The Book and its Science. BY UNCLE JAMES. CHAPTER II.-THE EARTH AND ITS CIRCUIT. HE poem of Job is the oldest in the world; it was written probably 3,000 years ago. How grand is its lesson! how sublime its language! how deep its philosophy and how remarkable its declarations of natural phenomena !—several of which have been left to modern times for scientific confirmation. We shall take the most common of "the marvellous things without number" to which the patriarch alludes,-compare the simple declaration of divine truth with uninspired antiquity, and, briefly reminding our readers of the great facts demonstrated by the most learned of nature's students, leave them to their own conclusions. Hindooism or Brahminism is the religion of the majority of the inhabitants of the vast country of Hindostan, containing a population of 200,000,000 of souls, while Boodhism is the most prevalent form of religion upon earth, being practised generally by China, with its teeming population of 360 millions of beings, besides Burmah, Tartary, Japan, and other ancient empires. The holy books of these two forms of religion are perhaps the oldest of human compositions; and here are two fair specimens of what they contain, in relation to the origin and form of our earth and its The supreme ruler of the universe the Hindoos term Brahma. He is the creator. Previously to the creation of the world, Brahma, according to the sacred books, reposed in silence, absorbed in himself. He looked upon the dark abyss around him, and his first creative act was to call the water into existence, in which he deposited a golden egg, which shone with the light of ten thousand suns. Millions of years were occupied in the hatching of this mystic egg, in which the supreme power was hidden. At last the process was complete, and out sprang the forefather of men and spirits, giving birth to inferior deities and things, all of which own him for the god of gods. The supreme deity of China is Boodh, who has enjoyed various manifestations. A small part of his portrait is described in the following words :-" His ears were so beautifully long as to hang upon his shoulders, his hands reached to his knees, his fingers were of equa length, and with his tongue he could touch the end of his nose!" The universe, according to Boodhists, consists of an infinitè number of worlds, each formed of one great mountain, surrounded by seas and islands, of which our earth forms one. It is, they say, a convex plane, not a globe. Below its surface is water twice the depth of the earth itself, and the whole is supported on air twice as deep as the water. The abode of the blest consists of twentysix superior heavens, piled up one above another; and the abode of the lost consists of eight hells, each surrounded by sixteen smaller ones. The chief heaven is the residence of the king; and one of the most remarkable inhabitants there is said to be a royal elephant of enormous size, having seven heads, each head having seven tusks, in each of which are seven tanks. In each of the elephantine tanks grow seven waterlilies, each of which bears seven flowers, each flower seven petals, and each petal bears up seven palaces, and in each palace' are seven water-nymphs, or queens, each of which is surrounded by 500 slaves. The enjoyment is of an exclusively carnal character. Matter is said to be eternal; and every human soul has existed from eternity, and has been occupied throughout in transmigrating from one body into another, and so painful is the operation, that the tears shed by each soul exceed the waters of the ocean, which is but a drop in comparison; and the magnificent ultimatum, or end of being, is to be annihilated. The aboriginal native of New Zealand declares that heaven and earth were originally man and wife, that they quarrelled about an unruly son, and that, like other foolish married people, they separated, and, when too late, they were so sorry for the divorce, that the one has been crying ever since for the reunion, and we call his tear-drops rain, while the other has every night been sighing for the return of her beloved, and we call her sighs the dews. These are about the oldest of uninspired records. As there have always been men who have lived before their time, so we find that the truth respecting the real condition of our earth has been taught in various ages. Pythagoras, in the Grecian school, 500 B. C., and Copernicus, in Italy, A.D. 1520, both taught the true system of the universe, though the former, who had travelled into Chaldea, most probably would have imbibed the spirit of the patriarch's statement, -which we shall repeat presently. In like manner Copernicus followed the Greek philosopher, and after him the "starry Galileo," nearly a century and a half. The first died in banishment, and the last was persecuted by the holy inquisition for maintaining the doctrine that our earth is a globe travelling on its own axis around the sun, from whom it receives its light. And now, "what saith the Scripture?" Exactly one thousand years before Pythagoras lived, Job, taught by Jéhovah, declared that God the Almighty "circled the waters with bounds, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." (chap. xxvi.) After him the grand old prophet Isaiah (chap. xl.) describes the Jehovah God as "sitting upon the circle of the earth,' having doubtless read King Solomon's words descriptive of the Eternal Wisdom, or Second Person of the divine Trinity, declaring that when Jehovah "prepared the heavens he was there; when he set a circle upon the face of the deep." (Prov. viii.) And now, again, what is the evidence of our own common sense in this matter? In an eclipse of the moon, several truly glorious exhibitions of which we have witnessed during the last few years, there is a circular shadow