it, and when backed up by the Holy Book, written by 

 God's dictation, word for word, infallible and absolutely 

 true in every part, one does not wonder that progress 

 was practically blocked for fourteen hundred years, 

 but the real miracle is that it was not blocked forever. 



LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



'HOUSANDS of years before Christ, the 

 Chinese had mapped the heavens and 

 knew the movements of the planets so 

 well that they correctly prophesied the 

 positions of the constellations years in ad- 

 vance. Twenty-five hundred years before 

 our Christian era a Chinese Governor put to death the 

 astronomers Hi and Ho because they had failed to fore- 

 tell an eclipse, quite according to the excellent Celestial 

 plan of killing the doctor when his patient dies. Sir Wil- 

 liam Hamilton points out the fact that the Chinese, five 

 thousand years ago, knew astronomy nearly as well as 

 we do today, and that Christian astrology grew out of 

 Chinese astronomy, in an effort to foretell the fortunes 

 of men. Fear wants to know the future, and astrology 

 and priesthood are synonymous terms, since the busi- 

 ness of the priest has always been to prophesy what 

 was going to happen, a profession he has not even yet 

 discarded. 



Their prophecies are at present innocuous and lightly 

 heeded. They preach that perfect faith will move 

 a mountain, but energetic railroad builders of today 

 find it quicker and cheaper to tunnel. 



9 



