SPECIAL AKKANGEMENT. 421 



and it is curious to observe that this condition 

 disappears when an artificial outlet is provided 

 for the water. It will be remembered that the 

 saltness of the ocean is very far exceeded by 

 that of several inland lakes of the kind de- 

 scribed : that of Aral, near the Caspian, and 

 the Dead Sea, in Judaea, are remarkable 

 examples."* 



Upon either supposition, we may not doubt 

 that a wise and gracious end was accomplished 

 in the constitution of the ocean being such as 

 it now is. If it was, in the beginning, formed 

 by the creative hand of God a mass of saline 

 water, we are sure it was not so formed in 

 vain; if, on the contrary, as seems natural to 

 suppose, its saline contents are the result of 

 the water drainage of the earth, we are not 

 to regard it in the cold and gloomy aspect in 

 which it is placed by the writer last quoted, as 

 " rather an inevitable result of the present dis- 

 position of things, than a special arrangement 

 expressly intended to fulfil certain objects." 

 When God formed the world in the mass, and 

 employed in its mighty fabric the elements to 

 which we have alluded, had He not, who knows 

 the end from the beginning, a gracious inten- 

 tion in so doing? The all- wise Creator suffers 

 nothing to be done by chance ; and if the ocean 

 * Fownes : Actonian Prize Essay, p. 17. 



