these men call it); but then, had this been obtained by the dint of the sword only, it From Josh. 1. would have been imputed to their superior valour and strength, and deemed no more to the end. than the common fate of war; or had there nothing more remarkable happened in it than a shower of large hail stones, this might have been thought owing to chance or natural causes, or at most been only known in that neighbourhood; whereas, the stopping of the two great luminaries in the height of their career (which could not but be universally seen and felt), was enough to convince these poor deluded people, that the gods whom they trusted in were subject to the God of Israel, and at the same time deter the Israelites from falling into the like idolatry, from (a) "kissing their hand (as Job expresses that form of worship) when they beheld the sun as it shined, or the moon walking in its brightness :"-To convince them, I say, that (b) "the gods of the heathens were but idols, and that it is the Lord who made and who ruleth in the heavens." It cannot be questioned but that the fame of this miracle raised Joshua's reputation to an high degree, nor (c) can we see any inconvenience in admitting that this was a more remarkable miracle than any which Moses ever did; because it does not therefore follow, that Joshua, in other respects, was a person of greater eminence than Moses. Our blessed Saviour tells his disciples, (d) " Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father:" And yet he gives us to understand, in another place, that (e)" the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his Lord." Elisha was the servant and attendant on the prophet Elijah, and yet it is certain that, according to our estimate, he did more and greater miracles than his master did; for even (f)" after his death his body prophesied (as the son of Sirach expresses it); he did wonders in his life, and at his death were his works marvellous." And therefore we need not account it a strange thing, that we find Joshua here doing a miracle which in our opinion surpasses all that ever Moses did: Because God's making use of the ministry of one man rather than another, in his surpassing works of wonder, is no certain proof of the man's superior merit; since in this, as well as any other dispensation, he is at perfect liberty (g) "to choose (if he pleases) the weak things of the world, to confound the things that are mighty; yea, and base things, and things that are not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." But, after all, we talk of greater and less miracles, when in reality there are no such degrees of comparison between them. For what is it that makes us account one work of this kind greater than another? If it be because we conceive more difficulty in the doing it, this, with regard to God (the sole author of all miracles), is a great mistake, forasmuch as all things are equally easy to his Almighty power. The motion and other properties of every created being were at first impressed by him; (h)" He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast ;" and, with the same facility, he can retard or suspend their operations, for they have no power of resisting the very first beck of his will. Since every thing, therefore, that is contrary to the ordinary course of nature requires the interposition of an Almighty power, and whatever is not impossible in itself is equally possible to God; with him there can be no difference between passing the Jordan and passing the Red Sea, between drawing water out of the stony rock and arresting the sun in the firmament of heaven; for (i) "whatever he pleased that did he, in heaven, and in the earth, in the sea, and in all deep places." (a) Job xxxi. 26. (a) John xiv. 12. (h) Psal. xxxiii. 9. (b) Psal. xcvi. 5. (e) Matth. x. 24. (i) Psal. cxxxv. 6. (c) Calmet's Dissert. sur le Commandment, &c. (ƒ) Ecclus. xlviii. 13, 14. (g) 1 Cor. i. 27, &c. &c. or 3803. or 1608. APPENDIX TO DISSERTATION I. OF THE SHOWER OF STONES, AND THE SUN'S STANDING STILL. A. M. 2553, [INCE the days of our author discoveries have been made in chemistry and meteorAnt. Chris. ology, which remove every objection which can be made to the former of these mi1451, &c. racles; whilst a little closer attention than he seems to have paid to the meaning of the words in which the latter is recorded, together with an accurate notion of what is meant by the phrase-laws of nature, may certainly remove the greatest difficulties, with which the standing still of the sun is thought to be encumbered. That a heavy shower of hailstones-especially of such magnitude as those which our, author says have fallen in several places-was sufficient to effect the destruction of the army of the confederate kings of Canaan, will be readily granted; but hailstones of five pounds weight would themselves be miraculous, whilst it is by no means certain that the word 2 signifies hail in this place. Parkhurst suspects that its radical meaning is congelation or the like, because in Arabic it is used for intense cold, and also for firmness and stability; but