This year we’re reading selections from the discussions and the spiritual insights of the evangelical ministers who regularly met in London as “The Eclectic Society.” I hope you will find the time to read further around the section, so I have found the original volume for you in Google Books/Google Play. You can find the text by clicking this link.
I came across a fascinating entry thirteen years after their first meeting when the Eclectic Society members discussed on November 11, 1811 a question proposed by Secretary John Pratt on how they might use the appearance of a previously unknown comet that had appeared in the skies of the northern hemisphere. When the Eclectic met on 11 November the comet was at its highest and brightest in the sky.
A bit of research and cross-referencing identified the comet in question. It was called “The Great Comet of 1811”. It was visible to the naked eye for about 260 days, a record it held for 186 years until the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. The Great Comet of 1811 was considered a portent that confirmed to Napoleon that he should invade Russia. Later being mentioned by Leo Tolstoy with the wrong year 1812 in his novel, War and Peace. Poet and artist William Blake witnessed it, producing several sketches and incorporating it in his famous panel The Ghost of a Flea. The year 1811 turned out to be particularly fine for wine production, and merchants marketed “Comet Wine” at high prices for many years afterwards. In North America, the comet became a sign for Native American tribes in the Midwest to join forces under the leadership of Chief Tecumseh to open warfare with the American colonists in the War of 1812.
The Eclectic question was one I was unprepared to answer. When I read how 1811 lost its first place in 1997 to Hale-Bopp, I recalled how unexpected signs in the heavens can trigger near apocalyptic destruction tinged with the diabolical. Not just Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia in 1812 or the then American frontier, but in our modern era. Who remembers when in March 1997 Hale-Bopp was reaching its brightest point in the night sky, 39 members of the cult Heaven's Gate committed mass suicide with the intention of teleporting to a spaceship they believed was flying behind the comet? Its leader believed himself to be Jesus’ successor and the “Present Representative” of Christ on Earth.
The pastors of the Eclectic saw profitable teaching fall into three areas. The first is to awaken us from our complacency concerning God’s sovereignty as Creator. The second is to humble us to acknowledge that his providence and rule over creation is hidden from our senses, thus should increase our confidence and trust in his governance. The third is to stir us to search the Scriptures to record how heavenly bodies are used, particularly as similes for the utter stability of the covenant of grace that God makes with his people. We also learn the littleness of humanity and the amazing condescension of God in the work of redemption.
Works of creation, wonderful as they are, are incapable of changing the heart. But the heart when changed may gain great encouragement from them.
