VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 223 



piled up in a heap, like sand ; or that it seeks the 

 lowest level. When, after 150 days, " the foun- 

 tains also of the deep and the windows of heaven 

 were stopped, and the rain from heaven was 

 restrained " (Gen. viii. 2), what prevented the 

 mass of water, several, possibly very many, 

 fathoms deep, which covered, say, the present 

 site of Bagdad, from sweeping seaward in a furious 

 torrent ; and, in a very few hours, leaving, not 

 only the " tops of the mountains," but the whole 

 plain, save any minor depressions, bare ? How 

 could its subsidence, by any possibility, be an 

 affair of weeks and months ? 



And if this difficulty is not enough, let any one 

 try to imagine how a mass of water several, per- 

 haps very many, fathoms deep, could be accumu- 

 lated on a flat surface of land rising well above 

 the sea, and separated from it by no sort of 

 barrier. Most people know Lord's Cricket- 

 ground. Would it not be an absurd contradiction 

 to our common knowledge of the properties of 

 water to imagine that, if all the mains of all the 

 waterworks of London were turned on to it, they 

 could maintain a heap of water twenty feet deep 

 over its level surface ? Is it not obvious that the 

 water, whatever momentary accumulation might 

 take place at first, would not stop there, but that 

 it would .dash, like a mighty mill-race, southwards 

 down the gentle slope which ends in the Thames ? 

 And is it not further obvious, that whatever 



