A little volume has just appeared, with the title of _The Truth of
Revelation demonstrated by an appeal to existing monuments, sculptures,
gems, coins, and medals_. The author is stated to be "a Fellow of
several learned Societies," and has dedicated his work to Dr. Chalmers,
who approved of its original plan. We confess this to be too extensive
for us to explain in a few lines, although we do not hesitate to say,
that a more amusing book upon abstruse subjects has scarcely ever met
our attention. It is literally filled with facts and closely-packed
inquiries, and these are so attractively arranged as to amuse a listless
reader.
_The Ark of Noah and Mount Ararat._
"It has been supposed that the ark rested on Mount Ararat in Armenia:
Josephus countenances this view of it, and it is interesting to observe,
that the name of the Armenian city where it has been supposed the ark at
last grounded, signifies the _Place of Descent_, from the Greek [Greek:
aporataeeion]:--others have, however, urged that it rested upon Mount
Caucasus, near Apamea, in Phrygia, from the circumstance that in Genesis
xi. 2, the sons of the patriarch are represented as journeying westward
from the place of descent, and Mount Ararat in Armenia being _west_ of
this country. The language of the sacred writer does not particularly
define the question. Mount Ararat, according to Morier, is at once awful
in its elevation, and beautiful in its form. Sir Robert Ker Porter
describes this celebrated mountain as divided, by a chasm of about seven
miles wide, into two distinct peaks, called The Great and The Little
Ararat, and is of opinion that the ark finally rested in this chasm.
This pleasing and elegant writer gives a beautiful description of
Ararat. 'I beheld Ararat in all its amplitude of grandeur. From the spot
on which I stood, it appeared as if the hugest mountains of the world
had been piled upon each other, to form this one sublime immensity of
earth, and rock, and snow. The icy peaks of its double heads rose
majestically into the clear and cloudless heavens; the sun blazed bright
upon them, and the reflection sent forth a dazzling radiance equal to
other suns. This point of the view united the utmost grandeur of plain
and height, but the feelings I experienced while looking on the mountain
are hardly to be described. My eye, not able to rest for any length of
time on the blinding glory of its summits, wandered down the apparently
interminable sides, till I could no longer trace their vast lines in the
mists of the horizon; when an inexpressible impulse immediately carrying
my eye upwards again, refixed my gaze on the awful glare of Ararat; and
this bewildered sensibility of sight, being answered by a similar
feeling in the mind, for some moments I was lost in a strange suspension
of the powers of thought.'"
_The Deluge._
"Nothing seems to be better substantiated and established than the
circumfusion of the waters of the deluge. The language of the Sacred
Volume is clear and decisive on this point. 'The waters prevailed
exceedingly on the earth; and all the high hills that were under the
whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters
prevail, and the mountains were covered.' The attestations to this fact,
in organic remains, are universal, and completely conclusive. In Italy
entire skeletons of whales have been found at an elevation of not less
than one thousand two hundred feet above the level of the Mediterranean.
In a letter of the 5th May, 1830, to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, M.
Gerard states, that he had collected shells among the snowy mountains of
the frontiers of Thibet: some of them were obtained on the crest of a
pass, seventeen thousand feet above the level of the sea. Here were also
found fragments of rock, bearing impressions of shells, detached from
the contiguous peak rising far above the elevated level: generally,
however, it would appear, that the rocks from whence these shells were
collected, rise to an altitude of about sixteen thousand feet; one cliff
was no less than a mile in perpendicular height above the nearest level.
M. Gerard continues, 'Just before crossing the boundary of Sudak into
Bassalier, I was exceedingly gratified by the discovery of a bed of
fossil oysters clinging to the rock as if they had been alive.' No doubt
many of the rocks are in more sublime relief now, than they were in the
antediluvian world. The subsidence of the land and lower levels, and the
action of submarine currents would scoop out deep valleys; and no doubt,
much that is now 'dry land,' once formed the bed of the ocean. Alpine
structures have emerged from the deep, and volcanoes have heaped up
elevations on mountains already lofty and sublime; as Cotopaxi,
Antisana, and Tunguragua, amid the range of the Cordilleras of the
Andes. The Geological Society has a series of ammonites from India.
These fossils are objects of adoration to the Hindoos: they fall on the
S.W. side of the Himala mountains from an altitude which exceeds that of
perpetual congelation: they are picked up by the natives, and
religiously preserved, being concealed as much as possible from the
scrutiny of Europeans. Mont Perdu, among the Appennines, which rise to
an altitude of eleven thousand feet above the sea's level, encloses an
innumerable multitude of testacea: and Humboldt found sea-shells among
the Andes, fourteen thousand feet above the level of the ocean. At
Touraine, on the Continent, is a bed of shells which extends nearly
twenty-seven miles, having a depth of twenty feet. Mount Bolca contains
upwards of one hundred species of fish from the four quarters of the
earth, and collected together in one immense assemblage."
(_To be continued._)
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