And last, but not least, amid the tuneful train, William Shakespeare, without whom no review of English literature or of poetic lore could be complete, twice mentions the man in the moon. First, in the _Midsummer Night"s Dream_, Act iii. Scene 1, Quince the carpenter gives directions for the performance of Pyramus and Thisby, who "meet by moonlight," and says, "One must come in with a bush of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of Moonshine." Then in Act v. the player of that part says, "All that I have to say is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog." And, secondly, in the _Tempest_, Act ii., Scene 2, Caliban and Stephano in dialogue:
"_Cal_. Hast thou not dropp"d from heaven?
_Ste_. Out o" the moon, I do a.s.sure thee. I was the man i" the moon, when time was.
_Cal_. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee: my mistress show"d me thee, thy dog, and bush."
Robert Chambers refers the following singular lines to the man in the moon: adding, "The allusion to Jerusalem pipes is curious; Jerusalem is often applied, in Scottish popular fiction, to things of a nature above this world":
"I sat upon my houtie croutie (hams), I lookit owre my rumple routie (haunch), And saw John Heezlum Peezlum Playing on Jerusalem pipes." [29]
Here is an old-fashioned couplet belonging probably to our northern borders:
"The man in the moon Sups his sowins with a cutty spoon."
Halliwell explains _sowins_ to be a Northumberland dish of coa.r.s.e oatmeal and milk, and a _cutty_ spoon to be a very _small_ spoon.
[30]
Wales is not without a memorial of this myth, for Mr. Baring-Gould tells us that "there is an ancient pictorial representation of our friend the Sabbath-breaker in Gyffyn Church, near Conway. The roof of the chancel is divided into compartments, in four of which are the evangelistic symbols, rudely, yet effectively painted. Besides these symbols is delineated in each compartment an orb of heaven. The sun, the moon, and two stars, are placed at the feet of the Angel, the Bull, the Lion, and the Eagle. The representation of the moon is as follows: in the disk is the conventional man with his bundle of sticks, but without the dog." [31] Mr. Gould says, "our friend the Sabbath-breaker" perhaps the artist would have said "the thief," for stealing appears to be more antique.
[Ill.u.s.tration: moon07]
REPRESENTATION IN GYFFYN CHURCH, NEAR CONWAY.
A French superst.i.tion, lingering to the present day, regards the man in the moon as Judas Iscariot, transported to the moon for his treason. This plainly is a Christian invention. Some say the figure is Isaac bearing a burthen of wood for the sacrifice of himself on Mount Moriah. Others that it is Cain carrying a bundle of thorns on his shoulder, and offering to the Lord the cheapest gift from the field. [32] This was Dante"s view, as the succeeding pa.s.sages will show:
"For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine On either hemisphere, touching the wave Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight The moon was round."
(_h.e.l.l_. Canto xx., line 123.)
"But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots Upon this body, which below on earth Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?"
(_Paradise_, ii. 50.) [33]
When we leave Europe, and look for the man in the moon under other skies, we find him, but with an altogether new aspect. He is the same, and yet another; another, yet the same. In China he plays a pleasing part in connubial affairs. "The Chinese "Old Man in the Moon" is known as _Yue-lao_, and is reputed to hold in his hands the power of predestining the marriages of mortals--so that marriages, if not, according to the native idea, exactly made in heaven, are made somewhere beyond the bounds of earth. He is supposed to tie together the future husband and wife with an invisible silken cord, which never parts so long as life exists." [34]
This must be the man of the Honey-moon, and we shall not meet his superior in any part of the world. Among the Khasias of the Himalaya Mountains "the changes of the moon are accounted for by the theory that this...o...b.. who is a man, monthly falls in love with his wife"s mother, who throws ashes in his face. The sun is female."
