Increase Mather preached on the text taken from the Book of Revelation: “And the third Angel sounded, and there fell a great Star burning as a Torch, ... and behold the Third Woe cometh quickly.”
In this sermon the great preacher told of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, who, when warned of the omen of a Comet, made fun of it, and then died miserably.
So Mather preached: “For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the Heavens among the stars of God there. The fearful sign is not yet out of sight.... Do we not see the sword blazing over us?... Doth God threaten our very Heavens? O pray unto Him, that he would not take away stars and send Comets to succeed them!”
THE TERROR OF THE COMET OF 1531.
FROM AN OLD NUREMBERG WOOD-CUT.
The profound Russian thinker Tolstoy, in his great book “War and Peace,” has written of the flaming Comet of 1811. This was the famous “Comet of Napoleon,” which blazed over Western Europe when Napoleon was gathering his grand army for its disastrous march into Russia and to Moscow.
At Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, this Comet was observed by anxious thousands. One night there was this talk between a novice nun and the Abbess of her Convent. On their way to vesper service one evening in Moscow the nun suddenly beheld the Comet for the first time and asked: “What is that star?”
The Abbess answered: “It is not a star. It is a Comet.”
“But what is a Comet?” asked the young nun. “I have never heard that word.”
The Abbess then answered: “Comets are signs in Heaven, which God sends before misfortunes.”