hat
the earth is the cause of it, and not the sun or moon. Carry this out in
Joshua's case.

On the whole, the miracle was very plain, very comprehensible, and very
probable. It had good cause: for Canaan felt more confidence in the
protection of his great and glorious Baal, than stiff-necked Judah in
his barely-seen divinity: and surely it was wise to vindicate the true
but invisible God by the humiliation of the false and far-seen idol.
This would constitute to all nations the quickly-rumoured proof that
Jehovah of the Israelites was God in heaven above as well as on the
earth beneath. And, considering the peculiar idolatries of Canaan, it
seems to me that no miracle could have been better placed and better
timed--in other words, anteriorly more probable--than the command of
obedience to the sun and to the moon. I suppose that few persons who
read this book will be unaware, that the circumstance is alluded to as
well in that honest heathen, old Herodotus, as in the learned Jew
Josephus. The volumes are not near me for reference to quotations: but
such is fact: it will be found in Herodotus, about the middle of
Euterpe, connected with an allusion to the analogous case of Hezekiah.

No miracles, on the whole (to take one after-view of the matter), could
have been better tested: for two armies (not to mention all surrounding
countries) must have seen it plainly and clearly: if then it had never
occurred, what a very needless exposure of the falsity of the Jewish
Scriptures! These were open, published writings, accessible to all:
Cyrus and Darius and Alexander read them, and Ethiopian eunuchs;
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, with all other nations of the earth, had
free access to those records. Only imagine if some recent history of
England, Adolphus's, or Stebbing's, contained an account of a certain
day in George the Fourth's reign having had twenty-four hour's daylight
instead of the usual admixture; could the intolerable falsehood last a
minute? Such a placard would be torn away from the records of the land
the moment a rash hand had fixed it there. But, if the matter were
fact, how could any historian neglect it?--In one sense, the very
improbability of such a marvel being recorded, argues the probability of
it having actually occurred.

Much more might here be added: but our errand is accomplished, if any
stumbling-block had been thus easily removed from some erring thinker's
path. Surely, we have given him some