the course of the shadow-that is, of the total portion of the eclipse-by cutting out a slip of paper of the width of the representative of one hundred and sixty miles on any map of the United States, and long enough to reach from the map-position of Beaufort, N. C., to that of Fort Union, Dacotah. Place this strip so that the centre of one end shall be near Cape Lookout, and the edge shall just lap over Rock Island and avoid Omaha. The path of the eclipse, however, is somewhat curved, and the maps themselves distort the shape of the earth, so that you will not find such a strip, made straight, to give more than a very rough idea of the shadow's

course.

On the map which I use, for instance, Cincinnati and Indianapolis would be thus included, and St. Louis be left too far to the south.

The phenomena attending lunar eclipses are quite familiar to those who notice such phenomena, and in general are these: The earth's shadow is seen at the predicted time to enter upon the moon, at first as a small circular arc, growing wider and wider, and often of a pea-green tint, until, when the eclipse is a large one, it is succeeded by a deep copper hue, finally overspreading a great part or the whole of the moon. After this we can see, with a good telescope, not only the general outlines of the lunar disc, but also special features, such as the ranges of mountains, the circular valleys so familiar to telescopic observation, and the great plains called by the old astronomers "seas." After a whileperhaps an hour or two-the totality ceases, and the partial eclipse recurs and goes off in the inverse order of phenomena. The most striking thing about such an eclipse is the deep coppery hue of the moon's surface.

Partial eclipses of the sun are more exact phenomena for observation; the indentation which is seen is produced by the body of the moon itself, and we sometimes see the jagged prominences

of the lunar mountains. This, too, is to be noted that every solar eclipse appears at different magnitudes for dif ferent places, because an observer at one point can see further around the intervening obstacle of the moon's dise than at another; and, as will be inferred from what was before said, the same eclipse may be partial at one place and total at another.

Partial eclipses of the sun yield in importance to annular. In the latter, four phenomena are to be noticed: first, the beginning of the partial eclipse or indentation of the sun's disc; next, the beginning of the annular eclipsenamely, the formation of the ring, where the moon is first seen completely within the sun, and its breaking up as the moon recrosses the boundary of brilliant light; and finally the end of even partial eclipse. The annular phenomena are much more accurately observable than those of a partial eclipse; and the formation and breaking up of the ring are sometimes accompanied with what are called "Baily's beads." The rim of light between the moon's edge and that of the sun is, when very narrow, broken up into points partially disconnected, like a string of beads. It is supposed that the jagged points of the lunar mountains cause this appear

ance.

But a total eclipse of the sun surpasses in sublimity, as well as interest, all other astronomical phenomena whatever. During a space of time never exceeding eight minutes, we observe the passage from a sunlight to a darkness almost like that of night, and back again. The sky, as the partial eclipse grows larger and larger, changes its tints to various hues, described sometimes as livid, but mingled with orange yellow, or purple, sometimes much before the beginning of the total eclipse proper. The moon advances slowly over the solar disc, covering more and more of it with its blackness, and making more

and more obscure surrounding objects, till, when the last gleam of sunlight is about to pass away, the observer sees the moon and what remains of the sun surrounded by a bright corona or glory, such as surrounds the heads of the Lord and the saints in religious pictures. When the sunlight totally disappears, nothing is left to enlighten objects around, save the scattered rays of twilight and the corona itself. This glory is intersected here and there with flashing rays, extending often to considerable distances from the sun, and has been itself seen nearly as broad as the sun's diameter. When the corona gives the light by which objects are seen, they naturally appear very differently from what we see in daylight, or even åt night. The sharpness and blackness of distant hills have often been noticed.

Besides this corona, the "protuberances" of a rosy color and irregular shape are a very marked feature. These are cloud-like masses seen projecting beyond the dark edge of the moon, are not generally visible without telescopes, and have long been, as well as the corona, mysterious in their origin. But it is now made certain by the spectroscope that they are gaseous in nature; it was found out by photographing them that they were connected with the sun, and that as the moon passed over them it hid them by degrees. If they were phenomena of the lunar atmosphere they would move with the moon itself, which they do not do.

All these phenomena can only be observed by great concentration of effort, and by division of labor. When the time of observation of the most important extends only from two to eight minutes, it is plain that much expedition is necessary. In case of the eclipse of the present year, the duration is about three minutes near the central line.

