Page from Comstock’s “The Tongue of Time.”
Joseph Comstock’s The tongue of time, and star of the states: a system of human nature, with the phenomena of the heavens and earth. : American antiquities, remains of giants, geology, volcanoes, Egyptian and Indian magic, diet, dress, drinks, diseases, sleep, somnambulism, trances, resuscitation. : Also an account of persons with two souls, and of five persons who told colors by the touch is one of those texts which best speaks for itself.
For this week’s Digital Highlight, then, we present some excerpts from Comstock’s work.
From Chapter 1:
No book was ever written by any one man exactly so as to please another, much more, all others.
Dr. Goldsmith said, that the best way to please the whole world, was to try to please only one half of it. What is written in beauty, must be felt in a song.
Those writers have done most good by their writings, who have combined the pleasurable and the profitable,–who have exhibited the honey and the rose, and who have left the sting and the thorn to exhibit themselves.
From Chapter 2:
The knowledge of truth, in ancient times, was a prerogative of priests, or princes, or prophets. And in times more modern, it was held in chains, by popes and prelates.
From Chapter 4:
We cannot be censured for using the word chance, because we have the very highest authority for it in the parable of the good Samaritan.
We have often been surprised at the downright contradictions of Christian writers of some parts of the Bible. And it occurs so frequently either directly or indirectly, that we hardly read or hear a sermon without some degree of perturbation at witnessing it. We here particularly have in view, the flat denial of some, who say that there is no such thing as chance, when Jesus Christ says that there was.
And from Chapter 5:
The burial of the dead was a religious duty among the ancient Greeks. And indeed throughout the heathen world, the embalming, burial or burning, of deceased persons, was a matter of great importance.
Chapter 5 alone promises to cover “Of burying, embalming, and burning the dead. Of visions, voices, and supernatural impressions. Cromwell. Lord Herbert. Pausanias. Anaxagoras. Roscommon. A premonition defeated. Prediction of snow in June, fulfilled. The Indian and his tamed snake.”