Joshua's long day. 



121 



It is the only such account available to us, and therefore we 

 cannot check it by means of parallel documents. Now men of 

 science, and astronomers in particular, are taught to respect the 

 written document, for without the written document the science 

 of astronomy would be almost impossible. Sun, moon and stars 

 are beyond our reach. We cannot touch them, or alter them in 

 any way. All that we can do is to watch their changes of place 

 and appearance and put those changes on record. And it 

 frequently happens that those records must be accumulated 

 patiently for long generations of men before their full significance 

 can be apprehended. Let me give but one example. Dr. 

 Crommelin, who gave the Annual Address before this Institute 

 on the 9th of May, 1910 (see Transactions of the Victoria Institute, 

 Vol. xlii), computed the movements of Halley's comet for a period 

 of 2500 years and found records of observations at nearly every 

 return : the earliest being in the annals of the Chinese observers 

 600 years before the Christian era. If the written document 

 cannot be trusted, astronomy at least, whatever might be the case 

 with the other sciences, could never progress. 



Now every astronomer knows perfectly well that mistakes are 

 made in the original documents ; that where a document is 

 copied, the copy is not always correct ; that documents are 

 .sometimes purposely altered, or even deliberately falsified ; 

 nevertheless, it still holds good that in general the written docu- 

 ment has a right to be accepted and in no case is it excusable to 

 alter it, or even to suggest that it should be altered, except upon 

 direct, positive and independent evidence. To alter a record 

 so as to bring it into agreement with some preconceived idea 

 as to what it ought to have contained is, to an astronomer, the 

 unpardonable sin. 



But in the case of this particular narrative, we have a testimony 

 beyond that of the written document ; a present testimony 

 because it is the geography of the country concerned. It is some 

 3000 years since the Book of Joshua was written, but the physical 

 features of the country are practically unchanged. The Jordan, 

 the " Descender," still hurls itself downwards through the most 

 marvellous rift in the crust of the earth, and still forms the moat 

 which defends the eastern boundary of the Promised Land. 

 And, west of the Jordan, there still stands the great mountain 

 rampart of the Ridge of Palestine. History and geography are 

 inseparably connected, for indeed geography is statical history, 

 and history, dynamical geography. Thus Belgium has bieen 



