d be visible on our globe now; whereas, the Bible teaches
that the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago.
Third: that the Bible represents God as creating the sky a solid
crystal, or metallic sphere, or hemisphere (they are not agreed which),
to which the stars are fastened, and with which they revolve around the
earth; which every school-boy knows to be absurd. Fourth: that the Bible
represents God as creating the sun and moon only two days before Adam,
and as creating light before the sun, which is also held to be absurd.

1. The first of these objections--that the Hindoos and Egyptians made
astronomical observations thousands of years before Adam, and that the
accuracy of these observations has been verified by modern
calculations--_is simply untrue_. No such observations were ever made.
The pretended records of such have been proved, in the case of the
Hindoo astronomy, to be forgeries, and in the case of the Egyptian
records, blunders of the discoverers. There is not an authentic
uninspired astronomical observation extant for two thousand years after
Adam.

The objection, however, is worth noticing, and its history worth
remembering, as a specimen of the way in which ignorant men swallow
impudent falsehoods, if they only seem to contradict the Word of Truth.
When the labors of oriental scholars had made the Vedas and
Shasters--the sacred books of the Hindoos--accessible to European
philosophers, a wonderful shout was raised among Infidels. "Here," it
was said, "is the true chronology. We always knew that man was not a
degenerate creature, fallen from a higher estate, some few thousand
years ago, but that he has existed from eternity, in a constant progress
toward his present lofty position; and now we have the most authentic
records of the most ancient and civilized people in the world--the
people of India--reaching back for millions of years before the Mosaic
cosmogony, and allowing ample time for the development of the noble
savage into the cultivated philosopher. These records have every mark of
truth, giving minute details of events, and histories of successive
lines of princes; and, moreover, record the principal astronomical facts
of the successive periods--eclipses, comets, positions of stars,
etc.--which attest their veracity. Henceforth, the Hebrew records must
hide their heads. Neither as poetry nor history can they pretend to
compare with the Vedas."

The Hindoo Shasters were