§ 598, 599. THE BASIN AND BED OF THE ATLANTIC. 323 



awa}^ ? Why have not its currents cut through the solid crust in 

 which its billows are rocked, and ripped out from the bowels of 

 the earth the masses of incandescent, molten matter which geolo- 

 gists tell us lie pent up and boiling there ? 



598. If the currents of the sea, with this four-mile velocity at 

 Why they can not ^^^^ surfacc, aud this huudrcds of ton pressure in its 

 ^^^'^^^ '*• depths, were permitted to chafe against its bed, the 

 Atlantic, instead of being two miles deep and 3000 miles broad, 

 would, we may imagine, have been long ago cut down into a nar- 

 row channel that might have been as the same ocean turned up 

 on edge, and measuring two miles broad and 3000 deep. But 

 had it been so cut, the proportion of land and water surface would 

 have been destroyed, and the winds, for lack of area to play upon, 

 could not have sucked up from the sea vapors for the rains, and 

 the face of the earth would have become as a desert without wa- 

 ter. Now there is a reason why such changes should not take 

 place, why the currents should not uproot nor score the deep bed 

 of the ocean, why they should not throw out of adjustment any 

 phj^sical arrangement whatever in the ocean ; it is because that in 

 the presence of everlasting wisdom a comjMss was set upon the face 

 of the deep ; because its ivaters luere measured in the holloiu of the Al- 

 mighty hand; because bars and doors were set to stay its proud waves; 

 and because^ when He gave to the sea His decree tJiat its waters should 

 not 2'>ass His command^ He laid the foundations of the luorld so fast 

 that they should not be removed forever. 



599. By bringing up specimens from the depths of the ocean, 

 What it consists of. and studyiug them through the microscope, it has 

 been ascertained that the bed of the ocean is lined with the mi- 

 croscopic remains of its own dead, with marine feculences which 

 lie on the bottom as lightly as rests the gossamer in a calm at 

 the bottom of the atmospherical .ocean. How frail yet how 

 strong, how light yet how firm are the foundations of the sea ! 

 Its waves can not fret them, its currents can not wear them, for 

 the bed of the deep sea is protected from abrasion by a cushion 

 of still and heavy water. There it lies — that beautiful arrange- 

 ment — spread out over the bottom of the deep, and covering its 

 foundations as with a garment, so that they may not be worn. 

 If the currents chafe upon it now here, now there, as in shallow 

 seas they sometimes do, this protecting cushion is self-adjusting: 