there may be firmness and stability, where there is no intense cold; and in one of the instances which he gives (a) of its signifying congealed rain or hail, we know that there was much heat, for there was "fire mingled with the hail," and fire that ran along upon the ground." I do not by this mean to say that there are not occasionally showers of hail during a thunder storm, for every one knows that there are; but I do mean to say that the hail with which the fire was mingled in Egypt and ran along the ground, appears from its dreadful effects, much liker those showers of metallic stones in a state of ignition which have been lately seen to fall in various countries, than what is usually meant by the word hail. The reality of such meteors is now so well established, that it would be a waste of the reader's time to multiply instances of them. They have fallen in every quarter of the globe; they have been analysed by various chemists, who had very different objects in view; they have all been found to differ in many respects from every other known stone; and they have all resembled each other, being all composed of the same ingredients. Mr Howard published a dissertation on these meteoric bodies in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1802 and the proofs which he produced, that they fell from the atmosphere are perfectly irresistible. Most of them which have been seen in the act of falling, have been preceded by the appearance of luminous bodies or meteors. These meteors burst with an explosion, and then the shower of stones falls to the ground. Sometimes the stones continue luminous till they sink into the earth; but most commonly their luminousness disappears at the time of the explosion. These meteors move in a direction nearly horizontal; seem to approach towards the earth before they explode; and when found, if found immediately after their fall, are always hot. Their size differs from a .ew ounces to several tons; they are always covered with a black crust; and in many cases they smell strongly of sulphur (b)." A principal ingredient of them is iron in a metallic state scattered in grains through the stone; and I have seen a sabre, which, as I was assured, on authority that I had no right to call in question, was made of the iron (converted into steel) of one of these stones, which fell in a prodigious shower at Benares (a) Exod. ix. 18-27. (b) Thomson's System of Chemistry, ed. 3d. vol. 4. p. 163, &c. on the 19th of December 1798. The number of similar stones that have burst from From Josh. i. individual fire-balls, since the attention of men of science was first drawn to this sub- to the end. ject, has been very great; but besides these and the shower at Benares just mentioned, we can now, without hesitation, admit the reality of the two showers of stones quoted by our author from Livy, as well as of the shower of iron, which we are told by Pliny fell in Lucania during the year preceding the defeat of Crassus. To all these phenomena we have parallels in modern times so well authenticated as to remove all ground for doubt. Thus, we have a shower of about 1200 stones, of which one was 20, and another 60 lbs. near Padua in Italy in the year 1510; a shower of sand, which continued for 15 hours in the Adriatic, April 6th 1719; an extensive shower of stones in the environs of Agen, July 24th 1790; a shower of about 12 stones at Sienna in Tuscany, July 1794; a shower of stones at Plann, near Tabor, Bohemia, July 3d 1753; a shower of stones at Barboutan, near Roquefort, July 1789*; and, may we not add, the shower of stones, which destroyed the army of the confederated kings of Canaan, near Gibeon, in the days of Joshua, as the most ancient phenomenon of the kind on record? I confess, that I am much more inclined to believe that the stones employed on that occasion, were such meteoric stones as those just mentioned, than a shower of ordinary hailstones. Hailstones are not only natural, but common phenomena, and therefore were not calculated to make such an impression on the minds either of the Israelites or of the Gibeonites as a shower of fire-balls or ignited stones. There seems indeed to be little room for doubt but that the one kind of stone is formed in the atmosphere by some natural process as well as the other; but in what manner or by what law of nature the ignited metallic stones are formed, is, I believe, equally unknown to the philosopher and to the peasant. One of the most scientific chemists of the present day, after describing a great variety of such metallic stones, which are to be found in every quarter of the globe, says, that "we may consider them all as fragments of fire-balls, which have burst in the atmosphere; but that the origin and physical cause of those fire-balls will, perhaps, for ages, baffle all the attempts of philosophers to investigate them." The pouring down of such a shower of stones, by whatever process formed, on the army of the Canaanites confederated against Israel, was a miracle admirably calculated to convince the Israelites and Gibeonites of the superiority