BEIEF ESSAYS 227 



earth Lad many suns and many moons. An eclipse 

 of the sun, he said, happened when the orb of the 

 sun, falling upon some part of the world which is 

 uninhahited, wandered in a vacuum and became 

 eclipsed. Herodotus also looked upon the sun as 

 something thus special to the earth. On the ap- 

 proach of winter, he says, he grows feeble and 

 retreats to the south, because he can no longer face 

 the cold and the storms of the north. One is 

 reminded of these things when he sees the good 

 people appropriate God to themselves in a way they 

 are perpetually doing. What a special interest He 

 takes in their lives ! Their well-being or their ill- 

 being seems his main concern. All the early races 

 — the Bible races — do this. How the old He- 

 brews claimed God! He was the Lord God of 

 Israel and of no one else. How imminent, how 

 personal, He is in their Scriptures.; how cruel, how 

 terrible, how jealous, — a magnified and heaven- 

 filling despot and king! All the good old pious 

 people still refer the events of their daily lives 

 to Providence. Indeed, the popular conception of 

 God is still essentially Ptolemaic. Our religion is 

 built upon the notion that man and man's life are 

 the objects of his especial care and solicitude. And 

 so they are, but not just in the way we are so fond 

 of thinking. 



Astronomers figure out for us the infinitesimal 

 fraction of the sun's light which our earth inter- 

 cepts in the infinite void; in the same way and to 

 the same extent does the providence of God tran- 



