nests: the other, relating to the English king
touching for the evil, seems remarkably suited to the mind of Shakspeare.

C. B.

* * * * *

"SUN, STAND THOU STILL UPON GIBEON!"

(JOSH. x. 12.)

(Vol. iii., p. 137.)

The observations of I. K. upon this passage have obviously proceeded from a
praiseworthy wish to remove what has appeared to some minds to be
inconsistent with that perfect truth which they expect to be the result of
divine inspiration. I. K. doubtless believes that God put it into the heart
of Joshua to utter a command for the miraculous continuance of daylight.
But why should he expect the inspiration to extend so far as to instruct
Joshua respecting the manner in which that continuance was to be brought
about? Joshua was not to be the worker of the miracle. It was to be wrought
by Him who can as easily stop any part of the stupendous machinery of His
universe, as we can stop the wheels of a watch. Joshua was left to speak,
as he naturally would, in terms well fitted to make those around him
understand, and tell others, that the sun and moon, whom the defeated
people notoriously worshipped, were so far from being able to protect their
worshippers, that they were made to promote their destruction at the
bidding of Joshua, whom God had commissioned to be the scourge of
idolaters. And when the inspired recorder of the miracle wrote that "the
sun stood still," he told what the eyes saw, with the same truth as I might
say that the sun _rose_ before seven this morning. Inspiration was not
bestowed to make men wise in astronomy, but wise unto salvation.

Those who think that the inspired penman should have said "the earth stood
still," in order to give a perfectly true account of the miracle, have need
to be told, or would do well to remember, that the stopping of the diurnal
revolution of the earth, in order to keep the sun and moon's apparent
places the same, would not involve a cessation of its motion in its orbit,
still less a cessation of that great movement of the whole solar system, by
which it is now more than conjectured that the sun, the moon, and the earth
are all carried on together at the rate of above 3700 miles in an hour; so
that to say "the earth stood still" would be liable to the same objection,
viz., that of not being astronomically true. I. K. carries his notion of
the "inseparable connexion" of the sun "with all planetary motion" too far,
when he suppose