own day. Thus the angelic life must be one everlastingly-varied round of successive delights—"Day unto day uttereth speech!" Even their comparative states of obscurity tend to urge onward a desire for further illumination, and thus it is that "night unto night showeth knowledge!" Use faithfully. O man! God's precious gift of speech: it will be for thy good and thy Maker's glory.
April Third.
SUN, STAND THOU STILL!
"And the sun stood still."—Josh. x. 13.
JOSHUA commanding the sun to stand still, is not only one of the most extraordinary miracles recorded in the Word of God, but the MOST extraordinary? and many have been the commentaries thereon, attempting to explain it as a literal or historical fact, all of which have utterly failed in giving any rational or clear solution of the passage. Now, the difficulty is not so much in the passage itself, as in the supposition that the sun and moon here named as standing still and staying while the people avenged themselves upon their enemies, are the natural sun and moon of our world. Both commentators and philosophers have clearly perceived that if the natural sun and moon were to stand still, the order established by the Creator would be destroyed, and the whole universe perish. The passage, "And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies," is not related historically but prophetically, for it is said, "Is not this written in the