[35] The Slavonic legend, following the Himalayan, says that "the moon, King of night and husband of the sun, faithlessly loves the morning Star, wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, as we see him in the sky." [36]
"One man in his time plays many parts," and the man in the moon is no exception to the rule. In Africa his _role_ is a trying one; for "in Bushman astrological mythology the moon is looked upon as a man who incurs the wrath of the sun, and is consequently pierced by the knife (_i.e._ rays) of the latter. This process is repeated until almost the whole of the moon is cut away, and only a little piece left; which the moon piteously implores the sun to spare for his (the moon"s) children. (The moon is in Bushman mythology a male being.) From this little piece, the moon gradually grows again until it becomes a full moon, when the sun"s stabbing and cutting processes recommence." [37]
We cross the Atlantic, and among the Greenlanders discover a myth, which is _sui generis_. "The sun and moon are nothing else than two mortals, brother and sister. They were playing with others at children"s games in the dark, when _Malina_, being teased in a shameful manner by her brother _Anninga_, smeared her hands with the soot of the lamp, and rubbed them over the face and hands of her persecutor, that she might recognise him by daylight. Hence arise the spots in the moon. Malina wished to save herself by flight, but her brother followed at her heels. At length she flew upwards, and became the sun. Anninga followed her, and became the moon; but being unable to mount so high, he runs continually round the sun, in hopes of some time surprising her. When he is tired and hungry in his last quarter, he leaves his house on a sledge harnessed to four huge dogs, to hunt seals, and continues abroad for several days. He now fattens so prodigiously on the spoils of the chase, that he soon grows into the full moon. He rejoices on the death of women, and the sun has her revenge on the death of men; all males therefore keep within doors during an eclipse of the sun, and females during that of the moon." [38] This Esquimaux story, which has some interesting features, is told differently by Dr. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, who puts a lighted taper into the sun"s hands, with which she discovered her brother, and which now causes her bright light, "while the moon, having lost his taper, is cold, and could not be seen but for his sister"s light." [39] This belief prevails as far south as Panama, for the inhabitants of the Isthmus of Darien have a tradition that the man in the moon was guilty of gross misconduct towards his elder sister, the sun. [40]
The Creek Indians say that the moon is inhabited by a man and a dog. The native tribes of British Columbia, too, have their myth.
Mr. William Duncan writes to the Church Missionary Society: "One very dark night I was told that there was a moon to be seen on the beach. On going to see, there was an illuminated disk, with the figure of a man upon it. The water was then very low, and one of the conjuring parties had lit up this disk at the water"s edge. They had made it to wax with great exactness, and presently it was at full. It was an imposing sight. Nothing could be seen around it; but the Indians suppose that the medicine party are then holding converse with the man in the moon." [41] Mr. Duncan was at another time led to the ancestral village of a tribe of Indians, whose chief said to him: "This is the place where our fore fathers lived, and they told us something we want to tell you. The story is as follows: "One night a child of the chief cla.s.s awoke and cried for water. Its cries were very affecting--"Mother, give me to drink!" but the mother heeded not. The moon was affected, and came down, entered the house, and approached the child, saying, "Here is water from heaven: drink."
The child anxiously laid hold of the pot and drank the draught, and was enticed to go away with the moon, its benefactor. They took an underground pa.s.sage till they got quite clear of the village, and then ascended to heaven." And," said the chief, "our forefathers tell us that the figure we now see in the moon is that very child; and also the little round basket which it had in its hand when it went to sleep appears there." [42]
The aborigines of New Zealand have a suggestive version of this superst.i.tion. It is quoted from D"Urville by De Rougemont in his _Le Peuple Primitif_ (tom. ii. p. 245), and is as follows:--"Before the moon gave light, a New Zealander named Rona went out in the night to fetch some water from the well. But he stumbled and unfortunately sprained his ankle, and was unable to return home. All at once, as he cried out for very anguish, he beheld with fear and horror that the moon, suddenly becoming visible, descended towards him. He seized hold of a tree, and clung to it for safety; but it gave way, and fell with Rona upon the moon; and he remains there to this day." [43] Another account of Rona varies in that he escapes falling into the well by seizing a tree, and both he and the tree were caught up to the moon. The variation indicates that the legend has a living root.
