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The Fundamentals a wild, poetic exaggeration, but literal truth. Who was Jere- miah’s teacher in astronomy ? Let us take an example from natural philosophy. Moses accords with modern discoveries as to the nature of light, in not representing this mystery as being made, but “called forth,” commanded to shine. If light be only “a mode of motion,” how appropriate such phraseology 1 In Job 37: 13, 14, we read of the dayspring that it takes hold of the ends of the earth; it is turned as clay to the seal, and they stand as a garment. The ancient cylindrical seals rolled over the clay, and left an impress of artistic beauty. What was without form before, stood out in bold relief, like sculpture. So, as the earth revolves, and brings each portion of its surface successively under the sun’s light and heat, what was before dull, dark, dead, discloses and develops beauty, and the clay stands like a garment, curiously wrought in bold relief and brilliant colors. Considered either as science or poetry, where, in any other book of antiquity, can you find anything equal to that? That phrase, “takes hold of the ends of the earth,” conveys the idea of a bending of the rays of light, like the fingers of the hand when they lay hold. When the sunlight would touch the extremities of the earth, it is bent by the atmosphere so as to secure contact, and, but for this, vast portions, out of the direct line of the sun’s rays, would be dark, cold and dead. Who taught Job; 1,500 years or more before Christ, to use terms that Longfellow or Tenny- son might covet to describe refraction? “When the morning stars sang together,” Job 38:7, has been always taken to be a high flight of poetry. And when in the Psalms, 65:8, we read, “Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice,” the Hebrew word means to give forth a tremulous sound, or to make vibrations—t o sing. In these poetic expressions, what scientific truth was wrapped up! Light comes to the eye in undulations or vibrations, as tones of sound to the ear. There is a point at which these
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