126 LT.-COL. G. MACKLNLAY ON BIBLICAL ASTRONOMY. 



seeking to attain this facility of telling the time direct from 

 the heavens. 



I was wondering the other clay whether the intelligent 

 modern would recur to the ancient methods of making direct 

 use of the movements of the stars, when deprived uf the 

 ordinary clocks, etc., of present day civilisation. I therefore 

 enquired of those who had been engaged in our late war in 

 South Africa, and soon heard the following from an army 

 nursing sister, Miss Watson Tulloh, E.E.C. 



A young officer suffering from measles was a patient under 

 her care at Nopal's Pont in an isolation tent, and during 

 convalescence he watched for her daily visits. As he had no 

 clock or watch, he made use of the heavens, and he soon 

 noticed that the nurse's last round, which was about a couple of 

 hours after the winter sunset, was paid just when a bright 

 star rose over a neighbouring kopje, and on the following 

 evenings the same star again gave him due notice, though the 

 length of warning increased a little each time. The incident 

 would probably have been forgotten except for the facts which 

 occurred afterwards : a false report of the officer's death, 

 accompanied by a portrait, was published in the newspapers ; 

 a little later he was wounded in an engagement and brought 

 back to the same hospital and to the same nurse. She 

 recognised his features at once, but thought he must be some 

 near relative of her former patient, and was only assured of 

 his identity by his reminding her of the bright star rising 

 behind the kopje ! 



We may conveniently divide our subject into the following 

 sections : — 



1. Jehovah, Creator and Euler. 



2. Worship of the heavenly bodies forbidden. 



3. The Hebrew calendar. 



4. Direction and orientation. 



5. The heavens. 



6. Grand astronomical statements. 



7. Figurative allusions. 



(1) Jehovah, Creator and Euler. 



In Gen. i, 1, we are told that God created the heaven, and 

 afterwards in the sixteenth verse that He made or ordained the 

 sun, moon and stars for their purposes. I do not stop to discuss 

 how the current theories about the origin of the universe fit in 



