The universe as it is pictured to us by the modern astronomer, a vast spiral nebula, lense-shaped in form, containing hundreds of millions of suns; not unlike the spiral (Canes Venatici) shown above. If our sun and planets were transferred to the point in this spiral indicated by the letter S the heavens would be quite similar to those we view. (Photograph by Courtesy of Mt. Wilson Observatory.)

MY SEARCH FOR GOD

I told my soul I would search for God,
And she bade me gladly try.

So I wandered long, my steps joy-shod,
Till I bent me wearily

On failure's stones to lie.

But from under my head the way I had trod,

Whispered: "I

Am God."

I told my soul I would search for God,
And she bade me madly try.

So I beat each beautiful bush with the rod

Of hope, lest his flame be nigh.

Then I laid me down with a sigh.

But the depth of defeat in the mouldering sod,

Whispered: "I

Am God."

I told my soul I would search for God,

And she bade me sadly try.

So I sought through the Book and the brook and the clod For the hand of Him, most high;

Nor voice, nor word, nor cry.

But the infinite longing that bade me plod,

Whispered: "I

Am God."

CHAPTER II

THE INHABITANTS OF THE HEAVENS

66

Among the ancient legends of the Euphrates Valley that have been preserved to us through the mishaps of centuries is that of Etana, friend of the eagle of Shamash. * That he might obtain for his agonized wife the plant which alleviates suffering, he besought the eagle to convey him to the heaven of Anu where, only, it might be found. Pitying his distressed friend, the eagle dares the enterprise. "Banish the clouds from thy face," he said, "come, I will carry thee to the heaven of Anu. Place thy breast against my breast, thy two hands upon the pinions of my wings, thy side against my side." This Etana did. Above the countryside they rose while the shepherds, stupefied at the prodigy, called to one another and their dogs howled in terror. For a double-hour they mounted upward, above the hills, the mountains, the clouds. Then the eagle called to Etana, Behold, my friend, the earth, what it is! Regard the sea which the ocean contains! See the earth is no more than a mountain and the sea is no more than a lake." For a second double-hour they mounted. Again the eagle, "Behold, my friend the earth, what it is. The sea appears as a girdle of the earth!" At the end of a third double-hour again the eagle spoke, "See, my friend, the earth, what it is. The sea is no more than a rivulet made by a gardener." At length, they are come to the heaven of Anu. While they rest a moment Etana gazes about him and sees only the emptiness of space. Terrorstricken he would return but the eagle says, "Come, I will bear thee to Ishtar!" For a double-hour they ascend. "Friend, behold the earth, what it is," then said the eagle, "the face of the earth is flat, the sea is no larger than a mere." Again, after the fourth hour, he spoke, "Friend, behold the earth, what it is; the earth is no more than a square plat in a garden and the great sea is no larger than a puddle of water." Onward, upward! The third doublehour ends. Etana can stand it no longer. "Stop!" he cries. His eyes dim. He grows dizzy. His muscles relax. He falls to his death!

* The translation followed is that of Maspero.

So would the ancient Chaldeans warn the curious that no man may with impunity penetrate the holy above, heaven, the empire of the gods.

Yet have men not ceased to dare! "Come," they still say, "let us build us a tower that shall reach unto heaven." Only it is no longer done with brick and bitumen but with lenses and prisms and sensitive photographic films. Those

Etana carried to heaven by the eagle. (From Mas-
pero's Dawn of Civilization, courtesy of D. Apple-
ton and Company, New York.)

ancient astronomers, magi, see-ers, had only one tiny lens. whose size was but one-fifth of an inch, the human eye. Galileo placed before his eyes a telescope whose lens was approximately two inches in size. Now a one-inch lens is just five times larger than the eye and a two-inch aperture would increase sight one hundred times since the amount of light collected would vary as the square of the diameter. Therefore, to the vision of the astonished Galileo there sprang sights no mortal eye had ever seen before. He was caught up past the heavens of the Sacred Seven, beyond the thrones of Shamash and Sin, of Nebo and Nergal and Ishtar, of Marduk and Ninib. In that strangely eventful moment of the year 1610 when he turned his telescope upon Jupiter he saw a sight so amazing as to make adequate description impossible. There, floating unsupported in the sky, swam a sun-fair, shining, globular. About him circled a family of little planets, travelling, as the event proved, in the same plane and in the same sense. Night after night he studied its meaning until the truth was clear. Copernicus was right! Gone are the waters above the firmament and below, gone are the heavens above the earth and hell below, gone forever. The very throne of God had vanished.

If we, with Etana and Galileo, could ascend so far into

the sky that we could view our earth in the proportions it sustains to its sister planets, we, also would see:

A great central fire, a vast burning thing, nearly a million miles in diameter, in unending eruption, too brilliant for the eye of men to view unshaded, slowly rotating, emitting flames of

super-heated particles, burning gases, whose explosions reach a quarter of a million miles in length, and a vast corona of emitted particles about it.

A tiny planet some three thousand miles in diameter revolves around this mighty disc at a distance of some thirty six million miles and at a speed of some thirty miles a second, making a complete revolution in eighty-eight days and by rotating on its own axis in the same period, keeping the same face eternally toward the central fire. There is little if any atmosphere around it and it is baked perpetually on one side and perpetually frozen on the other. This is the Roman Mercury, the Greek Hermes, the Babylonian Nebo, Messenger of the Gods, who darts here and there about the throne of the

sun.

The sun and planets, relative sizes. (From
The Vault of Heaven, by Sir Richard
Gregory, courtesy of Methuen and Co.)

Just outside his elliptical orbit at a distance of some sixty-seven million miles from the sphere of flame, speeding at about twenty-two miles per second, revolving and perhaps rotating in a period of about two hundred and twenty-five days, is a sister planet, approximately seventyseven hundred miles in diameter with an atmosphere dense with either vapor or dust. It is Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar Ashtoreth, the queen of love and beauty, ever staring vacantly at her lord.