Ancient Poetic Phrases. 155 sky; the intelligent knew of the connection between cloud and rain; none but the dullest would imagine that the sky was solid. The phrases "windows of heaven" (Gen. vii. 11), “foundations" (2 Sam. xxii. 8), "pillars" (Job xxxi. 11), "doors (Ps. lxxviii. 23), have led unpoetic persons to imagine that Moses and the Hebrews really did think of the firmament as a solid vault in which fowls fly and winds blow. The ancient sages were not so simple. These poetic expressions, and others like that of Job (xxxvii. 18), "The sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking-glass," are sometimes a contrast, sometimes a comparison. Job meant that the sky, though rare, fine, and spread out, is established and strong as metal. Ancient worthies had a better understanding of things than our modern conceit gives them credit for. They knew that the earth was hung upon nothing (Job xxvi. 7), and when they spoke of it as firm and not to be moved, it was in the sense of being sustained by the Almighty. They knew of the sea as a fountain to water the whole earth (Amos ix. 6); of the rivers returning to it again (Eccl. i. 7); of the firmament as an expanse; of light existing apart from the sun; and of stars innumerable, or, as an astronomer would say, "Like grains of sand on the sea shore." They accounted the present as but a momentary space in the interval between two eternities, earning blessings or cursings for ever, according to man's efforts to do good and hate evil. They thought of the future as a home of rest from evil, a place of everlasting beauty, in which the whole creation should praise God. They saw living things and men in a vast procession, not urged by blind force, but guided by Divine Intelligence to higher activities and more glorious spheres. The knowledge of ancient sages was indeed wonderful; it often pierced the outward form and natural aspect of things to discern their inner meaning and power. Inspired men regarded God as the One who bound up the thick clouds with strength, that the waters might not rend them (Job xxxvi. 8); who apportioned the atmosphere, made a balance for the winds, a decree for the rain, and a path for the lightning (Job xxviii. 24-27). Solomon, moreover, or whosoever it was that wrote in his name, had understanding of the wind going toward the south, the turning about unto the north, and why the fulness of the sea was not over-fulness (Eccl. i. 6, 7). Science, since those old-world days, has weighed the wind, traced its path, and found that it turneth about to the north, whirling in continual currents. We know now that an atmospheric pressure of fifteen tons is on every man, and that, if it were not so, our lungs could not well use the air. It is a physical fact, that the air, by a secret process, raises and suspends water, eight hundred times heavier than itself; and in quantity so vast that if it descended at once upon the earth, the world would be deluged; and by ascent so graduated that the earth be not unduly parched, nor animal and vegetable destroyed. Those ancients were not ignorants, and, great as is the advance of modern science, no man has exceeded Solomon in wisdom, or Job in patience, or convinced Moses of folly for saying, "God made the firmament, and Idivided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament." The genius of ancient worthies was not less marvellous than their knowledge. There were sparkles of spirit and gleams of genius which remind us of, while they surpass, the best and purest portions of the classic page. As a literary production, there is nothing in any ancient or modern book that equals in simplicity, or beauty, or grandeur, the account by Moses of creation. The Book of Job cannot be styled less than perfect; the Psalms are matchless; Isaiah is often sublime. The whole Bible remains ever fresh by the life that is in it; creates new interest in men of every age, not only by the letter, but specially by the spirit; for it is adapted to the various stages of history, and illustrates the great principles of moral government. It possesses a wider influence than when originally spoken, and the charm of novelty as were it newly found. It is rendered more romantic than the romance thrown into it by Divinity of origin, through the sacred, subduing sadness which pervades it; and the high art of embalming the spirit, the thought, the laws, the life of a whole nation. The words of graceful imagery with which patriarchs and prophets describe God and His works, and the ruin of beauty and glory by sin, Primeval Waters and Atmosphere. 157 are in the power of true poet-artists. Sometimes its form of language is child-like, and the figures express our commonest notions; but that outward body and form so take hold of our life as to win homage and love from the purest and wisest of mankind. The representation of perfection and beauty in Divinity is entrancing, and our delight deepens into awe. Sacred anger is aroused while, as before our very eyes, a malignant hand, by a few wickedly skilful, dark strokes, turns favour into disfavour, so that the purpose of God and the image of man are distorted and defaced. The two hemispheres of representation-Divine holiness and Satanic iniquity-are then separated by a firmament of mercy. Beneath that firmament are forgiveness and sanctification; above that firmament, ascending to the height, are promises of regeneration to the earth, and of glorification to men-the likeness of a throne, and upon the likeness of the throne as the appearance of a man (Ezek. i. 26.) "Aye, gloriously thou standest