The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-08-03

not wonder that q great number or arbf-
trary enumerations fixed themselves upon
the number seven We have seven sases
in Greece, seven argonauts, and seven
wonders of the world. The Pleiades,
which happen to consist Of seven stars
Of great intensity, are deemed con-
stellation of special significance ana
power.
1.-THE ancient Babylonians associated
seven of their great gods with the seven
planets In those days OF crude astron-
omy these planets were held to be the
sun, moon, Jupiter Venus, Mars Mef-
curry and Saturn.
.Happily for the number seven two
new planets Uranus and Neptune, were
discovered In due time when, owing to
change Of our astronomical science ana
, its terminology, the sun and the moon
ceased to be regarded as planets. The OLD
belief, however, unfortunately Ialis TO
the ground because the earth must now
be counted among the planets, wh1cn
would raise their number of eight-with-
out counting the planetoids, about Seo al
together.
.'There were seven jewels Of the law IN
buddhism which united to make up the
bright diadem of Nirvana. These were
purity. oalmness, comprehension, bliss,
wisdom perfection and enlightenment.
There were seven. points in Budohlst
ethics which constituted religious en-
deavor, and there were seven KINDS OF
miraculous property, consisting OF the
sword. the snake skin, the palace, the
garden, the robes, the bed and the shoes.
They are endowed with magical quail
ties; the shoes, for instance, convey the
wearer 100 miles without fatigue and
across water without wett1ng the snake
skin cannot be wetted by water nor
Il bnn xxycT -Pf1
in heat nor cold in freezing weather.
GAS the Greeks speak of seven sages
so do the East Indians of the seven rishis
Gnspired men of great sanctftD, and
Hindoo folklore discovers them in the
seven stars Of the Great Bear. The Chi
nose. too. know Of the seven wise men
who spurned the temptations of the
world and retired to the bamboo grove,
where they led a life Of undisturbed rest
and happiness
ssThe awe Of the number seven could
only be enhanced when the first notions
of Mathematics dawned on the thinkers
of mankind and when geometr1c1ans dis
covered that the relation Of the radius
to the circumference of the circle could
be roughly expressed by the number
seyen-or, what is the same, that the re-
Iation of the diameter to the circumfer-
ence is approximately Expressed py the
number three and halr
eft appears that the Jews developed
their notion Of the sacredness of seven
on the same lines as the Babylonians and
the Persians 1t Is we'll known that a
seyen-armed candlestick stood in the
tennle at Jerusalem, and we cannot
doubt that its seven. lights were repre-
sentative Of the seven divine messengers
of Yahveh, who are the same as the
seven rulers In the starry heavens of the
more ancient religions of Mesopotamia.
ezekiel, the HEIR a. prophet (chap.
ix), speaks In his remarkable vision of
six men, every one holding In his hand
a slaughter weapon and of another man
with writer's inkhorn by his side. Our
Bible version speaks of him as among
: the SIX as though he were one of them.
but Hebrew scholars (Smend, CornIll
Berthelo) interpret the passage in the
sense that the man in linen who has not
a slaughter weapon but an inkhorn is to
be added to the other six, and Gunkel
recognizes in the vision a "reminiscences
Of the seven great planetary gods OF the
Babylonians. In his excavations at Nip
pur, Hilprecht has discovered many
traces of the exiled Jews and Ezekiel Is