Let us look a little more closely at this Abraham-and-Isaac myth. Abraham was the personification of Saturn, the god of Time, while Isaac was the personification of the Sun. Abraham took Isaac up to Hebron—which means _union or alliance_, and clearly indicates a union of the ecliptic and equinoctial line—the very point at which the Ram of the vernal equinox passed by, or, as might be poetically said, was caught in a cloud or bush; so that the whole story was written long ages before in the celestial heavens, and emblazoned in the skies at the return of each vernal equinox. Writers on astro-theology point out details at great length to support the symbolic interpretation, but it is enough for pur purpose to merely give the keynote. Let the fact be specially noted that the names of the patriarchs have an astrological meaning, and that the twelve sons of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, who became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, have distinctly astrological characters, fully indicated in Jacob’s dying blessing on his sons (Gen. 49) and in the corresponding “Song of Moses” (Deut. 33), on the banner carried by the different tribes in their mythical march from Egypt to Canaan; and that on the breastplate of the officiating high priest the jewels correspond to the celestial signs of the solar zodiac; and although Jacob had children by several different women and was a first-class Mormon, his twelve sons are made to correspond with the twelve months of the year and the twelve signs of the zodiac. This fact is admitted by the orthodox author of _The Gospel in the Stars_. His daughters are not considered worthy of notice, as that would have spoiled the riddle. The philology and etymology of the name _Jacob_ has suggestions of the serpent; and from his history he must have been a snaky fellow from the first to the last. He was born with his hand upon his brother’s “heel,” and he managed to cheat him out of his share of his mother’s affections, and lied to his father, and conspired with his mother to rob Esau, his brother, of his “blessing.” The stories of Laban and Leah and Rachel all conform to the symbolic rather than the literal hypothesis, as well as Jacob’s vision of the ladder, and his wrestling-match with the angel, when he openly obtained the astrological name of the children of Saturn—Israel. It must be admitted that the allegorical hypothesis relieves the patriarchs of the charge of many mean things, such as the heartless manner in which Abram treated Hagar when Sarah got jealous, and the manner in which he treated Sarah herself when he lied to the king through a selfish cowardice and gave his wife over to the lusts of the monarch Abimelech, who was (or one bearing his name) deceived by Isaac in regard to Rebekah by a similar trick (Gen. 26:1). Lot, the nephew of Abraham, was guilty of a meaner and more unmanly act when he himself proposed to give over his two virgin