In so vast a case the obscure sympathy should stretch, Janus-like, each
way. And an objection of the same kind to the rainbow, considered as
the sign or seal by which God attested his covenant in bar of all
future deluges, may be parried in something of the same way. It was not
then first created--true: but it was then first selected by preference,
amongst a multitude of natural signs as yet unappropriated, and then
first charged with the new function of a message and a ratification to
man. Pretty much the same theory, that is, the same way of accounting
for the natural existence without disturbing the supernatural
functions, may be applied to the great constellation of the other
hemisphere, called the Southern Cross. It is viewed popularly in South
America, and the southern parts of our northern hemisphere, as the
great banner, or gonfalon, held aloft by Heaven before the Spanish
heralds of the true faith in 1492. To that superstitious and ignorant
race it costs not an effort to suppose, that by some synchronizing
miracle, the constellation had been then specially called into
existence at the very moment when the first Christian procession,
bearing a cross in their arms, solemnly stepped on shore from the
vessels of Christendom.
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