Here we terminate our somewhat wearisome wanderings about the world and through the mazes of mythology in quest of the man in the moon. As we do so, we are constrained to emphasize the striking similarity between the Scandinavian myth of Jack and Jill, that exquisite tradition of the British Columbian chief, and the New Zealand story of Rona. When three traditions, among peoples so far apart geographically, so essentially agree in one, the lessons to be learned from comparative mythology ought not to be lost upon the philosophical student of human history. To the believer in the unity of our race such a comparison of legends is of the greatest importance. As Mr. Tylor tells us, "The number of myths recorded as found in different countries, where it is hardly conceivable that they should have grown independently, goes on steadily increasing from year to year, each one furnishing a new clue by which common descent or intercourse is to be traced." [44] The same writer says on another page of his valuable work, "The mythmaking faculty belongs to mankind in general, and manifests itself in the most distant regions, where its unity of principle develops itself in endless variety of form." [45] Take, for example, China and England, representing two distinct races, two languages, two forms of religion, and two degrees of civilization yet, as W. F. Mayers remarks, "No one can compare the Chinese legend with the popular European belief in the "Man in the Moon," without feeling convinced of the certainty that the Chinese superst.i.tion and the English nursery tale are both derived from kindred parentage, and are linked in this relationship by numerous subsidiary ties. In all the range of Chinese mythology there is, perhaps, no stronger instance of ident.i.ty with the traditions that have taken root in Europe than in the case of the legends relating to the moon." [46] This being the case, our present endeavour to establish the consanguinity of the nations, on the ground of agreement in myths and modes of faith and worship, cannot be labour thrown away. The recognition of friends in heaven is an interesting speculation; but far more good must result, as concerns this life at least, from directing our attention to the recognition of friends on earth. If we duly estimate the worth of any comparative science, whether of anatomy or philology, mythology or religion, this is the grand generalization to be attained, essential unity consistent and concurrent with endless multiformity; many structures, but one life; many creeds, but one faith; many beings and becomings, but all emanating from one Paternity, cohering through one Presence, and converging to one Perfection, in Him who is the Author and Former and Finisher of all things which exist. Let no man therefore ridicule a myth as puerile if it be an aid to belief in that commonweal of humanity for which the Founder of the purest religion was a witness and a martyr. We have sought out the man in the moon mainly because it was one out of many scattered stories which, as Max Muller n.o.bly says, "though they may be p.r.o.nounced childish and tedious by some critics, seem to me to glitter with the brightest dew of nature"s own poetry, and to contain those very touches that make us feel akin, not only with Homer or Shakespeare, but even with Lapps, and Finns, and Kaffirs." [47]
Vico discovered the value of myths, as an addition to our knowledge of the mental and moral life of the men of the myth-producing period. Professor Flint tells us that mythology, as viewed by the contemporaries of Vico, "appeared to be merely a rubbish-heap, composed of waste, worthless, and foul products of mind; but he perceived that it contained the materials for a science which would reflect the mind and history of humanity, and even a.s.serted some general principles as to how these materials were to be interpreted and utilised, which have since been established, or at least endorsed, by Heyne, Creuzer, C O Muller, and others." [48]
Let us cease to call that common which G.o.d has cleansed, and with thankfulness recognise the solidarity of the human race, to which testimony is borne by even a lunar myth.
We now return to the point whence we deflected, and rejoin the chief actor in the selenographic comedy. It is a relief to get away from the legendary man in the moon, and to have the real man once more in sight. We are like the little boy, whom the obliging visitor, anxious to show that he was pa.s.sionately fond of children, and never annoyed by them in the least, treated to a ride upon his knee.
"Trot, trot, trot; how do you enjoy that, my little man? Isn"t that nice?" "Yes, sir," replied the child, "but not so nice as on the real donkey, the one with the four legs." It is true, the mythical character has redeeming traits; but then he breaks the Sabbath, obstructs people going to ma.s.s, steals cabbages, and is undergoing sentence of transportation for life. While the real man, who lives in a well-lighted crescent, thoroughly ventilated; whose n.o.ble profile is sometimes seen distinctly when he pa.s.ses by on the shady side of the way; whose beaming countenance is at other times turned full upon us, reflecting nothing but sunshine as he winks at his many admirers: he is a being of quite another order. We do not forget that he has been represented with a claret jug in one hand, and a claret cup in the other; that he frequently takes half and half; that he is a smoker; that he sometimes gets up when other people are going to bed; that he often stops out all the night; and is too familiar with the low song--
"We won"t go home till morning."