of Jehovah, over the gods of Canaan, among whom was certainly reckoned (a)" the prince of the power of the air;" but a shower of such hailstones as our author thinks were thrown down, though it would in reality have been equally miraculous, would not have been so striking, nor of course so proper for serving that purpose. The standing still of the SUN and MOON-the two greatest gods of the whole heathen world-to witness, as it were, the destruction of their own votaries, and even to aid the Israelites in the work of their destruction, was another stupendous miracle, which must have produced the happiest effects on the minds of all who beheld it, and who had not like Balaam and Ahab absolutely "sold themselves to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord." It is in the highest degree probable that there was in Gibeon a temple to the sun-the king of heaven-from which oracles were given out; and * For a proof of all these facts, and many more of the same kind, see Thomson's Chemistry ubi supra. (a) See Whitby's note on Ephes. ii. 2. "That Gibeon had a relation to the sun, we may judge from its name; for Giba (21) signifies a hill, and the term ON is well known to denote the sun. * da šoli "Halos. Cyril. in Hoseam. vdioliv xala *Ων δε ἐστιν ὁ Ἥλιος. avtous & Hλos. Ibid. p. 145. Giba-on, therefore, or Gibaon, is literally the hill or high place of the sun. In like manner Ajalon, which from should be expressed ATA-LUN, denotes the place, or shrine of the moon; for Ài or Aia, in the language of ancient &c. or 3803. 1451, &c or 1608. A. M. 2553, perhaps there was another to the moon-the queen of heaven-in the valley of Ajalon. Ant. Chris. That the Gibeonites had joined their forces to Joshua's, and were with him in great numbers when he arrested the sun and moon in their courses, there can be no doubt; and when they saw the two greatest of their gods obey the voice of the servant of Jehovah, and stand still, to witness the utter destruction of those by whom they had been hitherto most zealously worshipped, that people must have been convinced of the vanity of their former religion, and the Israelites confirmed in their belief of their own. When the two luminaries were arrested in their courses, the sun was probably in the horizon with his rays gilding the turrets-perhaps the turrets of the temple-of Gibeon; and the moon shining faintly on the vale of Ajalon, which was too low to be touched by the solar rays then passing over the country in a horizontal direction. Whilst things were in this state, Joshua, we are told, spoke to the Lord; and we may suppose the purport of his address to have been this-" God of all victory, may the sun, by thy command, stand still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, till we have avenged ourselves of thine and our enemies. May thy people, from such an instance of thy superiority over the gods of the heathen, be confirmed in their duty, and worship thee alone. And may the Gibeonites, by this display of thy power, be weaned from their idolatry, and see the vanity and impotence of their base deities. May the sun be compelled by thee to linger in the horizon, shining on the temples of Gibeon, and the moon to stand over the valley of Ajalon, that these two greatest deities of the nations, beholding, as it were, the overthrow of their votaries, may bear witness to the truth, and proclaim to all the earth-" The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God." That there are difficulties in the scriptural account of this singular miracle, no man, I suppose, will presume to deny ; but the account of every miracle must be attended with difficulties to him, who attempts to account for the immediate operations of God by the principles of a superficial philosophy. A miracle may be defined—an effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or, a sensible deviation from the known laws of nature. Thus, the sun has been known, with this single exception, to rise and set regularly, or, to use more accurate language, the earth has performed one complete revolution on its axis, during the space of twenty-four hours, ever since the beginning of the world; and therefore this sun rising and setting, or this diurnal revolution of the earth, is said to be performed by an established law of nature, and a law of the utmost importance. All this is perfectly true, and the language in which it is expressed, is sufficiently accurate; but perhaps it is often used by those, who have never asked themselves what is meant by an established law of nature. To law, in the proper sense of the word, as it directs the conduct of men and other rational beings, inanimate matter cannot be subjected. To force, it may; but what are the forces which move the heavenly bodies, and keep them steady in their respective courses? The common reply is attraction and repulsion, or centripetal and centrifugal forces; and to this reply no objection can be made; but the question recurs-What are those forces, and whence do they proceed? We have no other notion of force than what we derive from our own