The Book of Abraham - Its Genuineness Established, Chapter IX

THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM—ITS GENUINENESS ESTABLISHED.

BY ELDER GEORGE REYNOLDS.

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 115.]

CHAP IX.

The System of Astronomy taught by Abraham proven true by recent re­search. Testimony of Various Authors. Admissions that the Ancients were taught scientific truths by Di­vine Revelation.

When Joseph Smith enunciated the sublime truths noticed in our last chapter, with regard to the governing powers amidst the starry hosts, no such thoughts were prevalent amongst the students of astronomy. The Herschels had some inkling of the facts, but their ideas were crude and undeveloped. It was not until the Book of Abraham had been published in America, and, if we mistake not, in England also, that Sir William G. Hamilton, of the Dublin University, advanced the idea that our solar system had a centre round which the sun and all its attendant planets moved. To-day, the scholars in the most radical school of astronomy will only admit that our system has a centre, and that the probabilities are that that centre has a centre also round which it and all its satellites move. Further than this they cannot go. However, the little they do admit, confirms the mighty truths revealed to Abraham of old and Joseph of to-day. On the other hand, the followers of the more conservative schools will simply acknowledge that our solar system has a proper motion of its own, independent of its relative or apparent motions with regard to other stars. They admit that “relative to the general mass of stars, our sun is moving in the direction of the constellation of Hercules.” They have come to this conclusion, because they find that the stars in in that part of the heavens are continually growing brighter (thus showing they are com­ing nearer), whilst those in exactly the opposite direction are as con­tinually growing more dim. They have also discovered that “there are in the heavens several cases of widely-extended groups of stars, having a common proper motion entirely different from that of the stars around and among them. Such groups, they say, “must form connected systems,”1 or, in other words, are all controlled by one and the same governing planet. It is also admitted that “the stars in all parts of the heavens move in all directions with all sorts of velocities;”2 but they claim that the distances of the stars from the earth are so im­mense, and so short a period of time has elapsed since they first began to notice these movements, that they cannot with certainty say whether they are moving in circles or straight lines, it is only by analogy that they reason that they are moving round a centre. So little are some of these observers willing to admit, that Prof. Newcomb simply allows that “as our sun is merely one of the stars, and rather a small one too, it may have a proper motion as well as other stars.” The Smithsonian report for 1871, speaking of Herschel, says:          “The world can afford to wait. Astronomy advances. It may be in the distant future, that the mysterious centre around which our sun and his worlds revolve, may be detected, and afford a solution for other mysteries as well as these. The greatest astronomer is equipped for no more than a Sabbath-day's journey.” Another writer re­marks, “Madler attempted to show, from an examination of the proper motions of the stars, that the whole stellar universe was revolving around Alcyone, of the Pleides “(or seven stars)” as a centre—a theory, the grandeur of which led to its wide diffusion in popular writing.” Mr. Wm. Petrie, of London, writing with regard to this same star, says: “Alcyone, a primeval name of the star, means the centre, and has quite recently been discovered to be really the centre round which even our whole solar system, amongst others, revolves.”

Short as is this last quotation, it testifies to three things confirmatory of the divine inspiration that gave to the world the Book of Abraham.

1st. That this solar system has a central, or governing sun or planet.

2nd. That this fact was known to the ancients, who gave to this parti­cular star the name of the centre.

3rd. That in modern times this truth has only been “quite recently discovered.” That is to say, Joseph Smith could not have learned it from living men or modern books, but only through the revelations of God.

Elder Joseph L. Barfoot affords us the following additional particulars with regard to the revolution of the solar system around Alcyone. He states: “The entire march of our sun and its system around its centre is 25,368 years. (The period of the precession of the equinoxes.) I be­lieve this to be the period of the solar orbit, and that there is some relation to this period and the sacred cubit (25 025) which may yet be discovered. The change of 50.1" per annum in the appearance of the stars as seen from the earth, results from the orbitual motion around Kolob, or some other large body. This would be a degree in 72 years. Of course the orbit would be immense; the Lord evidently gave the Prophet Joseph an insight into the order of this grand eternal round, which, I think, is really pictured in the Hypociphalus.”