thrown on to the moon's surface. It is the shadow of our earth. If on the moon that our coin does on the wall; but it is a circular shadow always, and it must therefore be of a globular form. Various circumnavigators have left Europe going to the westward without ever turning back, and at last, after sailing on for months, and sometimes long years, returning eastward, they have all returned to the very place from whence they set out, which they could never have done had the earth been anything but a globe. But another, and a still more familiar illustration will strike any thoughtful mind-what is that thin, ashy light we always observe partially covering the new moon's bright disc on a fine, clear night? It is earthshine, that is, the light thrown from the earth on to the lunar surface. Were the earth any other form than globular, we should see its unglobular shadow at these seasons. These, among other instances, prove our earth to be a globe suspended in high air, revolving round the solar centre, that great light which divides the night from the is the Sun of righteousness. day-the true symbol of Him who Thus, we see that not only is the earth a circular body, as said the we make a mimic representation, let Bible 3,300 years ago, in contradis us hold a half-crown between a lighted candle and the wall of our room, turning the coin slowly round in every direction, in one position the shadow will represent a straight line; in another, an oval disc; and a third, a flat circular plane. Were the earth a circular plane, it would produce the same variety of shadows tinction from uninspired writers, but that it is suspended in the "expanse" or firmament, like the many other millions of worlds which spangle the midnight sky, all revolving with our own solar system around some far-off centre, the nucleus of which we have reason to believe to be the throne of God. LOUGH OUEL AND MULLINGAR CHURCHYARD. STOOD for the first, and probably the last time, on the margin of the most lovely lake that spreads its bright bosom to the sunbeam; several miles in circumference, yet lying before the eye like a mirror, with its boundaries distinctly marked out, and the swelling banks so gently diversified, here with a plantation, there a meadow of emerald green, and several little islands speckling the bright surface with their beautiful verdure crowned with tufts of trees. I have it before me now, and shall have it before me while I live." Thus wrote Charlotte Elizabeth (an authoress of whom we may have more to say hereafter) of Lough Ouel, where her only brother, Captain John Browne, unhappily met his death. Charlotte Elizabeth proceeds: "On buoyant step had rested one sunny the spot where I stood, a light and day in June, previously to entering a 62 Lough Ouel and Mullingar Churchyard. small boat ten minutes afterwards that spot was pressed again beneath the heavy tread of those who landed a drowned corpse and bore it away." The cause of the accident which befel Captain Browne's boat seems always to have been shrouded in mystery, but a curious incident connected with his embarkation is mentioned by his sister in one of her writings:-Captain Browne was aecompanied by a favourite dog, his daily companion in every excursion on land or water. On this day, for the first time, the dog proved disobedient; neither Captain Browne's threats nor entreaties could induce the animal to enter the boat, and during the melancholy "ten minutes" which elapsed before his death, the faithful creature kept up a long mournful howl, as if of expostulatory entréaty for its beloved master's return. From early childhood Charlotte Elizabeth and her brother had been attached to each other in ho common degree, both enjoyed a kind mother's care, and were brought up by a father whose chief object in life seems to have been his children's happiness. The deafness of the little girl prevented her enjoying any society so much as that of home, and there was a sort of buoyant freshness and beauty in the manly character of Captain Browne perceptible from his earliest childhood, which must have doubly endeared him to a sister whose deep and sensitive feelings bordered sometimes almost upon romance, and gave à peculiar glow of their own to all animate and inanimate objects with which she came in contact. For some time after the tidings of Captain Browne's death reached his bereaved sister, her feelings were much intensified by the harassing thought that, though her brother was all she could have wished him to be outwardly, that noble, joyous affectionate nature had given no decided proof of being guided by higher principles than mere worldly morality, the soul so suddenly called to its last account might not have been "prepared to meet its God." This shadow was mercifully dispersed a letter was received from one who was previously unknown to her, but who had enjoyed ample opportunities of reading the "inner life" of her beloved brother during his residence in Ireland, and whose testimony to the "love of God which constrained all his actions, was received by Charlotte Elizabeth with a depth of thankfulness which no words could express. The very interesting little story of "The Military Samaritan" was dedicated by his sister to his memory, and from its pages I have extracted one incident of his life, which illustrates, in a striking manner, Captain Browne's very beautiful character. "We were dwelling in a sweet cottage hear a principal road, and he was returning home one winter evening from the scene of his professional duties at a little distance, in haste to dress for å select dinner at head-quarters: Twilight had closed and the road was nearly dark; he heard a strange sound from the opposite side of it mingled with stifled eries—robberies were not unfrequent there, and the spot was |