consciousness, when with some exertion we ourselves move a heavy body; but inanimate matter can exert no such force, and to talk of any other kind of force, is to employ words that have no meaning. The only force, of which we know any thing, is either volition or what is the necessary consequence of volition; but the unconscious earth is incapable of volition. What then is the cause of the earth's diurnal revolution round its own axis, and of its annual revolution round the sun? To this question no other answer can be given, than that such was the will of God, when he formed the present beautiful system out of chaos. When we contemplate the orbits in which the heavenly bodies move, we soon discover that they are of the same nature with those which are described on earth, by bodies fastened to a centre by some flexible chord, and at the same time projected by another force in a direction nearly at right angles to that From Josh. i. chord. Being perfectly acquainted with these two forces, and capable of reasoning about to the end. their combination with mathematical precision, we suppose them to be the very forces which produce the motions of the heavenly bodies round their respective centres, and reason on that hypothesis with absolute certainty as well as with great advantage to ourselves. A moment's reflection however must convince us, that the forces which produce the motions of the sun and planets are not exactly the same-or at least not applied in precisely the same manner-with the forces by which we produce similar motions on the surface of the earth; for the planets are not tied to their respective centres by a flexible chord or chain, as a stone whirled round in a sling is fastened to the hand of him that whirls it, nor is there the smallest reason to suppose that they were in the beginning actually projected from the places in which they were formed, as a cannon-ball is projected from the cannon by the force of gunpowder. The cause of their motions must therefore be ultimately resolved into the fiat of the Almighty, who, when he formed this universe, willed that the several bodies of which it consists, should roll each round its own axis, and all revolve round their respective centres in certain curves and in certain periods of time. That volition having continued steady, has supported, as it originally produced, the established constitution and course of things, and in fact constitutes what is called the laws of nature; and this being the case, we may rest assured that no deviation from the known laws of nature can ever take place for a trifling or unimportant purpose, since it implies a change-or something analagous to a changeof volition in him, with whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning. God, however, could as easily have willed from the beginning, that the earth should occupy the space of thirty-six, or forty-eight, hours, in the performance of its diurnal revolution, as that it should perform that revolution in the shorter space of twenty-four hours; and all things being at once known to him, it must have been part of his original plan to arrest the rotation of the earth on its axis, whenever he should perceive that such a deviation from the usual course of nature, would promote the great object which he had in view, when he formed the earth and peopled it with rational inhabitants. But it will be said that, although God could easily stop for twelve, or twenty-four, hours the diurnal revolution of the earth, the sudden cessation of so rapid a motion as that of about a thousand miles in the hour, would have produced such a reaction, as must have not only destroyed all animals and vegetables, but have levelled with the ground the most solid buildings, and even have overturned the Alps and the Andes from their bases! This is true, if God could be supposed to have performed his work by halves; but surely it will be allowed that he who, by a volition, could stop the motion of the earth, could, at the same time, prevent the reaction which would otherwise have followed. It does not, however, appear that an actual cessation of the motion of the earth was necessary to produce all that happened according to the narrative of the sacred historian. The radical import of the word, which some take to be silence, and others, as our translators, stillness, is equable, level, uniform, even, parallel; and the words , which, in our version, are rendered "in the midst of heaven," signifying in that division of the heavens which is made by the visible horizon; from all which it follows that the sun must have been in the horizon just ready to set, when Joshua issued the command which appeared to arrest him in his course. The word wow, which we render sun, signifies rather the solar light than the orb of the sun; and therefore the whole passage might be thus rendered-" Solar light remain thou upon Gibeon, and be thou moon stayed or supported over the valley of Ajalon; and the solar light remained, and the moon was stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the solar light lingered VOL. II. G |