in the youth of the world, there lived men who watched their flocks by
day and the hosts of heaven by night. Their study of the heavens lifted
them out of themselves, in my belief, and their observations of
celestial phenomena led them to the discovery of the fact that eclipses
of the great heavenly lights happened in a regular rotation of eighteen
years and ten days. This discovery has been very useful in purging the
idolatry from eclipses--as, had it not been for the Chaldæans, perhaps
the mother of the atheist might have offered him as an oblation in