[214] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 360.

[215] Dick's Sidereal Heavens, chap. xx.

[216] Nichol's Solar System, p. 76.

[217] Cosmos, III. p. 27.

CHAPTER XI.

DAYLIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE.

In the last chapter we saw astronomy demonstrating our need of a
revelation from God. In this we shall see how it illustrates and
confirms that revelation. Seen through the telescope, the Bible glows
with celestial splendor. Even its cloudy mysteries are displayed as
clouds of light, and its long misunderstood phrases are resolved, by a
scientific investigation, into galaxies of brilliant truths, proclaiming
to the philosopher that the Book which describes them is as truly the
Word of God as the heavens which it describes are his handiwork.

If, once in a century, a profound practical astronomer is found denying
the inspiration of the Bible, he will either acknowledge, or discover
himself, not familiar with its contents. For the most part, the charges
brought against the Bible, of contradicting the facts of astronomy, are
based upon misstatements and mistakes of its teachings, and so do not
fall within the range of the telescope, or the department of the
observatory. The Sabbath-school teacher, and not the astronomer, is the
proper person to correct such errors. A few months' instruction in the
Bible class of any well-conducted Sabbath-school would save some of our
popular anti-Bible lecturers from the sin of misrepresenting the Word of
God, and the shame of hearing children laugh at their blunders.

A favorite field for the display of their knowledge of science, and
ignorance of the art of reading, by our modern Infidels, is the Bible
account of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, which is alleged
to be utterly irreconcilable with the known facts of astronomy and
geology. Leaving the latter out of view, for the present, the
astronomical objections may all be arranged under four heads. First:
that the Bible account of the creation of man, only some six or seven
thousand years ago, must be false; because the records of astronomical
observations, taken more than seventeen thousand years ago, by the
Hindoos and Egyptians, are still in existence, and have been verified.
Second: that the light of some of the stars, now shining upon us, and
especially of some of the distant nebulae, must have left them millions
of years ago, to have traveled over the vast space which separates them
from us, an