In past ages the fate of a battle or an assault has turned upon a total eclipse of the sun. Xenophon tells us

that the town of Larrisa was taken on account of the fright of the inhabitants when the sun was covered by a cloud. This circumstance, casually mentioned in the Anabasis (Book III., section iv.), has enabled astronomers to make certain that a total eclipse took place then and there, and has even been of use in correcting the lunar tables. Other eclipses of note in history were those predicted by Thales, 585 B. C.; that connected with the expedition of Agathocles against Carthage, B. C. 310; and an eclipse which helped decide the battle of Stiklastad, in the Scandinavian annals. Columbus is said to have acquired great renown among the Indians by predicting a lunar eclipse, which was probably his only means of determining his longitude, and so the distance of America from Europe. modern times we have often heard of the panic terror of ignorant populations; and there are even stories that in the eclipse of 1806, persons here and there thought the Judgment Day was coming.

In

These phenomena have, however, become so well known, and astronomy has penetrated to so distant parts of the earth, that no civilized people need fear them any longer; and they are simply to be regarded as examples of the unvarying laws of nature, and as occasions to learn more of those laws. Even the sun is gradually yielding up the secrets of its fiery globe to the unwearied scrutiny of science; and no small advantage is gained by the absence of the direct light of the body itself in studying those glowing atmospheres which surround it, and which have so much to do with the life of the sun itself if we may use Sir John Herschel's figure of speech relative to the solar activity.

A most important use of eclipses, to the mind of the world, is the proof which they afford of the unerring cer tainty within their own sphere of the

laws of nature. The evidence afforded by ordinary astronomical phenomena is more convincing to scientific minds, as it is cumulative in its character. There are more such examples of the fixity of natural laws constantly before the astronomer's mind than can readily be numbered; the alternations of light and darkness, of summer and winter, the ebb and flow of the tides, the courses of the moon and planets, and so on. But an eclipse, and especially a total eclipse, of the sun, is so rare and surprising a phenomena, and its occurrence can be so certainly predicted many years in advance, to the very day, hour, and minute, and almost second, that all who come within its range will be compelled to acknowledge

the unvarying nature of the laws of astronomy. The infidel may, indeed, point to those laws as evidences that when one shuts his eyes to spiritual truth he can see no God in nature; but one of the greatest intellectual triumphs of true Christianity is to show that the laws of nature are intelligible to man only because the Lord has made us after His image and likeness, and that He has made them in their own limits unvarying for an analogous reason that He has made the swiftly-moving earth firm under our feet; to give us something on which we can establish ourselves as on a firm, unyielding basis of thought and action, and on which our mental edifices can be raised, trusting in His laws.

our text, with anachronism. The fact is, we have among us a class of men who ought to have lived before the flood; of Rip Van Winkles who, after they went to sleep, ought never to have waked up; but, in the Providence of God, their lot has been cast in these latter times. They persistently cling to the past, and esteem nothing as valuable or useful and to be commended, unless, like a bottle of wine, it is cov ered over with the cobwebs of antiquity. The Frenchman who directed the artist to paint a family picture, with the ark in the background moored to a wharf, and a porter in the foreground shouldering a trunk inscribed with the initials of his great ancestor, was not more vain-glorious of his descent than this class of men. They are to be found

pulpit, in the halls of legislation, and in the various walks of science. The English language contained no one word which precisely describes their idiosyncracies, and hence the modern innovation "fogy." To him the phrases "wisdom of ages," and "venerable antiquity," are as the revelations of an oracle ; while those other phrases, "spirit of the times," and "progress of humanity," are but the expressions of reckless and innovating empirics. This reverence for antiquity, this blind idolatry of the past, has operated as a clog upon human energy, and led to the rejection, for a time, of many of the noblest discoveries of the human intellect. We are, as long ago declared by Bacon, the ancients; and this observation has been well illustrated by

Jeremy Bentham, a really great thinker, but who had the faculty of repelling ordinary readers by his almost inextricably involuted and prodigiously long-drawnout periods. Man acquires knowledge by experience; and hence, setting aside the diversities of understanding, the oldest man of the present day ought to be the wisest and best-informed.

So, too, with regard to the generations of men. Each succeeding generation ought to be wiser than the one which preceded it; and, therefore, the people of A. D. 1869 are wiser than were the people of A. D. 1. We have inherited, as a capital, the accumulated experience of the past, and have added to it our own. What to our ancestors was the utmost attainable limit, is to us as a starting-point. Whatever of territory they were able to survey and map in the vast domain of nature, serves but as a base-line for us in fresh surveys. What they saw as through a glass darkly, we see face to face.

