Page:The Other Life.djvu/141

 has simply passed into a different frame of mind. So of time. The sun may be shining in noon-day brilliance, but if the spirit sinks into a selfish or worldly state of thought, it will grow immediately dark and the sun will disappear. States shorten or lengthen the days.

From this point of view, we may understand that strange passage of Scripture, in which it is asserted that Joshua made the sun stand still in the midst of heaven, so that it hasted not to go down for a whole day. The skeptic mocks at this statement, and the Christian doubts it or is sorely puzzled to explain it. No one in this scientific age dares suppose that either the earth or the sun could stand still for a moment without precipitating the globe to destruction. The commentators have no refuge but to say with some, that it is "a sublime poetical trope;" or, with others, that God caused a great refraction of light in the sky long after the sun had gone down, enabling the Israelites to pursue their enemies—which, of course, is a paltry subterfuge.

All persons and events in the Jewish history represented spiritual things, the mysteries of heaven, the operation of God on the heart. In this fact lies the divinity of the Old Testament. The miracles