THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 



203 



570. There is wonderful meaning in that word abundantly, 

 as it stands recorded in that Book, and as it is even at this day re- 

 peated by the great waters. 



571. So far the two records agree, and the evidence is clear 

 that the sea was salt when it received this command. Do they 

 afford any testimony as to its condition previously ? Let us ex- 

 amine. 



On the second day of creation the waters were gathered togeth- 

 er unto one place, and the dry land appeared. Before that period, 

 therefore, there were no rivers, and consequently no washings of 

 brine by mists, nor dew, nor rains from the valleys among the 

 hills. The water covered the earth. This is the account of Rev- 

 elation ; and the account which Nature has written, in her own 

 peculiar characters, on the mountain and in the plain, on the rock 

 and in the sea, as to the early condition of our planet, indicates 

 the same. The inscriptions on the geological column tell that 

 there was a period when the solid parts of the earth's crust which 

 now stand high in the air were covered by water. The geological 

 evidence that it was so, with perhaps the exception of a solitary 

 mountain peak here and there, is conclusive ; and when we come 

 to examine the fossil remains that are buried in the mountains and 

 scattered over the plains, we have as much reason to say that the 

 sea was salt when it covered or nearly covered the earth, as the 

 naturalist, when he sees a skull or bone whitening on the wayside, 

 has to say that it was once covered with flesh. 



572. Therefore we have reason for the conjecture that the sea 

 was salt " in the beginning," when *' the waters under heaven were 

 gathered together unto one place," and the dry land first appeared ; 

 for, go back as far as we may in the dim records which young Na- 

 ture has left inscribed upon the geological column of her early 

 processes, and there we find the fossil shell and the remains of 

 marine organisms to inform us that when the foundations of our 

 mountains were laid with granite, and immediately succeeding 

 that remote period when the primary formations were completed, 

 the sea was, as it is now^ salt ; for had it not been salt, whence 

 could those creeping things which fashioned the sea-shells that 

 cover the tops of the Andes, or those madrepores that strew the 



