ies: we will follow with the most
unfaltering faith, and receive with joy these proofs of his eternal
power and Godhead. Let the astronomer raise his telescope, and reflect
on our astonished eyes the light which flashed from morning stars, on
the day of this earth's first existence, or even the rays which began to
travel from distant suns, millions of years ere the first morning dawned
on our planet: we will place them as jewels in the crown of Him who is
the bright and morning star. They shall shed a sacred luster over the
pages of the Bible, and give new beauties of illustration to its
majestic symbols. But never will geologist penetrate, much less exhaust,
the profundity of its mysteries, nor astronomer attain, much less
explore, the sublimity of that beginning revealed in its pages; for eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man
to conceive, either the antiquity, or the nature, or the duration of the
things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Human science
will never be able to reach the Bible era of creation. It is placed in
an antiquity beyond the power of human calculation, in that sublime
sentence with which it introduces mortals to the Eternal: "_In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth._"

3. The third objection we have named is equally unfounded. _The Bible
nowhere teaches that the sky is a solid sphere, to which the stars are
fixed, and which revolves with them around the earth._ I know that
Infidels allege that the word _firmament_, in the first chapter of
Genesis, conveys this meaning. It does not. Neither the English word,
nor the Hebrew original, has any such meaning. As to the meaning of the
English word, I adhere to the dictionary. Infidels must not be allowed
to coin uncouth meanings for words, different from the known usage of
the English tongue, for which Webster is undeniable authority. His
definition of _firmament_ is, "The region of the air; the sky, or
heavens. In Scripture, the word denotes an expanse--a wide extent; for
such is the signification of the Hebrew word, coinciding with _regio_,
_region_, and _reach_. The original, therefore, does not convey the
sense of solidity, but of stretching--extension. The great arch or
expanse over our heads, in which are placed the atmosphere and the
clouds, and in which the stars _appear_ to be placed, and are _really_
seen." The word _firmament_, then, conveys no such meaning as the
Infidel alleg