he other eternal darkness. Since she has
no moon, she has no "month." Since she moves round the sun in a circle,
and the axis through her north and south poles lies at right angles to
her ecliptic, she has no "seasons," she can have no "year." On her
daylight side, the sun remains fixed in one spot in the sky, so long as
the observer does not leave his locality; it hangs overhead, or near
some horizon, north, south, east, or west, continually. There are no
"hours," therefore no divisions of time, it might be almost said no
"time" itself. There are no points of the compass even, no north, south,
east or west, no directions except towards the place where the sun is
overhead or away from it. There could be no history in the sense we know
it, for there would be no natural means of dating. "Time" must there be
artificial, uncertain and arbitrary.

On the night side of Venus, if her men can see the stars at all for
cloud, they would perceive the slow procession of stars coming out, for
Venus turns continually to the heavens--though not to the sun.
_Mazzaroth_ would still be brought out in his season, but there would be
no answering change on Venus. Her men might still know the ordinances of
heaven, but they could not know the dominion thereof set upon their
earth.

This imaginary picture of the state of our sister planet may illustrate
the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis:--

"And God said, Let there be lights 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 years."

The making of the calendar is in all nations an astronomical problem: it
is the movements of the various heavenly bodies that give to us our most
natural divisions of time. We are told in Deuteronomy:--

"The sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of
heaven, . . . the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations
under the whole heaven."

This is the legitimate use of the heavenly bodies, just as the worship
of them is their abuse, for the division of time--in other words, the
formation of a calendar--is a necessity. But as there are many heavenly
bodies and several natural divisions of time, the calendars in use by
different peoples differ considerably. One division, however, is common
to all calendars--the day.

The "day" is the first and shortest natural division of time. At present
we recognize three kinds of "days"--_t