I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.
Few things in the evolution of astronomy are more suggestive than the struggle between the theological and the scientific doctrine regarding comets—the passage from the conception of them as fire-balls flung by an angry God for the purpose of scaring a wicked world, to a recognition of them as natural in origin and obedient to law in movement. Hardly anything throws a more vivid light upon the danger of wresting texts of Scripture to preserve ideas which observation and thought have superseded, and upon the folly of arraying ecclesiastical power against scientific discovery.(88)
(88) The present study, after its appearance in the Popular Science
Monthly as a "new chapter in the Warfare of Science," was revised
and enlarged to nearly its present form, and read before the American
Historical Association, among whose papers it was published, in 1887,
under the title of A History of the Doctrine of Comets.
Out of the ancient world had come a mass of beliefs regarding comets, meteors, and eclipses; all these were held to be signs displayed from heaven for the warning of mankind. Stars and meteors were generally thought to presage happy events, especially the births of gods, heroes, and great men. So firmly rooted was this idea that we constantly find among the ancient nations traditions of lights in the heavens preceding the birth of persons of note. The sacred books of India show that the births of Crishna and of Buddha were announced by such heavenly lights.(89) The sacred books of China tell of similar appearances at the births of Yu, the founder of the first dynasty, and of the inspired sage, Lao-tse. According to the Jewish legends, a star appeared at the birth of Moses, and was seen by the Magi of Egypt, who informed the king; and when Abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east. The Greeks and Romans cherished similar traditions. A heavenly light accompanied the birth of Aesculapius, and the births of various Caesars were heralded in like manner.(90)
(89) For Crishna, see Cox, Aryan Mythology, vol. ii, p. 133; the Vishnu
Purana (Wilson's translation), book v, chap. iv. As to lights at
the birth, or rather at the conception, of Buddha, see Bunsen, Angel
Messiah, pp. 22,23; Alabaster, Wheel of the Law (illustrations of
Buddhism), p. 102; Edwin Arnold, Light of Asia; Bp. Bigandet, Life
of Gaudama, the Burmese Buddha, p. 30; Oldenberg, Buddha (English
translation), part i, chap. ii.
(90) For Chinese legends regarding stars at the birth of Yu and
Lao-tse, see Thornton, History of China, vol. i, p. 137; also Pingre,
Cometographie, p. 245. Regarding stars at the birth of Moses and
Abraham, see Calmet, Fragments, part viii; Baring-Gould, Legends of Old
Testament Characters, chap. xxiv; Farrar, Life of Christ, chap. iii. As
to the Magi, see Higgins, Anacalypsis; Hooykaas, Ort, and Kuenen,
Bible for Learners, vol. iii. For Greek and Roman traditions, see Bell,
Pantheon, s. v. Aesculapius and Atreus; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol.
i, pp. 151, 590; Farrar, Life of Christ (American edition), p. 52; Cox,
Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. 41, 61, 62; Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i,
p. 322; also Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p.88, Claud., p. 463; Seneca,
Nat. Quaest, vol. 1, p. 1; Virgil, Ecl., vol. ix, p. 47; as well as
Ovid, Pliny, and others.
The same conception entered into our Christian sacred books. Of all the legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about the cradle of Jesus of Nazareth, none appeals more directly to the highest poetic feeling than that given by one of the evangelists, in which a star, rising in the east, conducted the wise men to the manger where the Galilean peasant-child—the Hope of Mankind, the Light of the World—was lying in poverty and helplessness.
Among the Mohammedans we have a curious example of the same tendency toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors, in the belief of certain Mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers are caused by good angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels out of the sky.
Eclipses were regarded in a very different light, being supposed to express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities. The Greeks believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths of Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, Aesculapius, and Alexander the Great. The Roman legends held that at the death of Romulus there was darkness for six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet. So, too, in one of the Christian legends clustering about the crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. Neither the silence regarding it of the only evangelist who claims to have been present, nor the fact that observers like Seneca and Pliny, who, though they carefully described much less striking occurrences of the same sort and in more remote regions, failed to note any such darkness even in Judea, have availed to shake faith in an account so true to the highest poetic instincts of humanity.