d the command, we should never have
heard of the miracle; for, as the earth rotates at the rate of a
thousand miles an hour, the concussion produced by such a stoppage would
have projected Joshua, and Israelites, and Amorites, beyond the moon, to
pursue their quarrel among the fixed stars.

When we hear men of some respectability bring forward such stuff, we are
constrained to wonder, not merely were they ever at school, but if they
ever traveled in a railroad car, or whether they suppose their hearers
to be so ignorant of the most common facts as to believe that there is
no way of bringing a carriage to a stand but by a sudden jerk, or that
God is more stupid than the brakeman of an express train. We will do
them the justice, however, to say, that they did not invent it, but
merely shut their eyes, and opened their mouths, and swallowed it for
philosophy, because they found it in the writings of an Infidel scoffer,
and of a Neological professor of theology[305]--an edifying example of
Infidel credulity!

Let it be noticed, that in neither of these texts, nor in any other
portion of Scripture, does the Bible say a single word about the
revolution of the sun _round the earth_, as the common center of the
universe; on which, however, the whole stress of the objection is laid.
The passages do not prove what they are adduced to prove. They speak of
the sun's motion, and of the sun's orbit, _but they do not say that the
earth is the center of that orbit_. These texts, then, do not prove the
Author of the Bible ignorant of the system of the universe.

The objection is based upon utter ignorance of one of the most important
and best attested discoveries of modern astronomy; the grand motion of
the sun and solar system through the regions of space, and the
dependence of the rotation of all the orbs composing it, upon that
motion. It is not the Author of the Bible who is ignorant of the
discoveries of modern astronomy--when he speaks of the orbit of the sun,
and his race from one end of the heavens to the other, and of the need
of a miraculous interposition to stop his course for a single day--but
his correctors, who have ventured to decry the statements of a Book
which commands the respect of such astronomers as Herschel and Rosse,
while ignorant of those elements of astronomy which they might have
learned from a perusal of the books used by their children in our common
schools. For the benefit of such, however, I will presen