A RECENT editorial in the Los Angeles Daily Times makes some very interesting statements in regard to Noah and his ark. Speaking of the critics that have been seeking to make it appear that the story of the Flood was only a legend, the Times says:
“Unbelievers were not lacking to declare that the old ark was a tub, and the whole story ridiculous; but when the real critics went to work to dismantle the legendary vessel rib by rib, they encountered a miracle.”
Mr. George W. Dickie, a Scotchman by birth, and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, was employed by the Union Iron Works of San Francisco in making the plans for the battleship Oregon, of the United States navy, which, at the time of its projection, ranked with the largest battleships built. The Times editor says:
“At the time when the plans for the Oregon were under discussion, Mr. Dickie’s attention was called to an article ridiculing the idea that Noah and his sons could have built a vessel in the Euphrates Valley that would be seaworthy. He took the book of Genesis, and proceeded to reduce the Biblical cubits to feet and inches, in order to determine what the general design of the ark was like. To his surprise, he discovered that each of the nine dimensions given in the Bible for the construction of the ark corresponded, with but one minor difference, exactly to those proposed for the Oregon. The only difference was that the Oregon was just one seventh smaller in each dimension than the ark. Struck by this remarkable coincidence, he took the question up the next day with the United States Navy Department, with the result that the plans finally adopted were a duplicate of those for the ark, except that the dimensions were still one seventh less. The remarkable speed maintained by the Oregon on its trip around the Horn to join Sampson’s fleet is now a chapter of history. The proportionate dimensions of the Oregon have been maintained in building larger vessels by our navy.”
The Times then comments in this strain:
“Theologians are now in position to demand of the iconoclasts how those dimensions, embodying the greatest carrying power with the least resistance, were obtained. How petty appear some of Ingersoll’s alleged ‘Mistakes of Moses’ before this divine example! It will not aid the iconoclast to allege that the dimensions were supplied several thousand years after the death of Moses. Those now used in the English Bible are the same which appeared in the St. James version, which was translated into English in the seventeenth century. At that time, sea-going vessels were built with dimensions as unlike those of the ark as the ark itself differed from the ‘tub’ of the early iconoclasts.”
“One of the surprising facts of history is that it took two thousand years for the science of marine engineering to develop the highest type of sea-going craft, when the secrets of the true dimensions for the greatest carrying power, combined with the least resistance to the action of the waves, rested all that time within the pages of the book of Genesis.”
Following the foregoing remarks, it was very fitting for the editor of the Times to utter the exclamation, “O ye of little faith!”
The devil is very busy in getting a certain class of scientists to make light of large portions of the Scripture. This scientific ridicule in this age, when science has been made a god, has even led ministers in the sacred desk to rise up to say that many portions of the Bible are pure myth and legend. The story of Noah and the ark and the Flood have been quite generally admitted into this catalogue of legends and myths. Yet there are conditions all over the world today that cannot be successfully explained on any other hypothesis except that of the universal Flood.
Sensible men and women can safely anchor their faith to the grand old book of God. It gives them hope, comfort, and good cheer in the midst of the darkest and most trying hours of life. We can well afford to allow shallow-minded men to laugh at us for believing the story of divine inspiration. The prophecy, the precept, and the history of the book of God can be relied upon; and relying upon it, we may know that the joys of the eternal world will soon be ours. And how foolish it is to be turned away from such a hope by the carpings of men who would set up their finite wisdom against the knowledge and the utterances of the most high God!
