244 On the Physical Facts contained in the Bible, 
If we represent this universal force as depending on some 
more general mechanical conception, for example, the exis- 
tence of an elastic ether diffused throughout the whole uni- 
verse, there would still remain the why of this existence ; the 
second why would immediately lead us to another still more 
remote ; and the last of all must remain for ever inaccessible, 
not only to the efforts of our thoughts, but even of our 
imagination. 
When Scripture speaks of the earth, it teaches us that 
God has laid the foundations of it, and that it shall never be 
shaken ; for he has fixed it upon its poles.* It then repre- 
sents to usthe terrestrial globe as having passed, in its earliest 
ages, through the state of a kind of vapour more subtile than 
the most attenuated and finest dust. If it speaks of its form, 
it represents its true spheroidal figure, and compares it to an 
immense globe or vast sphere.t When it speaks of its 
position in space, it represents it as suspended on nothing, or 
on a bottomless space. It also correctly describes its di- 
mensions and size. { 
If it directs our attention to the heavens, it designates them 
by their extent, rakiah. Notwithstanding the accuracy of 
this interpretation, which represents the immensity of the 
celestial spaces, the Greeks. in the Septuagint version, as well 
as the Latins, in the Vulgate, have presumed to correct it, 
* See Psalm civ., verses 5-9, ‘‘ God laid the foundations of the earth 
that it should not be removed for ever. The deep covered it as a gar- 
ment ; the waters stood upon the mountains. At His rebuke they fled ; 
at the voice of His thunder they hasted away. They went up by the 
mountains ; they went down by the valleys unto the place he had founded 
for them. He has set a bound that they may not pass over; that they 
turn not again to cover the earth.” 
i + See Job chapter xxvi., verse 10; Proverbs viii., verse 27 ; Isaiah xl., 
verse 22. [Some of M. Marcel de Serres’s views regarding certain 
passages of the Bible, are more fully borne out by Martin Luther’s Ger- 
man version than by our English translation.—ED. } 
t+ The Hebrew text bears that ‘‘ God has stretched over the void the 
vault of heaven, (le septentrion), and suspended the earth on nothing, 
(al belimah).” ‘The Greek reads “ KetwaZov yavixi? dive (Job xxvi. 7). 
