THE ASTRONOMY OF THE BIBLE

BOOK I

THE HEAVENLY BODIES

CHAPTER I

THE HEBREW AND ASTRONOMY

Modern astronomy began a little more than three centuries ago with the
invention of the telescope and Galileo's application of it to the study
of the heavenly bodies. This new instrument at once revealed to him the
mountains on the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and the spots on the
sun, and brought the celestial bodies under observation in a way that no
one had dreamed of before. In our view to-day, the planets of the solar
system are worlds; we can examine their surfaces and judge wherein they
resemble or differ from our earth. To the ancients they were but points
of light; to us they are vast bodies that we have been able to measure
and to weigh. The telescope has enabled us also to penetrate deep into
outer space; we have learnt of other systems besides that of our own sun
and its dependents, many of them far more complex; clusters and clouds
of stars have been revealed to us, and mysterious nebulae, which suggest
by their forms that they are systems of suns in the making. More lately
the invention of the spectroscope has informed us of the very elements
which go to the composition of these numberless stars, and we can
distinguish those which are in a similar condition to our sun from those
differing from him. And photography has recorded for us objects too
faint for mere sight to detect, even when aided by the most powerful
telescope; too detailed and intricate for the most skilful hand to
depict.

Galileo's friend and contemporary, Kepler, laid the foundations of
another department of modern astronomy at about the same time. He
studied the apparent movements of the planets until they yielded him
their secret so far that he was able to express them in three simple
laws, laws which, two generations later, Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated
to be the outcome of one grand and simple law of universal range, the
law of gravitation. Upon this law the marvellous mathematical conquests
of astronomy have been based.

All these wonderful results have been attained by the free exercise of
men's mental abilities, and it cannot be imagined that God would have
intervened to hamper their growth in intellectual power by revealing to
men facts and methods which it was within their own ability to discover
for themselves. Men's mental powers have developed by their exercise;
they would have been stunted had men been led