But, (to return to the first three days of Creation,)--since the Author of Revelation seems to design that I should understand that Sun, Moon, and Stars not only did not come to view until the fourth day,--but also that they were not re-invested with their immemorial function and office until then,--I find no difficulty, _remembering with whom I have to do, even with Him who sowed the vault of Heaven so thick with stars, each one of which may be not a sun but a system_[107];--when, I say, I attend to the emphatic nature of the inspired record, on the one hand, and to GOD'S Omnipotence on the other,--I have no difficulty in supposing that He embraced the Sun in a veil, for just so long a period as it seemed Him good, and when He willed that it should re-appear, that He withdrew the veil again. The _name_ for the operation just now alluded to belongs to the province of Philosophy. Divinity is all the while thinking about something infinitely better and higher. [107] Herschel. [108] Gen. i. 6. [109] Ibid. 20. [110] Job xxxvii. 18. [111] Ps. civ. 2. [112] Is. xl. 22. [113] Job xxvi. 8. [114] Prov. xxx. 4. [115] See also Job ix. 8. Even in Job xxxvii. 18, the sky is said to be "_spread out_." So Is. xlv. 12, &c. [116] Job xxvi. 11. [117] 2 Sam. xxii. 8. [118] Ps. lxxviii. 23. [119] Gen. vii. 11. [120] Job ix. 6. Ps. lxxv. 3. See Blomfield's Glossary to Prom. Vinct. v. 357. [121] Comp. Is. xxiv. 18. [122] See Is. xxiv. 18 and Mal. iii. 10. [123] ἐκλείπειν τὴν ἕδραν. (Herod.) See Copleston's _Remains_, p. 107. [124] _Eccl. Pol._ 1. iii. § 2. [125] Gen. i. 26. [126] "The difficulty," he says, (alluding to Gen. i. 1,) "lies in this, that the heaven is distinctly said to have been formed ... on the second day." (p. 226.) But this is the language of a man determined that there _shall_ be a difficulty. "The Heavens and the Earth" clearly denote, (in the simple phraseology of a primitive age,) the sum of all created things; the great transaction which Nehemiah has so strikingly expounded:--"Heaven, _the Heaven of Heavens, with all their host_,--the Earth and all things that are therein;" including "the sea, with all that is therein." (Neh. ix. 6.) Whereas "the firmament" of ver. 6, (which GOD called "Heaven" in ver. 8,) _can_ only indicate the blue vault immediately overhead, wherein fowls fly. (ver. 20.) If this be _not_ the meaning of Gen. i. 1, one half of the phrase is "proleptical,"--the other half not: for the creation of Earth is nowhere recorded, if not in ver. 1.... But surely it is a waste of words to discuss such "difficulties" as these. [127] Consider especially Heb. iv. 9 and 10; and consider, (besides Exod. xx. 11,) Deut. v. 15. See also Col. ii. 17.