Job 38:11

11. Hitherto shalt thou come No one would, a priori, have conceived that so vast and mighty a body of water as the ocean could be kept in place by so contemptible a barrier as a shore of sand. There may have been in the mind of the speaker a more enlarged conception than that of a mere coast girding the sea on every side. That conception may have embraced the wonderful forces which unite to secure the stability of the ocean, and maintain its equilibrium. “The mean depth of the sea, according to the calculations of Laplace, is four or five miles. On this supposition, the addition to the sea of one fourth of the existing waters would drown the whole of the globe, excepting a few chains of mountains. Whether this be exact or no, we can easily conceive the quantity of water which lies in the cavities of our earth to be greater or less than it at present is. With every such addition or subtraction the form and magnitude of the dry land would vary” producing vastly important and destructive consequences, which Whewell proceeds to unfold. Astronomy and General Physics, book i, chap. 4. The stability of the ocean is secured by numerous nicely adjusted forces, among which the mean specific gravity of the earth, as well as the specific gravities of the moon, planets, and sun, may be mentioned as the most important. To enlarge upon but one of these influences the density of our earth: the simple circumstance that it is about five times that of water an exact proportion, which needed a divine mind to establish furnishes a restraint upon the immense fluid masses, by which they are held incumbent within their ocean bed. “The density of Jupiter is one fourth, that of Saturn less than one seventh, of that of the earth. If an ocean of water were poured into the cavities upon the surface of Saturn its equilibrium would not be stable. It would leave its bed on one side of the globe; and the planet would finally be composed of one hemisphere of water and one of land. If the earth had an ocean of a fluid six times as heavy as water, (quicksilver is thirteen times as heavy,) we should have in like manner a dry and fluid hemisphere” WHEWELL, ibid., book ii, chap. 6. Be stayed Literally, One shall set “a bound” evidently being understood.