th, or might have been shining with all his
brilliance at that very time, while not a single ray penetrated the
thick darkness of the vapors in which earth was clothed. But whether or
not, darkness must, from its very nature, be limited, both in space and
time. To speak of infinite and eternal darkness is as unscriptural as it
is absurd. The source of light is Uncreated and Eternal.[253]

Further--if my readers are not tired with these perpetual corrections of
careless reading and mistaken meaning--the light called into existence
in the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis is as evidently a
different word from _the two lights_ spoken of in the fourteenth verse,
as the singular is different from the plural; and the thing signified by
it is as distinct from the things spoken of in the fourteenth verse, as
the abstract is from the concrete; as, when I say of the first, "light
travels 195,000 miles per second," but mean a totally distinct subject
when I say, "Extinguish the lights." The Hebrew words are even more
palpably different, the word for _light_, in the third verse, being
_aur_, while the words for _the lights_, in the fourth day's work, are
_maurt_ and _at emaur_; words as distinct in shape and sense as our
English words, _light_ and _the lighthouses_.

The locality of the light of the third verse is, moreover, wholly
different from that of the light-bearers of the fourteenth verse. That
was placed on earth--these in heaven. It was of the earth alone the
writer was speaking, in the second verse; the earth alone is the subject
of the following verses. It was the darkness of earth that needed to be
illuminated; but there is not the remotest hint, in any portion of
Scripture, that any other planet or star was shrouded in gloom at this
time. But, on the contrary, we are most distinctly informed that the
wonders which God was performing in this world at that very time were
distinctly visible amid the cheerful illumination of other orbs, "when
the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for
joy,"[254] as this earth emerged from its temporary darkness. It was not
from the light of heaven, but out of this darkness of earth, that God,
who still draws the lightning's flash from the black thunder-cloud,
commanded the light to shine.[255] And it was upon this earth, and not
throughout the universe, that it produced alternate day and night. To
extend this command for the illumination of the darkened