But these are mere eccentricities of greatness, and with all such irregularities he is "a very delectable, highly respectable" young fellow; in short,
"A most intense young man, A soul-full-eyed young man, An ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical, Out-of-the-way young man."
Why, he has been known to take the shine out of old Sol himself; though from his partiality to us it always makes him look black in the face when we, Alexander-like, stand between him and that luminary. We, too, are the only people by whom he ever allows himself to be eclipsed. Ill.u.s.trious man in the moon I he has lifted our thoughts from earth to heaven, and we are reluctant to leave him. But the best of friends must part; especially as other lunar inhabitants await attention.
"Other inhabitants!" some one may exclaim. Surely! we reply; and though it will necessitate a digression, we touch upon the question _en pa.s.sant_. Cicero informs us that "Xenophanes says that the moon is inhabited, and a country having several towns and mountains in it." [49] This single dictum will be sufficient for those who bow to the influence of authority in matters of opinion.
Settlement of questions by "texts" is a saving of endless pains. For that there are such lunar inhabitants must need little proof. Every astronomer is aware that the moon is full of craters; and every linguist is aware that "cratur" is the Irish word for creature. Or, to state the argument syllogistically, as our old friend Aristotle would have done: "Craturs" are inhabitants; the moon is full of craters; therefore the moon is full of inhabitants. We appeal to any unbiased mind whether such argumentation is not as sound as much of our modern reasoning, conducted with every pretence to logic and lucidity. Besides, who has not heard of that astounding publication, issued fifty years since, and ent.i.tled _Great Astronomical Discoveries lately made by Sir John Herschel, LL.D., F.R.S., etc., at the Cape of Good Hope_? One writer dares to designate it a singular satire; stigmatizes it as the once celebrated _Moon Hoax_, and attributes it to one Richard Alton Locke, of the United States. What an insinuation! that a man born under the star-spangled banner could trifle with astronomy. But if a few incredulous persons doubted, a larger number of the credulous believed. When the first number appeared in the New York Sun, in September, 1835, the excitement aroused was intense. The paper sold daily by thousands; and when the articles came out as a pamphlet, twenty thousand went off at once. Not only in Young America, but also in Old England, France, and throughout Europe, the wildest enthusiasm prevailed.
Could anybody reasonably doubt that Sir John had seen wonders, when it was known that his telescope contained a prodigious lens, weighing nearly seven tons, and possessing a magnifying power estimated at 42,000 times? A reverend astronomer tells us that Sir Frederick Beaufort, having occasion to write to Sir John Herschel at the Cape, asked if he had heard of the report current in England that he (Sir John) had discovered sheep, oxen, and flying _men_ in the moon. Sir John had heard the report; and had further heard that an American divine had "improved" the revelations. The said divine had told his congregation that, on account of the wonderful discoveries of the present age, lie lived in expectation of one day calling upon them for a subscription to buy Bibles for the benighted inhabitants of the moon. [50] What more needs to be said? Give our astronomical mechanicians a little time, and they will produce an instrument for full verification of these statements regarding the lunar inhabitants; and we may realize more than we have imagined or dreamed. We may obtain observations as satisfactory as those of a son of the Emerald Isle, who was one day boasting to a friend of his excellent telescope. "Do you see yonder church?" said he.
