[127] Prov. viii. 29. It is hardly necessary to point out that the language betrays a complete ignorance of those facts with which astronomy and geology have made us familiar. The author puts into the lips of Wisdom the scientific conceptions of his own time, when the earth was regarded as a flat surface, covered by a solid circular vault, in which the sun, and moon, and stars were fixed. The "circle upon the flood" is probably the apparent circle which is suggested to the observer by the horizon. No one had as yet dreamed that the mountains were thrown up by, not settled in, the surface of the earth, nor was it dreamed that the bounds of the sea are far from being settled, but subject to gradual variations, and even to cataclysmal changes. It may be observed, however, that the voyage of the _Challenger_ seems to have established beyond question that the great outlines of land and ocean have remained approximately the same from the beginning. Ocean islands are of volcanic origin or the work of the coral-insect; but the great continents and all contained within the fringe of a thousand-fathom depth from their shores have remained practically unaltered despite the numerous partial upheavals or submergences. A passage so full of spiritual and moral significance, and yet so entirely untouched by what are to us the elementary conclusions of science, should furnish a valuable criterion in estimating what we are to understand by the Inspiration of such a book as this. [128] _Cf._ x. 23. [129] Prov. viii. 22-31. [130] Wisdom vii. 25-29. The book of Wisdom, a work of the second century B.C., at one time had a place in the canon, and owes its exclusion, in all probability, to the fact that it was written in Greek; as there was no Hebrew original, it was evident that Solomon was not the author. But the use which the Epistle to the Hebrews makes of the passage quoted in the text may suggest how very unnecessary the exclusion from the canon was. [131] Luke vii. 35; Matt. xi. 19. [132] John viii. 58. [133] John i. 3, 18. IX. _TWO VOICES IN THE HIGH PLACES OF THE CITY._ CH. IX., VV. 14 WITH 3, AND 16 WITH 4. After the lengthened contrast between the vicious woman and Wisdom in chaps. vii. and viii., the introduction of the book closes with a little picture which is intended to repeat and sum up all that has gone before. It is a peroration, simple, graphic, and beautiful.