more
conceivable in a globe covered with water, and consequently destitute
of the dry and powerfully radiating surfaces which land presents, and
receiving from without the rays, not of a solar orb, but of a
comparatively feeble and diffused luminous ether. The continued action
of these causes would gradually cool the earth's crust and its
incumbent waters, until the heat from without preponderated over that
from within, when the result stated in the text would be effected.

The statements of our primitive authority for this condition of the
earth might also be accounted for on the supposition that the
permanently gaseous part of the atmosphere did not at the period in
question exist in its present state, but that it was on the second day
actually elaborated and caused to take its place in separating the
atmospheric from the oceanic waters. The first is by far the more
probable view; but we may still apply to such speculations the words
of Elihu, the friend of Job:

"Stand still and consider the wonderful works of God.
Dost thou know when God disposes them,
And the lightning of his cloud shines forth?
Dost thou know the poising of the dark clouds,
The wonderful works of the Perfect in knowledge?"

We may now consider the words in which this great improvement in the
condition of the earth is recorded. The Hebrew term for the atmosphere
is _Rakiah_, literally, something expanded or beaten out--an expanse.
It is rendered in our version "firmament," a word conveying the notion
of support and fixity, and in the Septuagint "_Stereoma_," a word
having a similar meaning. The idea conveyed by the Hebrew word is not,
however, that of _strength_, but of _extent_; or as Milton--the most
accurate of expositors of these words--has it:

"The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure,
Transparent, elemental air, diffused
In circuit to the uttermost convex
Of this great round."

That this was really the way in which this word was understood by the
Hebrews appears from several passages of the Bible. Job says of God,
"Who alone _spreadeth_ out the heavens."[71] David, in the 104th
Psalm, which is a poetical paraphrase of the history of creation,
speaks of the Creator as "_stretching_ out the heavens as a curtain."
In later writers, as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, similar expressions
occur. The notion of a solid or arched firmament was probably
altogether remote from the minds of these writers. Such beliefs may
have prevai