And here let us observe that the word planet as given by Joseph Smith to the suns, in common parlance called fixed stars, is scientifically correct; as a planet is a world that moves or wanders through space, and the com­mon nomenclature of fixed stars is untruthful and scientifically incorrect, as none are absolutely at a standstill or fixed immoveably in one place.

Having thus shown that present research and investigation are proving the astronomical truths first given to this generation by that unlearned but heaven-inspired man, the Prophet Joseph Smith, we have next to show that the Egyptians were familiar with them, and that they learned them through the teachings of Abraham. To have done this some fifteen or twenty years ago would have been next to an imp; but to-day, through the researches of various talented and earnest men, it can be demonstrated with comparative ease.

But before we attempt to prove that Abraham was actually the instrument used of God to instruct the Egyptians in the mysteries of the starry worlds, we will present a few extracts, from various writers, to manifest that even the scientific world is beginning to admit that the Egyptians obtained their knowledge of astronomy through divine agency or revelation, as it was entirely out of their power in those early post-deluvian days to make such stupendous advances in this science with the instruments and learning then at their disposal, without they received aid from records, etc., of anti-deluvian times.

Rev. Mr. Mackay, referring to some of the astronomical truths known to the ancient inhabitants of the land of the Pharaohs, states that he believes they were “revealed to man, ages and generations before science had any existence,” and, strange to say, the truths to which this gentleman refers have a direct relation to those con­tained in the Book of Abraham. Mr. Wm. Osborn, in sketch of the history of ancient Egypt, remarks: “Accord­ing to Moses, moreover, the age that produced by far the most remarkable of those monuments (the pyramids,) was one in which the Almighty had frequent and familiar intercourse with man, as in the case of the Patriarchs Abraham, Melchizedeck and Job, while the monument itself evinces innumerable evidences of a knowledge and wisdom to which unaided huma­nity has no where ever attained.”

Rev. Mr. Goodsir, from the demon­stration of facts akin to the foregoing, remarks: “The conclusion that some men in primeval times were taught by, for important religious and moral purposes, scientific truths which modern men of science are only now discovering, is maintained on the strength of two lines of evidence— first, the freedom of Scripture rightly interpreted from scientific error, and from the religious and moral errors witnessed among the pagans as the result of ignorance and errors in science; and second, the possession by primeval man of such scientific knowledge as we are only now reaching, as demonstrated by the great Pyramid. Certain things render it extremely probable that this knowledge was im­parted to the Ethnics [the Gentiles] (who employed it in constructing the great Pyramid) by servants of God whom He had taught; and though ultimately corrupted and obscured by the pagans, still it is highly probable that evincing its truth even from the midst of enveloping error, this scien­tific knowledge continued to stimulate the Egyptian, and afterwards the Greek mind to scientific enquiry. * * * * For as there is the clearest evidence that a revelation of religious truth existed in primeval times, and continued to benefit men, even when it became more or less corrupted, so is there as clear evidence that men were primevally instructed in the most im­portant cosmologic and scientific truths. * * * The extreme proba­bility is that a true scientific con­ception of the Kosmos in general would be at first conveyed to man directly by God, to guard his intelli­gent and highly-favored children from nature-worship.”

That God did use Abraham, as stated in his book, to convey astrono­mical knowledge to the Egyptians is, we think, fully demonstrated by the following:

Josephus (Book 1. chap. viii) states that Abraham “communicated to them [the Egyptians] arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy, for before Abraham came into Egypt they were unacquainted with those parts of learning, for that science came by the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from them to the Greeks also.”

This is very strong, corroborative testimony, but modern research actu­ally claims to have discovered the year in which Abraham did this. A British text book, entitled Facts and Dates, published in 1870, by the well-known firm of Wm. Blackwood and Sons, of Edinburgh, (we are particu­lar in giving details, to show that it proceeds from a reliable and highly respectable firm,) in its history of Ancient Egypt, gives the following:

“B. C. 1980. Abraham teaches the King of Egypt the true chrono­logy, after which the inscriptions bear the name of the year and month.” So far as the actual year is con­cerned we deem it a matter of minor importance, so that the fact is acknow­ledged, and the truth of modern reve­lation vindicated.