philosopher, whose thoughtless illustration of
Scripture is all the more valuable, that it is evidently unintentional.

"M. Otto Struve, Mr. Bond, and Sir David Brewster, are agreed that
Saturn's third ring is fluid, that this is not of very recent formation,
and that it is not subject to rapid change. And they have come to the
extraordinary conclusion, that the inner border of the ring has, since
the day of Huygens, been gradually approaching to the body of Saturn,
and that we may expect, sooner or later--perhaps in some dozen years--to
see the rings united with the body of the planet. _With this deluge
impending, Saturn would scarcely be a very eligible residence for men,
whatever it might be for dolphins._"[286]

Knowing, as we most certainly do, that the fluid envelopes of our own
planet were once exceedingly different from the present,[287] here is a
possibility quite sufficient to stop the mouth of the scoffer. Let him
show that God did not, or prove that he could not, suspend a similar
series of oceans over the earth, or cease to pronounce a universal
deluge impossible.

2. That sublime ode, in which Deborah describes _the stars in their
courses as fighting against Sisera_[288] has been rescued from the grasp
of modern scoffers, by the progress of astronomy. It has been alleged as
lending its support to the delusions of judicial astrology; by one class
desiring to damage the Bible as a teacher of superstition, and by
another to help their trade. The Bible reader will doubtless be greatly
surprised to hear it asserted, that the Bible lends its sanction to this
antiquated, and, as he thinks, exploded superstition. He knows how
expressly the Bible forbids God's people to have anything to do with
it, or with its heathenish professors. "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not
the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven, for
the heathen are dismayed at them."[289] And they will be still more
surprised to learn, that those who object against the Bible, that it
ascribes a controlling influence to the stars, are firm believers in
Reichenbach's discovery of _odyle_; an influence from the heavenly
bodies so spiritual and powerful, that they imagine it able to govern
the world, instead of God Almighty.[290]

The passage thus variously abused is a description, in highly poetic
strains, of the battle between the troops of Israel and those of Sisera;
of the defeat of the latter, and of an earthquake and tempest