"On September 1, 1814, a few minutes before midday, while the sky was perfectly serene, a violent detonation was heard in the department of the Lot and Garonne. This was followed by three or four others, and finally by a rolling noise, at first resembling a discharge of musketry, afterward the rumbling of carriages, and lastly that of a large building falling down. Stones were immediately after precipitated to the ground, some of which weighed eighteen pounds, and sunk into a compact soil, to the depth of eight or nine inches; and one of them rebounded three or four feet from the ground."
"A great shower of stones fell at Barbatan, near Roquefort, in the vicinity of Bordeaux, on July 24, 1790. A mass fifteen inches in diameter penetrated a hut and killed a herdsman and bullock. Some of the stones weighed twenty-five pounds, and others thirty pounds."
"In July, 1810, a large ball of fire fell from the clouds, at Shahabad, which burned five villages, destroyed the crops, and killed several men and women."[292]
Astronomers are perfectly agreed as to the character of these masses, and the source whence they come. "It appears from recent astronomical observations that the sun numbers among his attendants not only planets, asteroids, and comets, but also immense multitudes of meteoric stones, and shooting stars."[293] Ærolites are, then, really stars. They are composed of materials similar to those of our earth; the only other star whose materials we can compare with them. They have a proper motion around the sun, in orbits distinct from that of the earth. They are capable of emitting the most brilliant light, in favorable circumstances. Some of them are as large as the asteroids. One, of 600,000 tons weight, passed within twenty-five miles of the earth, at the rate of twenty miles a second. A fragment of it reached the earth.[294] "That ærolites were called stars by the ancients is indisputable. Indeed, Anaxagoras considered the stars to be only stony masses, torn from the earth by the violence of rotation. Democritus tells us, that invisible dark masses of stone move with the visible stars, and remain on that account unknown, but sometimes fall upon the earth, and are extinguished, as happened with the stony star which fell near Aegos Potamos."[295]
When Deborah, therefore, describes the stars in their courses as fighting against Sisera, it is an utterly unfounded assumption to suppose that she has any allusion to the baseless fancies of an astrology everywhere condemned by the religion she professed, when a simple and natural explanation is afforded by the fact, that stars do fall from the heavens to the earth, and that they do so in their courses, and just by reason of their orbital motion; and that the ancients both knew the fact, and gave the right name to those bodies. Let no reasonable man delude himself with the notion that God has no weapons more formidable than the dotings of astrology, till he has taken a view of the arsenals of God's artillery, which he has treasured up against the day of battle and of war.
Here it may be well to notice the illustration which the remarkable showers of meteors, particularly those of November, 1833, shed upon several much ridiculed texts of Scripture. Scientific observation has fully confirmed and illustrated the scientific accuracy of the Bible in such expressions as, "the stars shall fall from heaven;" "there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp;" "and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Whatever political or ecclesiastical events these symbols may signify, there can be no question, now, that the astronomical phenomenon used to prefigure them is correctly described in the Bible. Most of my readers have seen some of these remarkable exhibitions; but for the sake of those who have not, I give a brief account of one. "By much the most splendid meteoric shower on record, began at nine o'clock, on the evening of the twelfth of November, 1833, and lasted till sunrise next morning. It extended from Niagara and the northern lakes of America, to the south of Jamaica, and from 61° of longitude, in the Atlantic, to 100° of longitude in Central Mexico. Shooting stars and meteors of the apparent size of Jupiter, Venus, and even the full moon, darted in myriads toward the horizon, as if every star in the heavens had darted from their spheres." They are described as having been as frequent as the flakes of snow in a snow-storm, and to have been seen with equal brilliancy over the greater part of the continent of North America.[296]
The source whence these meteors proceed is distinctly ascertained to be, as was already remarked with regard to the ærolites, a belt of small planetoids, revolving around the sun in a little less than a year, and in an orbit intersecting that of the earth, at such an angle, that every thirty-three years, or thereabouts, the earth meets the full tide on the twelfth of November. These meteors are true and proper stars. "All the observations made during the year 1853 agree with those of previous years, and confirm what may be regarded as sufficiently well established: the cosmical origin of shooting stars."[297]
3. The language of the Bible with respect to the circuit of the sun is found to have anticipated one of the most sublime discoveries of modern astronomy. True to the reality, as well as to the appearance of things, it is scientifically correct, without becoming popularly unintelligible.
There is a class of aspirants to gentility who refuse to recognize any person not dressed in the style which they suppose to be fashionable among the higher classes. A Glasgow butcher's wife, in the Highlands, attired in all the magnificence of her satins, laces, and jewelry, returned the courteous salute of the little woman in the gingham dress and gray shawl with a contemptuous toss of the head, and flounced past, to learn, to her great mortification, that she had missed an opportunity of forming an acquaintance with the Queen. So a large class of pretenders to science refuse to become acquainted with Bible truth, because it is not shrouded in the technicalities of science, but displays itself in the plain speech of the common people to whom it was given. They will have it, that because its author used common language, it was because he could not afford any other; and as he did not contradict every vulgar error believed by the people to whom he spoke, it was because he knew no better; and because the Hebrews knew nothing of modern discoveries in astronomy, geology, and the other sciences, and the Bible does not contain lectures on these subjects, the God of the Hebrews must have been equally ignorant, and the Bible consequently beneath the notice of a philosopher.
You will hear such persons most pertinaciously assert, that Moses believed all the absurdities of the Ptolemaic astronomy; that the earth is the immovable center, around which revolve the crystal sphere of the firmament, and the sun, and moon, and stars, which are attached to it, after the manner of lamps to a ceiling; and that he, and the world generally in his day, had not emerged from the grossest barbarism and ignorance of all matters of natural science. Yet these very people will probably tell you, in the same conversation, of the wonderful astronomical observations made by the Egyptians, ten thousand years before the days of Adam! So beautiful is the consistency of Infidel science. But when you inquire into the source of their knowledge of the philosophy of the ancients, you discover that they did not draw it from the writings of Moses, of which they betray the grossest ignorance, nor of any one who lived within a thousand years of Moses' time. Voltaire is their authority for all such matters. He transferred to the early Asiatics all the absurdities of the later Greek philosophers, and would have us believe that Moses, who wrote before these Greeks had learned to read, was indebted to them for his philosophy. Of the learning of the ancient patriarchs Voltaire does not tell them much, for a satisfactory reason.