to a participation in the joy and satisfaction which religion can alone supply, is a grand and cheering result, and one which furnishes the noblest possible answer to the ever ready “CUI BONO.” In addition to the numerous quotations which have been given from sacred scriptures, and proved to be true and consistent, it may be useful briefly to refer to the following difficulties which have been raised by the scientific objectors to scriptural authority:--“As the earth is a globe, and as all its vast collections of water--its oceans, lakes, &c., are sustained by the earthy crust beneath them, and as beneath this ‘crust of the earth’ everything is in a red-hot molten condition to what place could the excess of waters retire which are said in the scriptures to have overwhelmed the whole world? It could not sink into the centre of the earth, for the fire is there so intense that the whole would be rapidly volatilised, and driven away as vapour. It could not evaporate, for when the atmosphere is charged with watery vapour beyond a certain degree it begins to condense and throw back the water in the form of rain; so that the waters of the flood could not sink from the earth’s surface, nor remain in the atmosphere; therefore if the earth had ever been deluged at all, it would have remained so to this day. But as it is not universally flooded so it never could have been, and the account given in the scriptures is false.” All this specious reasoning is founded upon the assumption that the earth is a globe: this doctrine, however, being false, all the difficulties quickly vanish. The earth being “founded on the seas” would be as readily cleared of its superfluous water as would the deck of a ship on emerging from a storm. Or as a rock in the ocean would be cleared after the raging waves which for a time overwhelmed it had subsided. “Thou coveredst the Earth with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; and at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away ... down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.”[48] [48] Psalm civ. “Thou didst cleave the Earth with rivers; and the overflowing of the waters passed by; and the deep uttered his voice and lifted up his hands on high.”[49] [49] Hab. iii. 9-10. The surface of the Earth standing above the level of the surrounding seas, the waters of the flood would simply and naturally run down by the valleys and rivers into the “great deep,”--into which “the waters returned from off the earth continually ... until the tenth month, and on the first day of the month were the tops of the mountains seen.”[50] [50] Gen. viii. 2-5.