Miracles of Measurement of Distant Stars In ancient times everybody was deeply interested in the stars. Ths example most fresh in our memory is the Star in the East seen by the Wise Men, and followed by them till they found the Infant Saviour. Men were not attracted by their glory, nor were they clear their' size, or composition, or distance. These things had not oe-curred to them as subjects of inquiry.
The reason for the interest of men was their belief that these stars influenced their destinies. For long centuries astrology was ardently studied by men of intellect with often very curious results. They believed that astrology was an art or science of divining the fate and future of human beings from indications given by the positions of the stars (sun, moon and planets).
Writren iv THe Stars, This belief has played an import ant pant in human history. Chaldea and China cultivated astrology. It is needless to inquire which was the earlier. And the belief spread over the Asiatic and European world, and proofs have been found of its power in ancient Mexico. When the Apostle Paul described people under the bondage of the elements of the world, Dr. Moffatt says that the word "ec should be printed with capit letter, and undoubtedly refers to the seven planets, e.g., the five planets known then plas the sun and moon (and also the four elements, fire, air, water and earth) By the end of the pagan period the divinity of these physical "agents was a religious principle studied by all heathendom, and men from the cradle to the grave were under this supernatural tyranny from which they were often trying to escape.
A recent writer has said:
"Astrology fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls upon some island people. In all the religious systems of later antiquity the seven planets play some lordly ov terrifying part, The stars which had inexorably pronounced our fate, and decreed or at least registered the decree that in spite of all our striving, we must needs tread the prescribed path, become inevitably powers of evil rather than of good. being malignant as well as pitiless, making lifo a vain thing.""
OF course, nowadays no sensible person believes in astrology. Yet a man of such intellectual eminence pressed some belief in it in a book under the name A. G. Trent, but he sharply distinguished the grains of truth in astrology from the fortune-telling of social parasites.
Wuar ay Orkna-Grass Suows.
But the standing wonder is that so few know anything about those glorious orbs which bespangle the firmament on -bigh. How few can tell you the names of the principal constellations? Still fewer can name the stars of the first magni-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.