To cheer the fruits and warm the ground.”
“How fair has the day been!
How bright was the Sun!
How lovely and joyful
The course that he run.”
All the expressions of scripture are consistent with the fact of the Sun’s motion. They never declare anything to the contrary. Whenever they speak of the subject it is in the same manner. The direct evidence of our senses confirms it; and actual and special observations, as well as the most practical scientific experiments, declare the same thing. The progressive and concentric motion of the Sun over the Earth is in every sense demonstrable; yet the Newtonian astronomers insist upon it that the Sun does not really move, that it only appears to move, and that this appearance arises from the motion of the Earth; that when, as the scriptures affirm, the “Sun stood still in the midst of heaven,” it was the Earth which stood still and not the Sun! that the scriptures therefore speak falsely, and the experiments of science, and the observations and applications of our senses are never to be relied upon. Whence comes this bold and arrogant denial of the value of our senses and judgement, and the authority of scripture? The Earth or the Sun moves. Our senses tell us, and the scriptures declare that the Earth is fixed and that it is the Sun which moves above and around it; but a theory, which is absolutely false in its groundwork, and ridiculously illogical in its details, demands that the Earth is round and moves upon axes, and in several other and various directions; and that these motions are sufficient to account for certain phenomena without supposing that the Sun moves, therefore the Sun is a fixed body, and his motion is only apparent! Such reasoning is a disgrace to philosophy, and fearfully dangerous to the religious interests of humanity!
Christian ministers and commentators find it a most unwelcome task when called upon to reconcile the plain and simple philosophy of the scriptures with the monstrous teachings of theoretical astronomy. Dr. Adam Clark, in a letter to the Rev. Thomas Roberts, of Bath,[43] speaking of the progress of his commentary, and of his endeavours to reconcile the statements of scripture with the modern astronomy, says: “Joshua’s Sun and Moon standing still, have kept me going for nearly three weeks! That one chapter has afforded me more vexation than anything I have ever met with; and even now I am but about half satisfied with my own solution of all the difficulties, though I am confident that I have removed mountains that were never touched before; shall I say that I am heartily weary of my work, so weary that I have a thousand times wished I had never written one page of it, and am repeatedly purposing to give it up.”
[43] Life of Adam Clark, 8vo Edition.
The Rev. John Wesley, in his journal, writes as follows:—“The more I consider them the more I doubt of all systems of astronomy. I doubt whether we can with certainty know either the distance or magnitude of any star in the firmament; else why do astronomers so immensely differ, even with regard to the distance of the Sun from the Earth? Some affirming it to be only three and others ninety millions of miles.”[44]
[44] Extracts from works of Rev. J. Wesley, 3rd Edition, 1829. Published by Mason, London, p. 392, vol. 2.