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 observa