"Although it is scarcely discernible with the naked eye, when I look at it through my telescope, it brings it so close that I can hear the organ playing." Two hundred years ago, a wise man witnessed a wonderful phenomenon in the moon: he actually beheld a live elephant there. But the unbelieving have ever since made all manner of fun at the good knight"s expense. Take the following burlesque of this celebrated discovery as an instance. "Sir Paul Neal, a conceited virtuoso of the seventeenth century, gave out that he had discovered "an elephant in the moon." It turned out that a mouse had crept into his telescope, which had been mistaken for an elephant in the moon." [51] Well, we concede that an elephant and a mouse are very much alike; but surely Sir Paul was too sagacious to be deceived by resemblances. If we had more faith, which is indispensable in such matters, the revelations of science, however extraordinary or extravagant, would be received without a murmur of distrust. We should not then meet with such sarcasm as we found in the seventeenth century _Jest Book_ before quoted: "One asked why men should thinke there was a world in the moone? It was answered, because they were lunatique."
According to promise, we must make mention of at least one visit paid by our hero to this lower world. We do this in the cla.s.sic language of a student of that grand old University which stands in the city of Oxford. May the horns of Oxford be exalted, and the shadow of the University never grow less, while the moon endureth!
"The man in the moon! why came he down From his peaceful realm on high; Where sorrowful moan is all unknown, And nothing is born to die?
The man in the moon was tired, it seems, Of living so long in the land of dreams; "Twas a beautiful sphere, but nevertheless Its lunar life was pa.s.sionless; Unchequered by sorrow, undimmed by crime, Untouched by the wizard wand of time; "Twas all too grand, there was no scope For dread, and of course no room for hope To him the future had no fear, To make the present doubly dear; The day no cast of coming night, To make the borrowed ray more bright; And life itself no thought of death, To sanctify the boon of breath:-- In short, as we world-people say, The man in the moon was _ennuye_." [52]
Poor man in the moon! what a way he must have been in! We hope that he found improving fellowship, say among the Fellows of some Royal Astronomical Society; and that when e returned to his skylight, or lighthouse on the coast of immensity"s wide sea, he returned a wiser and much happier man. It is for us, too, to remember with Spenser, "The n.o.blest mind the best contentment has."
And now we record a few visits which men of this sublunary sphere are said to have paid to the moon. The chronicles are unfortunately very incomplete. Aiming at historical fulness and fidelity, we turned to our national bibliotheca at the British Museum, where we fished out of the vasty deep of treasures a MS. without date or name. We wish the Irish orator"s advice were oftener followed by literary authors. Said he, "Never write an anonymous letter without signing your name to it." This MS. is ent.i.tled "_Selenographia_, or News from the world in the moon to the lunatics of this world. By Lucas Lunanimus of Lunenberge." [53] We are here told how the author, "making himself a kite of ye hight(?) of a large sheet, and tying himself to the tayle of it, by the help of some trusty friends, to whom he promised mountains of land in this his new-found world; being furnished also with a tube, horoscope, and other instruments of discovery, he set saile the first of Aprill, a day alwaies esteemed prosperous for such adventures." Fearing, however, lest the date of departure should make some suspicious that the author was desirous of making his readers April fools, we leave this aerial tourist to pursue his explorations without our company, and listen to a learned bishop, who ought to be a canonical authority, for the man in the moon himself is an overseer of men. Dr. Francis G.o.dwin, first of Llandaff, afterwards of Hereford, wrote about the year 1600 _The Man in the Moone_, or a discourse of a voyage thither. This was published in 1638, under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales. The enterprising aeronaut went up from the island of El Pico, carried by wild swans. _Swans_, be it observed. It was not a wild-goose chase.
The author is careful to tell us what we believe so soon as it is declared. "The further we went, the lesser the globe of the earth appeared to us; whereas still on the contrary side the moone showed herselfe more and more monstrously huge." After eleven days"
pa.s.sage, the exact time that Arago allowed for a cannon ball to reach the moon, "another earth" was approached. "I perceived that it was covered for the most part with a huge and mighty sea, those parts only being drie land, which show unto us here somewhat darker than the rest of her body; that I mean which the country people call _el hombre della Luna_, the man of the moone."
