LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



goodness and wisdom of God. Without this there 

 would be no rain and hence no vegetation, and man 

 would soon perish. In Genesis we read that God said, 

 "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and 

 let it divide the waters from the waters.' ' And in Psalms, 

 " Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens and ye waters that 

 be above the heavens." Then we hear, " The windows 

 of heaven were opened." So this thought of the waters 

 above the earth was fully proved, accepted and fixed, 

 and to pray for rain was quite a natural thing. The 

 English Prayer Book contained such prayers up to 

 within a very few years ago, and in 1883 the Governor 

 of Kansas set apart a day upon which the people were 

 to pray that God would open the windows of heaven 

 and send them rain. They also prayed to be delivered 

 from grasshoppers. Just as in Queen Elizabeth's time 

 the Prayer Book had this, " From the Turk and the 

 Comet, good Lord deliver us." 



In the Sixth Century, Cosmos, one of the Saints, wrote 

 a full and complete explanation of the phenomena of 

 the heavens. To account for the movement of the sun, 

 he said God had His angels push it across the firma- 

 ment and put it behind a mountain each night, and the 

 next morning it was brought out on the other side. He 

 met every objection by citations from Genesis, Job, 

 Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes and the New Testament, and 

 wound up with an anathema upon any or all who doubted 

 or questioned in this matter of astronomy. 

 The whole Christian idea of the Universe was simple, 

 plain and plausible. The child-mind could easily accept 

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