"In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried unto my God:
He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my cry before Him came into His ears.
Then the earth shook and trembled,
The foundations also of the mountains moved
And were shaken, because He was wroth.
There went up a smoke out of His nostrils,
And fire out of His mouth devoured:
Coals were kindled by it.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down;
And thick darkness was under His feet.
And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly:
Yea, He flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness His hiding place,
His pavilion round about Him;
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
At the brightness before Him His thick clouds passed,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
And the Most High uttered His voice;
Hailstones and coals of fire.
And He sent out His arrows, and scattered them;
Yea lightnings manifold, and discomfited them.
Then the channels of waters appeared,
And the foundations of the world were laid bare,
At Thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.
He sent from on high, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
And from them that hated me, for they were too mighty for me."
Two other passages point to the circulation of water vapour upward from the earth before its descent as rain; one in the prophecy of Jeremiah, the other, almost identical with it, in Psalm cxxxv. 7: "When He uttereth His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; He maketh lightnings for the rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of His treasuries." Here we get a hint of a close observing of nature among the Hebrews. For by the foreshortening that clouds undergo in the distance, they inevitably appear to form chiefly on the horizon, "at the ends of the earth," whence they move upwards towards the zenith.
A further reference to clouds reveals not observation only but acute reflection, though it leaves the mystery without solution. "Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him Which is perfect in knowledge?" There is a deep mystery here, which science is far from having completely solved, how it is that the clouds float, each in its own place, at its own level; each perfectly "balanced" in the thin air.
"That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an inundation—why is it so heavy? and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour of morning, when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks—why are they so light—their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps? why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth like a shroud?"[46:1]
The fact of the "balancing" has been brought home to us during the past hundred years very vividly by the progress of aërial navigation. Balloons are objects too familiar even to our children to cause them any surprise, and every one knows how instantly a balloon, when in the air, rises up higher if a few pounds of ballast are thrown out, or sinks if a little of the gas is allowed to escape. We know of no balancing more delicate than this, of a body floating in the air.
CIRRUS FROM SOUTH KENSINGTON, 1906, MAY 29.