This last clause demands a protest. The bishop knocks the country-people"s man out of the moon, to make room for his own man, which episcopal creation is twenty-eight feet high, and weighs twenty-five or thirty of any of us. Besides ordinary men, of extraordinary measurement, the bishop finds in the moon princes and queens. The females, or lunar ladies, as a matter of course, are of absolute beauty. Their language has "no affinity with any other I ever heard." This is a poor look-out for the American divine who expects to send English Bibles to the moon. "Food groweth everywhere without labour": this is a cheering prospect for our working cla.s.ses who may some day go there. "They need no lawyers": oh what a country! "And as little need is there of physicians." Why, the moon must be Paradise regained. But, alas!
"they die, or rather (I should say) cease to live." Well, my lord bishop, is not that how we die on earth? Perhaps we need to be learned bishops to appreciate the difference. If so, we might accept episcopal distinction.
Lucian, the Greek satirist, in his _Voyage to the Globe of the Moon_, sailed through the sky for the s.p.a.ce of seven days and nights and on the eighth "arrived in a great round and shining island which hung in the air and yet was inhabited. These inhabitants were Hippogypians, and their king was Endymion." [54] Some of the ancients thought the lunarians were fifteen times larger than we are, and our oaks but bushes compared with their trees. So natural is it to magnify prophets not of our own country.
William Hone tells us that a Mr. Wilson, formerly curate of Halton Gill, near Skipton-in-Craven, Yorkshire, in the last century wrote a tract ent.i.tled _The Man in the Moon_, which was seriously meant to convey the knowledge of common astronomy in the following strange vehicle: A cobbler, Israel Jobson by name, is supposed to ascend first to the top of Penniguit; and thence, as a second stage equally practicable, to the moon; after which he makes the grand tour of the whole solar system. From this excursion, however, the traveller brings back little information which might not have been had upon earth, excepting that the inhabitants of one of the planets, I forget which, were made of "pot metal." [55] This curious tract, full of other extravagances, is rarely if ever met with, it having been zealously bought up by its writer"s family.
We must not be detained with any detailed account of M. Jules Verne"s captivating books, ent.i.tled _From the Earth to the Moon_, and _Around the Moon_. They are accessible to all, at a trifling cost. Besides, they reveal nothing new relating to the Hamlet of our present play. Nor need we more than mention "the surprising adventures of the renowned Baron Munchausen." His lunarians being over thirty-six feet high, and "a common flea being much larger than one of our sheep," [56] Munchausen"s moon must be declined, with thanks.
"Certain travellers, like the author of the _Voyage au monde de Descartes_, have found, on visiting these different lunar countries, that the great men whose names they had arbitrarily received took possession of them in the course of the sixteenth century, and there fixed their residence. These immortal souls, it seems, continued their works and systems inaugurated on earth. Thus it is, that on Mount Aristotle a real Greek city has risen, peopled with peripatetic philosophers, and guarded by sentinels armed with propositions, ant.i.theses, and sophisms, the master himself living in the centre of the town in a magnificent palace. Thus also in Plato"s circle live souls continually occupied in the study of the prototype of ideas.
Two years ago a fresh division of lunar property was made, some astronomers being generously enriched." [57]
That the moon is an abode of the departed spirits of men, an upper hades, has been believed for ages. In the Egyptian _Book of Respirations_, which M. p. J. de Horrack has translated from the MS. in the Louvre in Paris, Isis breathes the wish for her brother Osiris "that his soul may rise to heaven in the disk of the moon."
[58] Plutarch says, "Of these soules the moon is the element, because soules doe resolve into her, like as the bodies of the dead into the earth." [59] To this ancient theory Mr. Tylor refers when he writes, "And when in South America the Saliva Indians have pointed out the moon, their paradise where no mosquitoes are, and the Guaycurus have shown it as the home of chiefs and medicine-men deceased, and the Polynesians of Tokelau in like manner have claimed it as the abode of departed kings and chiefs, then these pleasant fancies may be compared with that ancient theory mentioned by Plutarch, that h.e.l.l is in the air and elysium in the moon, and again with the mediaeval conception of the moon as the seat of h.e.l.l, a thought elaborated in profoundest bathos by Mr. M. F.
