lves to-day except when writing from a purely technical
point of view. As said already, the Hebrews had probably not discovered
this explanation, and would certainly have not gone out of their way to
mention it in any of their Scriptures if they had.

One passage of great beauty has sometimes been quoted as if it contained
a reference to the earth's rotation, but when carefully examined it is
seen to be dealing simply with the apparent motion of the sun in the
course of the year and of the day.

"Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days;
And caused the dayspring to know his place;
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
That the wicked might be shaken out of it?
It is turned as clay to the seal;
And they stand as a garment."

The earth appears to be spoken of as being "turned" to the sun, the
dayspring; and this, we know, takes place, morning by morning, in
consequence of the diurnal rotation. But the last two lines are better
rendered in the Revised Version--

"It is changed as clay under the seal;
And _all things_ stand forth as a garment."

The ancient seals were cylinders, rolled over the clay, which, formless
before, took upon it the desired relief as the seal passed over it. So a
garment, laid aside and folded up during the night, is shapeless, but
once again takes form when the wearer puts it on. And the earth,
formless in the darkness, gains shape and colour and relief with the
impress upon it of the morning light.

It is quite clear that the Hebrews did not suppose that it was a new sun
that came up from the east each morning, as did Xenophanes and the
Epicureans amongst the Greeks. It was the same sun throughout. Nor is
there any idea of his hiding himself behind a mysterious mountain during
the night. "The sun," the Preacher tells us, "ariseth and the sun goeth
down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." The Hebrew was quite
aware that the earth was unsupported in space, for he knew that the Lord
"stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth
upon nothing." There was therefore nothing to hinder the sun passing
freely under the earth from west to east, and thus making his path, not
a mere march onward ending in his dissolution at sunset, but a complete
"circuit," as noted by the writer of the nineteenth Psalm.

The fierceness of the sun's heat in Palestine rendered sun-stroke a
serious danger. The little son of th