i. as having been created on the first day, but the sun not until the
fourth. The order is entirely appropriate from an astronomical point of
view, for we know that our sun is not the only source of light, since it
is but one out of millions of stars, many of which greatly exceed it in
splendour. Further, most astronomers consider that our solar system
existed as a luminous nebula long ages before the sun was formed as a
central condensation.

But the true explanation of the creation of light being put first is
probably this--that there might be no imagining that, though gross solid
bodies, like earth and sea, sun and moon might require a Creator, yet
something so ethereal and all-pervading as light was self-existent, and
by its own nature, eternal. This was a truth that needed to be stated
first. God is light, but light is not God.

The other references to the sun in Scripture do not call for much
comment. Its apparent unchangeableness qualifies it for use as an
expression for eternal duration, as in the seventy-second, the Royal,
Psalm, "They shall fear Thee as long as the sun and moon endure;" and
again, "His name shall endure for ever: His name shall be continued as
long as the sun." And again, in the eighty-ninth Psalm, it is said of
David: "His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before
Me."

The daily course of the sun from beyond the eastern horizon to beyond
the western gives the widest expression for the compass of the whole
earth. "The mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the
earth, from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof." "From
the rising of the sun, unto the going down of the same, the Lord's name
is to be praised." The sun's rays penetrate everywhere. "His going forth
is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and
there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." Whilst in the Book of
Ecclesiastes, the melancholy words of the Preacher revert over and over
again to that which is done "under the sun." "What profit hath a man of
all his labour which he taketh under the sun?"

It should be noted that this same Book of Ecclesiastes shows a much
clearer idea of the sun's daily apparent motion than was held by many of
the writers of antiquity. There is, of course, nowhere in Scripture any
mention of the rotation of the earth on its axis as the mechanical
explanation of the sun's daily apparent motion; any more than we should
refer to it ourse