Note 127 — VIII.

Prov. viii. 29. It is hardly necessary to point out that the language betrays a complete ignorance of those facts with which astronomy and geology have made us familiar. The author puts into the lips of Wisdom the scientific conceptions of his own time, when the earth was regarded as a flat surface, covered by a solid circular vault, in which the sun, and moon, and stars were fixed. The "circle upon the flood" is probably the apparent circle which is suggested to the observer by the horizon. No one had as yet dreamed that the mountains were thrown up by, not settled in, the surface of the earth, nor was it dreamed that the bounds of the sea are far from being settled, but subject to gradual variations, and even to cataclysmal changes. It may be observed, however, that the voyage of the Challenger seems to have established beyond question that the great outlines of land and ocean have remained approximately the same from the beginning. Ocean islands are of volcanic origin or the work of the coral-insect; but the great continents and all contained within the fringe of a thousand-fathom depth from their shores have remained practically unaltered despite the numerous partial upheavals or submergences.