VI LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 225 



a day, simply outrages the most ordinary and 

 familiar teachings of every man's daily experience. 

 A child may see the folly of it. 



In addition, I may remark that the necessary 

 assumption of the " partial Deluge " hypothesis (if it 

 is confined to Mesopotamia) that the Hebrew writer 

 must have meant low hills when he said " high 

 mountains," is quite untenable. On the eastern 

 side of the Mesopotamian plain, the snowy peaks 

 of the frontier ranges of Persia are visible from 

 Bagdad, 1 and even the most ignorant herdsmen in 

 the neighbourhood of " Ur of the Chaldees," near 

 its western limit, could hardly have been unac- 

 quainted with the comparatively elevated plateau 

 of the Syrian desert which lay close at hand. 

 But, surely, we must suppose the Biblical writer 

 to be acquainted with the highlands of Palestine 

 and with the masses of the Sinaitic peninsula, 

 which soar more than 8000 feet above the sea, if 

 he knew of no higher elevations ; and, if so, he 

 could not well have meant to refer to mere 

 hillocks when he said that " all the high moun- 

 tains which were under the whole heaven were 

 covered" (Genesis vii. 19). Even the hill-country 

 of Galilee reaches an elevation of 4000 feet ; and 

 a flood which covered it could by no possibility 

 have been other than universal in its superficial 

 extent. Water really cannot be got to stand at, 



1 So Reclus (Nouvelle Geographic Universcllc, ix. 386), but I 

 find the statement doubted by an authority of the first rank. 

 104 



