§ 27. Let us try, by way of example, this 19th Psalm, and see what plain meaning is uppermost in it.
“The heavens declare the glory of God.”
What are the heavens?
The word occurring in the Lord’s Prayer, and the thing expressed being what a child may, with some advantage, be led to look at, it might be supposed among a schoolmaster’s first duties to explain this word clearly.
Now there can be no question that in the minds of the sacred writers, it stood naturally for the entire system of cloud, and of space beyond it, conceived by them as a vault set with stars. But there can, also, be no question, as we saw in previous inquiry, that the firmament, which is said to have been “called” heaven, at the creation, expresses, in all definite use of the word, the system of clouds, as spreading the power of the water over the earth; hence the constant expressions dew of heaven, rain of heaven, &c., where heaven is used in the singular; while “the heavens,” when used plurally, and especially when in distinction, as here, from the word “firmament,” remained expressive of the starry space beyond.
§ 28. A child might therefore be told (surely, with advantage), that our beautiful word Heaven may possibly have been formed from a Hebrew word, meaning “the high place;” that the great warrior Roman nation, camping much out at night, generally overtired and not in moods for thinking, are believed, by many people, to have seen in the stars only the likeness of the glittering studs of their armor, and to have called the sky “The bossed, or studded;” but that others think those Roman soldiers on their might-watches had rather been impressed by the great emptiness and void of night, and by the far coming of sounds through its darkness, and had called the heaven “The Hollow place.” Finally, I should tell the children, showing them first the setting of a star, how the great Greeks had found out the truest power of the heavens, and had called them “The Rolling.” But whatever different nations had called them, at least I would make it clear to the child’s mind that in this 19th Psalm, their whole power being intended, the two words are used which express it: the Heavens, for the great vault or void, with all its planets, and stars, and ceaseless march of orbs innumerable; and the Firmament, for the ordinance of the clouds.
These heavens, then, “declare the glory of God;” that is, the light of God, the eternal glory, stable and changeless. As their orbs fail not—but pursue their course for ever, to give light upon the earth—so God’s glory surrounds man for ever—changeless, in its fulness insupportable—infinite.
“And the firmament showeth his handywork.”
§ 29. The clouds, prepared by the hand of God for the help of man, varied in their ministration—veiling the inner splendor—show, not His eternal glory, but His daily handiwork. So He dealt with Moses. I will cover thee “with my hand” as I pass by. Compare Job xxxvi. 24: “Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold. Every man may see it.” Not so the glory—that only in part; the courses of these stars are to be seen imperfectly, and but by a few. But this firmament, “every man may see it, man may behold it afar off.” “Behold, God is great, and we know him not. For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof.”
§ 30. “Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. They have no speech nor language, yet without these their voice is heard. Their rule is gone out throughout the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”