Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/41

 ed for their preservation. It may, therefore, be proper to notice some particulars. Such an additional quantity of water as their interpretation requires, would so dilute and alter the mass as to render it an unsuitable element for the existence of all the classes, and would kill or disperse their food; and all have their own appropriate food. Many of the marine fishes and shell animals could not live in fresh water; and the fresh water ones would be destroyed by being kept even a short time in salt water. Some species can indeed live in brackish water, having been formed by their Creator to have their dwelling in estuaries and the portions of rivers approaching the sea. But even these would be affected, fatally in all probability, by the increased volume of water, and the scattering and floating away of their nutriment."

The objections which the author urges in the following paragraph, may seem to some persons too much like a caricature. But I would most respectfully suggest, that the objection does not create the ludicrous absurdity; it only it as a difficulty necessarily involved in the commonly received doctrine. The author says that Mt. Ararat, on which the ark is supposed to have rested, "is nearly the height of our European Mont Blanc, and perpetual snow covers about five thousand feet from its summit. If the water rose, at its liquid temperature, so as to overflow that summit, the snows and icy masses would be melted; and, on the retiring of the flood, the exposed mountain would present its pinnacles and ridges, dreadful precipices of naked rock, adown which the four men and four women, and, with hardly any exception, the quadrupeds, would have found it utterly impossible to descend. To provide against this difficulty, to prevent them from being dashed to pieces, must we again suppose a miracle? Must we conceive of the human beings and the animals, as transported through the air to the more level regions below; or that, by