Part 2

Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of this handiwork can still be seen.

Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals. Those coins are still shown in museums.

Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church.

Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet came. Those books are read to-day.

The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting records, which he who runs may read.

Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet.

WHY HALLEY’S COMET?

Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen shining over the City of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley, made a special study of it.

Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come again, long after he should be dead.

“If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.”

The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet.

From that day this Comet has been called after Halley.

Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return.

Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of their prediction.

This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet should be plainly seen after dark late this May.

What they predicted has come true.

THE TERROR OF THE COMET

“Canst thou fearless gaze Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze, That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star, Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?” —Sylvester.

So long as the memory of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has always been taken as a just cause for dread.

In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed, fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers.

Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief.

The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap. XXI., Verse 10-11:

“Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from Heaven.”

In the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Chap. VIII., Verse 10) we read:

“There fell from Heaven a great star burning as a torch,” and again (Chap. XII., Verse 3):

“There was seen another sign in Heaven, and behold a great red dragon ... and his tail draweth a third part of the stars in Heaven. And behold the third woe cometh quickly.” (Chap. XII., Verse 14.)

The “flaming sword” in the hands of the angel of the Lord, when Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many sacred writers hold, can only be interpreted as a Comet.

“For the Almighty set before the door Of th’ holy park a seraphim that bore A warning sword, whose body shined bright A flaming Comet in the midst of night.” —Todd.