ere is nothing in
sea-description, detailed, like Dickens' storm at the death of Ham, in
'David Copperfield.'

SECTION V.

ILLUSTRATIVE: MOUNTAINS.

32. The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are
followed immediately by those notable ones,--"And God said, Let the
waters which are under the heavens be gathered together into one
place, and let the dry land appear." We do not, perhaps, often enough
consider the deep signification of this sentence. We are too apt to
receive it as the description of an event vaster only in its extent,
not in its nature, than the compelling of the Red Sea to draw back
that Israel might pass by. We imagine the Deity in like manner rolling
the waves of the greater ocean together on an heap, and setting bars
and doors to them eternally. But there is a far deeper meaning than
this in the solemn words of Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of
the Psalm, "His hands prepared the dry land." Up to that moment the
earth had been _void_; for, it had been _without_ _form_. The command
that the waters should be gathered, was the command that the earth
should be _sculptured_. The sea was not driven to its place in
suddenly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn to its place in perfect
and patient obedience. The dry land appeared, not in level sands
forsaken by the surges, which those surges might again claim for their
own; but in range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, for
ever to claim kindred with the firmament, and be companioned by the
clouds of heaven.

What space of time was in reality occupied by the "day" of Genesis, is
not at present of any importance for us to consider. By what furnaces
of fire the adamant was melted, and by what wheels of earthquake it
was torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight of sea-waves it was
engraven and finished into its perfect form, we may, perhaps,
hereafter endeavour to conjecture; but here, as in few words the work
is summed by the historian, so in few broad thoughts it should be
comprehended by us; and, as we read the mighty sentence, "Let the dry
land appear," we should try to follow the finger of God as it engraved
upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the law of its
everlasting form, as gulf by gulf the channels of the deep were
ploughed; and cape by cape the lines were traced with Divine
foreknowledge of the shores that were to limit the nations; and chain
by chain the mountain walls were lengthened