there, Beautiful, boundless firmament ! And round the horizon bent, With thy bright vault and sapphire wall, Dost overhang and circle all." WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. Beware of regarding the primeval waters as existing in their present state. They were full of mineral and earthy ingredients, surcharged with gaseous elements; rather a molten mass of fluid and gaseous condition than water, as seen now, cooled down and formed by the chemical affinity of oxygen and hydrogen. Thick steam, arising from this heated water and the other matters held in solution, rendered the circumference of the earth moist and cloudy. By some inscrutable operation, vapours and gaseous elements were more and more separated and differentiated from mineral parts—made to rise out of the water, and expanded to become constituents of the present life-sustaining atmosphere. Whatever it was, there seems to have been a power which decomposed the fluid matter, or water, and formed the atmosphere which evaporated the surplus vapour,-a power of attraction and contraction on one hand, a power of repulsion and expansion on the other. This power, by a peculiar law, the diffusion principle, abstracted the elements of the firmament from submission to the universal law of gravity, and enabled the watery vapour to penetrate it with perfect freedom, and become a wellspring of life in the atmospheric streams surrounding our earth. The words "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," express the relative degrees of expansion. Those under the firmament are of less expansive principle, being below what is called "Dew-point ;" and those above the firmament, being of more subtle or higher expansive principle, incline to ascend. Thus a division, ever varying in extent and degree, is established by means of the atmosphere. If the sun was so far conditioned as to shine out beyond his own vapours; the hypothesis is that earth-clouds excluded the light from our own planet, and covered the surface of the deep with gloomy obscurity, like that of evening and early morn. Our earth, with this robe of vapour, and earlier separated from the original mass than were Venus and Mercury, would probably, to a distant beholder, seem to have fleecy, shifting, dissolving bands, dense masses of clouds driven of winds and tossed, such as we now behold by telescopic examination of the planet Jupiter. This great planet is encircled by similar great cloud-belts, such as the sun is incompetent to raise. Cloud-layer upon cloud-layer cover the seething surface of that far-off world, which appears to be passing through those stages which marked the earth's early course; and small as is the visible sun there, the skies seem in formation by the establishment of a firmament like our own, to divide the waters which are under the firmament from the waters which are above the firmament. This may be expressed in another form. The firmament. is not strictly the air itself, still less a solid vault, falsely conceived to exist, but that visible hemisphere of sky which encloses the earth and sea. We ought never to depart from the optical view in explaining the sacred narrative, but that view must be explained and enlarged by an instructed intellect. Intellect tells us, "Were the matter of the universe The Waters Divided. 159 cast in cold detached fragments into space, and there abandoned to the mutual gravitation of its own parts, the collision of the fragments would in the end produce the fires of the stars." This separating of materials, then the gathering of meteoric masses into centres of conflagration, give us one star differing from another star, and the firmamental expanse. Further, we are told that "the planets exterior to Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, especially the best known of them, appear to be spheres of water and of aqueous vapour, combined, it may be, with atmospheric air. . . . It was agreeable to the general scheme that the excess of water and vapour should be packed into rotating masses, such as are Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. . . . Thus the vapour which otherwise would have wandered loose about the atmosphere, was neatly wound into balls, which again were kept in their due place by being made to revolve in nearly circular orbits about the sun." The scientific theory is, and it can be no more than theory, that our earth, with a robe of vapour around, seems to have had formed a sensible expanse, or middle region of clearer atmosphere, separating the waters depositing below from those drawn upward; and transferring, yet containing the sea of mist, by passing it into pure invisible vapour. The Lord bound up the waters in the thick cloud (Job xxvi. 8), in His discretion stretched out the heavens (Gen. x. 12), caused the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth, made lightnings for the rain, and brought the wind out of His treasures (Ps. cxxxv. 7). "Divide the waters from the waters." "The clouds are, in Scripture metaphor, the bottles of heaven. They are the instruments by which, when the windows of heaven are opened, some of the waters above the firmament are transferred from their celestial reservoir, and descend in showers to rejoin, by the springs and rivers, the gathering of the waters in seas below the firmament.' Mists and clouds are formed, so far as we can judge at present, of a multitude of hollow vesicles with exceedingly thin covering. These "The Constitution of Nature:" Prof. Tyndall. 2 "Theory of the Solar System:" Dr Whewell. 3 66 The Bible and Modern Thought:" Notes, Rev. T. R. Birks. |