naked
eye in both the Pleiades and the Hyades, or, if more than six, then
several more; though with both groups the number of "seven" has always
been associated.

In the New Testament we find the "Seven Stars" also mentioned. In the
first chapter of the Revelation, the Apostle St. John says that he "saw
seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks
one like unto the Son of Man, . . . and He had in His right hand seven
stars." Later in the same chapter it is explained that "the seven stars
are the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which
thou sawest are the seven churches." The seven stars in a single compact
cluster thus stand for the Church in its many diversities and its
essential unity.

This beautiful little constellation has become associated with a foolish
fable. When it was first found that not only did the planets move round
the sun in orbits, but that the sun itself also was travelling rapidly
through space, a German astronomer, Maedler, hazarded the suggestion that
the centre of the sun's motion lay in the Pleiades. It was soon evident
that there was no sufficient ground for this suggestion, and that many
clearly established facts were inconsistent with it. Nevertheless the
idea caught hold of the popular mind, and it has acquired an amazing
vogue. Non-astronomical writers have asserted that Alcyone, the
brightest Pleiad, is the centre of the entire universe; some have even
been sufficiently irreverent to declare that it is the seat of heaven,
the throne of God. A popular London divine, having noticed a bright ring
round Alcyone on a photograph of the group, took that halo, which every
photographer would at once recognize as a mere photographic defect, as a
confirmation of this baseless fancy. Foolishness of this kind has
nothing to support it in science or religion; it is an offence against
both. We have no reason to regard the Pleiades as the centre of the
universe, or as containing the attracting mass which draws our sun
forward in its vast mysterious orbit.

R. H. Allen, in his survey of the literature of the Pleiades, mentions
that "Drach surmised that their midnight culmination in the time of
Moses, ten days after the autumnal equinox, may have fixed the Day of
Atonement on the 10th of Tishri."[221:1] This is worth quoting as a
sample of the unhappy astronomical guesses of commentators. Drach
overlooked that his suggestion necessitated the assumption that