e Pagans draggled
in her skirts.

_Idolatry._--It is not only a mere blind crotchet of Isaiah's
(Jeremiah's?) to ridicule idols--utterly wide of any real imperfection,
but also it misses all that really might be bad. The true evil is not to
kindle the idea of Apollo by an image or likeness, but to worship
Apollo, _i.e._, a god to be in some sense false--belonging to a system
connected with evil. That may be bad; but there can be no separate evil
in reanimating the idea of this Apollo by a picture.

I have observed many times, but never could understand in any rational
sense, the habit of finding a confirmation of the Bible in mere
archaeologic facts occasionally brought to light and tallying with the
Biblical records. As in the Pharaonic and Egyptian usages, and lately in
the case of Nimrod, a great collateral confirmation of Ezekiel has been
fancied. But how? Supposing Ezekiel to have recited accurately the
dimensions of Nineveh, how should _that_ make him a true prophet? Or
supposing him a false one, what motive should that furnish for
mismeasuring Nineveh? The Gospels appear to have been written long after
the events, and when controversies or variations had arisen about them,
they have apparently been modified and shaped to meet those disputes.

_The sun stands still._ I am persuaded that this means no such
incredible miracle as is ordinarily imagined. The interpretation arises
from misconceiving an Oriental expression, and a forcible as well as
natural one. Of all people the Jews could least mistake the nature of
the sun and moon, as though by possibility they could stand in a
relation to a particular valley: that the sun could have stood still in
Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon. Since they viewed sun and moon as two
great lights, adequated and corresponding to day and night, that alone
shows that they did not mean any objective solstice of the hour, for
else why in Ajalon? Naturally it would be a phenomenon chiefly made
known to the central sanctity of that God whose miraculous interposition
had caused so unknown an arrest of ordinary nature; Jerusalem was not
then known, it was Jebus, a city of Jebusites; and the fact which
subsequently created its sanctity did not occur till more than four
centuries afterwards (viz., on the threshing-floor of Araunah). But
Shiloh existed, and Horeb, and Sinai, and the graves of the Patriarchs.
And all those places would have expounded the reference of the miracle,
would