FRAGMENTS;

ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE

MANNERS, INCIDENTS, AND PHRASEOLOGY,

OF THE

HOLY SCRIPTURES.

SELECTED FROM VARIOUS AUTHORITIES.

No. DI. ASTRONOMICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL EXCURSIONS.

INTRODUCTION.

THE order, the regularity, and the beauty of the ordinances of the Heavens have

been at all times subjects of gratulation and wonder to the sons of men; and with ample cause; whether men were rude or refined, whether in a social or a savage state, they felt, without exception, the importance inseparable from the seasons of the year, and they gradually associated in their minds the periodical returns of those luminaries which at first announced the returns of the seasons, and at length were supposed to exert an influence over them.

The Sun and the Moon were, indisputably, the two greater Lights of heaven: to these the most powerful influences were ascribed; and the most important obligations were universally acknowledged. They led on the year and the months, with their respective productions; they afforded means of calculating time, and of defining periods; and eventually, they contributed to the formation of systems, and to extensive combinations of numbers into multiples, progressions, and series. But, beside these principals, known to all as the sources of light, the Heavens presented, to the observant and intelligent, various minor luminaries, the periods of which were not only incommensurate, among themselves, but required long continued investigation of their appearances, by which to obtain materials for the theory of their orbits and motions. It had been well if mankind had stopped here; but, having acquired an elementary knowledge of the heavenly bodies and their circuits, the misplaced gratitude of some, and the pious credulity of others, attributed to them offices for which their Creator never designed them, and consequently never prepared them. The smallest spark of rationality too powerfully illuminates the human breast, to allow its possessor to conceive of the Great Supreme, other than as a Spirit of incomprehensible attributes and infinite wisdom and powers; a portion of which he at pleasure delegates to the emanations of his creative fiat, and which, in fact, he has in some degree, delegated to man, as a rational creature; and to beings much superior, in degrees proportionately higher. And where should the imagination of man establish these superior beings, if not in those celestial bodies, the aspects of which were deemed propitious, or were thought PART XVIII. Edit. 5.

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