from the heavens, at least in
our great towns and cities. These offer many conveniences, but they
remove us from not a few of the beauties which nature has to offer. And
so it comes that, taking the population as a whole, there is perhaps
less practically known of astronomy in England to-day than there was
under the Plantagenets. A very few are astronomers, professional and
amateur, and know immeasurably more than our forefathers did of the
science. Then there is a large, more or less cultured, public that know
something of the science at secondhand through books. But the great
majority know nothing of the heavenly bodies except of the sun; they
need to "look in the almanack" to "find out moonshine." But to simpler
peoples the difference between the "light half" of the month, from the
first quarter to the last quarter through the full of the moon, and the
"dark half," from the last quarter to the first quarter, through new, is
very great. Indian astronomers so divide the month to this day.

In one passage of Holy Scripture, the description which Isaiah gives of
the "City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel," there is a
reference to the dark part of the month.

"Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon
(literally "month") withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be
thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended."

The parallelism expressed in the verse lies between the darkness of
night whilst the sun is below the horizon, and the special darkness of
those nights when the moon, being near conjunction with the sun, is
absent from the sky during the greater part or whole of the night hours,
and has but a small portion of her disc illuminated. Just as half the
day is dark because the sun has withdrawn itself, so half the nights of
the month are dark because the moon has withdrawn itself.

The Hebrew month was a natural one, determined by actual observation of
the new moon. They used three words in their references to the moon, the
first of which, _chodesh_, derived from a root meaning "to be new,"
indicates the fact that the new moon, as actually observed, governed
their calendar. The word therefore signifies the new moon--the day of
the new moon: and thus a month; that is, a lunar month beginning at the
new moon. This is the Hebrew word used in the Deluge story in the
seventh chapter of Genesis; and in all references to feasts depending on
a day in the month