ambassador to
cast utter scorn on such idolatry. And what could be more apt than that
Joshua, commissioned to extirpate the corrupted race, should
miraculously be enabled, as it were, to bind their own gods to aid in
the destruction of such votaries?

Again: what should Joshua want with the moon for daylight, to help him
to rout the foes of God more fiercely? Why not, according to the
astronomical ignorance of those days, let her sail away, unconsorted by
the sun, far beyond the valley of Ajalon? There was a reason, here, of
secret, unobtruded science: if the sun stopped, the moon must stop too;
that is to say, both apparently: the fact being that the earth must, for
the while, rest on its axis. This, I say, is a latent, scientific hint;
and so, likewise, is the accompanying mention as a fact, that the Lord
immediately "rained great stones out of heaven" upon the flying host.
For would it not be the case that, if the diurnal rotation of earth were
suddenly to stop, the impetus of motion would avail to raise high into
the air by centrifugal force, and fling down again by gravity, such
unanchored things as fragments of rock?

Once more: our objector will here perhaps inquire, Why not then command
the earth to stop--and not the sun and moon? if thus probably Joshua or
his Inspirer knew better? Answer. Only let a reasonable man consider
what would have been the moral lesson both to Israelite and to
Canaanite, if the great successor of Moses had called out,
incomprehensibly to all, "Earth, stand thou still on thine axis;"--and
lo! as if in utter defiance of such presumption, and to vindicate openly
the heathen gods against the Jewish, the very sun and moon in heaven
stopped, and glared on the offender. I question whether such a noon-day
miracle might not have perverted to idolatry the whole believing host:
and almost reasonably too. The strictly philosophical terms would have
entirely nullified the whole moral influence. God in his word never
suffers science to hinder the progress of truth: a worldly philosophy
does this almost in every instance, darkening knowledge with a cloud of
words: but the science of the Bible is usually concealed in some
neighbouring hint quite handy to the record of the phenomena expressed
in ordinary language. In fact, for all common purposes, no astronomer
finds fault with such phrases as the moon rising, or the sun setting: he
speaks according to the appearance, though he knows perfectly well t