest worship of the ancients anterior to and outside of Israel, he endeavors to trace some of the vital elements of the old Iranian or Mithras religion among various ancient peoples — Aryans, Bactrians, Indians, Medes, Persians, Magi, etc. — and deduces from the connection between this ancient cult and the stellar signs many elements of the true biblical faith and hope of the ethnic believers. In this line of inquiry he would naturally reach general conclusions quite agreeing with those more directly developed in The Gospel in the Stars. The book embraces forty-five pages of introduction and two hundred and twenty-six additional pages of particular discussion, to which is appended a chart of the constellations. There is some lack of thorough elaboration in the way the argument is conducted, but there is in it a grasping after the truth, with serious conviction that there is something in this ancient system of star-pictures of infinitely more significance and worth than the modern world has even remotely suspected. To show the beliefs and conclusions of this writer, and how they conform to and sustain what we have endeavored to set forth, a few extracts from different parts of the book are here translated, which will be of interest to those who are disposed to entertain the subject “Closer examination with regard to the constellations which make up the Ecliptic,” he says, “gives assurance that there must be an intentional symbolization in the selection and combination of the ancient pictures of the star-groups. The very fact that many of these figures are so remotely and vaguely traceable in the stars themselves bespeaks design in the choice and formation of them, especially when we take in the pious fancy of the old Orientals and their fondness for emblems and likenesses. I am persuaded that the starry heavens, according to the religious contemplations of the oldest astronomers, present a picture-gallery of doctrinal and rich spiritual significance.”

“Albertus Magnus has written (De Universo) that all the mysteries of the Incarnation, from the Conception on to the Ascension into heaven, are shown us on the face of the sky and are signified by the stars.”

“Not from the ruins of Nineveh, not from the Rosetta Stone! but there in the heights above us — there where the holy Magi beheld the Saviour’s star — we find the primordial record and testimony of the way of God to us, and of our way back to God. It is there written on the heavens, to be seen and read of all men.”

“The old Persian sphere, as Aben Ezra found it, and as may be read, according to Scaliger, in Petavius and Dupuis, has for each of the Twelve Signs three separate figures or constellations-three Decans. The foundation (fundamental idea) of these three Decans is given in general in the regular zodiacal sign to which they belong; but they give that general idea in different and special pictures.” “These old forty-eight constellations all belong to one great hieroglyphical system, and all cohere as one original casting. They have an enigmatic meaning. They are sacred monuments. Rightly understood, they are a kind of Holy Scriptures in symbolic form, given as a witness to all nations, to aid and enlighten reason and to testify of higher divine truth.”

“As these star-pictures have a symbolic meaning of their own, it also follows that many of the heathen myths will be found to correspond with them, along with other analogies. The classic myths incontrovertibly connect with these appearances and movements of the heavenly bodies, and, certainly in their most inward meaning, stand related to these star signs and what they were meant to express, since they are the same, with only a few local modifications, among all peoples.”

“Likewise, the alphabet of the Holy Scriptures embodies a record and expression of the glory of God, the same as it is written on the heavens.” This author speaks of himself as advanced in life, and says that, being relieved from other engagements, he considered it most fitting for him to employ his declining years in endeavoring to become better acquainted with the heavens, and to do some work toward a better understanding of the symbolism portrayed in the ancient system of the constellations — “the beauty of heaven, the glory of the stars, an ornament giving light in the highest place of the Lord” (Ecclesiasticus 43:9).

Besides the ordinary indication of subjects, this Index contains a Glossary of the names which occur in the constellations and by which particular stars were anciently called. The meanings of these names are largely determined by the ancient Hebrew or Noetic roots from which they are formed, and the significations are given according to the best lexicons and philological authorities.