We have no reverence for the past, but rather a feeling of admiration for many of those chaps who were on the stage "when time was young";- a feeling akin to that of an elderly gentleman who looks out upon a lawn where children are playing and enacting their miniature parts on a contracted stage. We are inclined to the belief that Jacob Strawn could have given Father Adam some ideas in cattle-raising; that the Ames Company could beat TubalCain in brass, or rather bronze-founding; that George Stephenson was a better engineer than Archimedes ; that Captain Cook was a better navigator than Jason; and that Phil Sheridan, with an equal number of troopers armed with carbines, would, at this day, wipe out the Grecian phalanx in the twinkling of

an eye.

But, descending to more modern times, we may assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that Sir John Herschel knows more of astronomy

than did Tycho Brahe; that any clever college-boy knows more of practical philosophy than did Bacon; and every engineer who conducts a train out of Chicago, knows more of the steam engine than did the Marquis of Worcester. Thus, then, knowledge is ever progressive, ever cumulative; and yet we, in the midst of the activities of life, by a faculty of our nature which it is difficult to understand or interpret, instinctively turn to the past as though it contained stores of hoarded wisdom.

Perhaps, of all classes, our judges are the most swayed by this feeling. It is rarely that they have the independence to throw off the shackles imposed by a venerable prescription. If a decision is to be arrived at, the first step is to trace up the stream of history to a "time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary;" or to some old black-letter law written in barbarous French and enacted by a set of barons so ignorant that they could not write their names, and therefore used each one his stamp; and hence the flummery of a seal. The doctrine of immemorial usage and the sanctity of a long line of precedents, so fascinating to the mind of the lawyer, has made him essentially a conservative; and he would rather perpetuate an abuse, or suppress a reform, than violate what he considers the beauty and harmony of his profession. So ramified are the transactions of modern society, that the great bulk of our litigation grows out of matters whereof our ancestors knew little or nothing. What did they know of bills of exchange and promissory notes? of insurance? of patent-rights? of railroad corporations? And yet all the decisions, by far-reaching analogies, curious devices, and vague generalities, are supposed to be based on the "wisdom of our ancestors." Instead of planting the seed in a virgin soil, and allowing vigorous shoots to spring up, these cultivators in the legal vineyard

The same spirit of reverence for the past attaches to the ministers of the Christian church. The pure and simple teachings of our Savior can be comprehended by every one, so that he who runs may read. The writings of the Fathers, like the heads of old saints in the pictures, are encircled with a halo of glory. But when explored, while there may be some pure gold, there is much dross. Origen, we believe, was not over-scrupulous in regard to truth; and Tertullian, a man of fierce and vindictive passions, was wont to indulge in pious exultation in the expected damnation of the whole pagan world. The modern reformers had their weak

nesses.

Luther believed in the actual presence of devils, and hurled an inkstand at the head of the Prince of Darkness. Wesley even believed in witches, and Cotton Mather was active in bringing them to the gibbet. "Under the name of exorcism," says Jeremy Bentham, "the Catholic liturgy contains a form of procedure for driving out devils. Even with the help of this instrument the operation can not be performed with the desired success, but by an operator qualified by holy orders for the working of this, as well as so many other wonders. In our days and in our country, the same object is attained, and beyond comparison more effectually, by so cheap an instrument as a common newspaper. Before this talisman, not only devils, but ghosts, vampires,

witches, and all their kindred tribes, are driven out of the land, never to return again! The touch of the holy water is not so intolerable to them as the bare smell of printers' ink."

These remarks are made in no spirit of disrespect to the early propagators and reformers of Christianity. They had many noble but rugged virtues; but their characters were molded by the ignorance of the age, and their judgments clouded by its superstitions. At this day, no Presbyterian clergyman lays before his congregation the gloomy creed of Calvin, carried to its rigorous conclusions, or the still gloomier commentary thereon of that austere logician, Jonathan Edwards. Henry Ward Beecher would not have been tolerated in a Christian assembly at Geneva in the time of Calvin, nor in a Scotch kirk in the days of John Knox.

We object, then, to the authority of our ancestors in matters of conscience. We claim to have clearer views of our duties here and of our destinies hereafter. We confidently assert that, at no period in history, since the foundation of Christianity, have its teachings been so thoroughly recognized and acted upon. We see their exemplification in the universal spread of the Bible; in the vast sums expended each year in missionary effort; in the voluntary maintenance of public worship; and in the numerous foundations of charitable institutions for the alleviation of all the ills incident to humanity.

This reverence for antiquity has been a serious bar to the progress of science. Down to the time of the Reformation, the authority of Aristotle, as the great master of philosophy, was omnipotent. If any discovery was announced, the first inquiry was, "Is it sanctioned by this system?"

When, in 1543, Copernicus published his treatise on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, fearing the bigoted per