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pointing toward the sun, would draw into its formation an immense amount of loadstone? *

Allowing this mountain of loadstone to be removed, would not the remaining relics cause the aberration of the needle?

Where should we now look for the greatest mass of this stone?

May not the electric currents of the earth, concentrating upon the pole, account for polar light?*

12. Where was the home of our first parents? What was the climate?

What is it now?

13. Would not such a movement of the earth, cause the most even and gentle climate?

Where would be the greatest elevation of air? From whence would come the supply?

What advantage would such a climate have over ours?

14. Can we maintain such a hypothesis?

What alone can give it weight?

THE DELUGE EXPLAINED.

LESSON LXVI.

"And the mountains were covered."-Gen. 7: 20.

1. The sudden rise of water twenty-two feet, and then above the hills, and finally above the highest mountains, is an event unexplained by any forty days rain.

2. An eruption, capable of separating continents, twenty-five hundred miles apart, would be sufficient to cause a tidal wave of such magnitude, that, though it had to traverse the continent for two thousand miles to reach the ark, growing less all the time, still held a front twenty-two feet deep.

3. This, of itself, would last but a few hours, or days at most, e'er the natural outlets would

[graphic]

TIDAL WAVE REACHING THE ARK.-Gen. 7: 11.

406

drain it back to the ocean.

Other causes, acting

or resulting from the breaking up of the earth's crust, must have served to continue the onward flow of the ocean upon the land.

4.

These new causes must have been the result of the removal of the center of the electric currents. The mountain of loadstone was suddenly removed, by the eruption, two thousand miles to the north. But for the former momentum of the globe, the earth's motion would have suddenly commenced from east to west. The former momentum must be overcome. Until then, the earth tended to a double movement between the two powers, the new axis gaining as the old one lost. Months would elapse before the equilibrium would be gained, and the ocean settle to its new movements, and final change.

5. Here we have the cause of the great pressure of the ocean, down over Europe and Asia, until the highest mountains were covered.

6. Allowing that the tidal wave flowed from the north, we have a natural basin, bounded on three sides by high mountains, with only a few small outlets to the sea. This accounts for the slow manner in which the waters assuaged.

7. The opening of so vast extent of the earth, must have exposed many burning craters and extended seams of heated rock, which would readily convert vast quantities of water into steam, resulting in the noted rain of forty days.

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