Tupper:
"I know thee well, O Moon, thou cavern"d realm, Sad satellite, thou giant ash of death, Blot on G.o.d"s firmament, pale home of crime, Scarr"d prison house of sin, where d.a.m.ned souls Feed upon punishment. Oh, thought sublime, That amid night"s black deeds, when evil prowls Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners well, Glarest o"er all, the wakeful eye of--h.e.l.l!"
Skin for skin, the brown savage is not ill-matched in such speculative lore with the white philosopher." [60]
The last journey to the moon on our list we introduce for the sake of its sacred lesson. Pure religion is an Attic salt, which wise men use in all of their entertainments: a condiment which seasons what is otherwise insipid, and a.s.sists healthy digestion in the compound organism of man"s mental and moral const.i.tution. About seventy years since, a little tract was published, in which the writer imagined himself on _luna firma_. After giving the inhabitants of the moon an account of our terrestrial race, of its fall and redemption, and of the unhappiness of those who neglect the great salvation, he says, "The secret is this, that nothing but an infinite G.o.d, revealing Himself by His Spirit to their minds, and enabling them to believe and trust in Him, can give perfect and lasting satisfaction." He then adds, "My last observation received the most marked approbation of the lunar inhabitants: they truly pitied the ignorant triflers of our sinful world, who prefer drunkenness, debauchery, sinful amus.e.m.e.nts, exorbitant riches, flattery, and other things that are highly esteemed amongst men, to the pleasures of G.o.dliness, to the life of G.o.d in the soul of man, to the animating hope of future bliss." [61]
Here the man in the moon and we must part. Hitherto some may have supposed their thoughts occupied with a mere creature of imagination, or gratuitous creation of an old-world mythology.
Perhaps the man in the moon is nothing more: perhaps he is very much more. Possibly we have information of every being in the universe; and possibly there are beings in every existing world of which we know nothing whatever. The latter possibility we deem much the more probable. Remembering our littleness as contrasted with the magnitude of the whole creation, we prefer to believe that there are rational creatures in other worlds besides this small-sized sphere in, it may be, a small-sized system. Therefore, till we acquire more conclusive evidence than has yet been adduced, we will not regard even the moon as an empty abode, but as the home of beings whom, in the absence of accurate definition, we denominate men.
Whether the man in the moon have a body like our own, whether his breathing apparatus, his digestive functions, and his cerebral organs, be identical with ours, are matters of secondary moment. The Fabricator of terrestrial organizations has limited himself to no one type or form, why then should man be the model of beings in distant worlds? Be the man in the moon a biped or quadruped; see he through two eyes as we do, or a hundred like Argus; hold he with two hands as we do, or a hundred like Briarius; walk he with two feet as we do, or a hundred like the centipede, "the mind"s the standard of the man" everywhere. If he have but a wise head and a warm heart; if he be not shut up, Diogenes--like, within his own little tub of a world, but take an interest in the inhabitants of kindred spheres; and if he be a worshipper of the one G.o.d who made the heavens with all their glittering hosts;--then, in the highest sense, he is a _man_, to whom we would fain extend the hand of fellowship, claiming him as a brother in that universal family which is confined to no bone or blood, no colour or creed, and, so far as we can conjecture, to no world, but is co-extensive with the household of the Infinite Father, who cares for all of His children, and will ultimately blend them in the blessed bonds of an endless confraternity. Whether we or our posterity will ever become better acquainted in this life with the man in the moon is problematical; but in the ages to come, "when the manifold wisdom of G.o.d" shall be developed among "the princ.i.p.alities and powers in heavenly places," he may be something more than a myth or topic of amus.e.m.e.nt. He may be visible among the first who will declare every man in his own tongue wherein he was born the wonderful works of G.o.d, and he may be audible among the first who will lift their hallelujahs of undivided praise when every satellite shall be a chorister to laud the universal King. Let us, brothers of earth, by high and holy living, learn the music of eternity; and then, when the discord of "life"s little day" is hushed, and we are called to join in the everlasting song, we may solve in one beatific moment the problem of the plurality of worlds, and in that solution we shall see more than we have been able to see at present of the man in the moon.