8. According to St. Jerome the Tower of Babel was twenty thousand feet high. A Jewish writer says it was eighty thousand. In the first case it would be nearly four miles in height; in the other, over fifteen miles,—nearly three times the height of the highest mountain on the globe! No method has ever yet been discovered for elevating building materials to such a height.
9. Taking St. Jerome as authority, the hod-carriers, in ascending and descending, would have to perform a journey of more than seven miles each trip.
10. As the air becomes rarefied in proportion to its distance from the earth, the lungs of the workmen would have collapsed, and their blood have congealed, before they climbed half-way to the top. They could not have breathed at such a height.
11. As the earth is constantly revolving on its axis, the crazy tower-builders would only be in the direction of the point at which they aimed once in twenty-four hours, and then moving with a speed one hundred and forty times greater than that of a cannon-ball. It would require dexterous springing to leap into the door of heaven as they passed it.
12. And as the earth, in its orbit, moves at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, it would soon carry them millions of miles beyond any point they might be aiming to reach.
13. After all, we can not see any possible objection Jehovah or any other God could have had to such an enterprise.
14. If the Babelites had succeeded in climbing into heaven, what of it? Was Omnipotence afraid they would dispossess him of his throne, and seize the reins of government? If not, what could have been the objection?
15. And then it would not have taken the "heavenly host" fifteen minutes to tumble them out, as they did Michael and the dragon.
16. The truth is, the imaginary God of the Jews was a. suspicious, cowardly, and jealous being. He was constantly getting into hot water. He appeared to live in perpetual fear day and night that some other God, or some of his own creatures, would encroach upon his rights. In this case he seemed to be alarmed for fear those ignorant, deluded tower-builders and wild fanatics would succeed in reaching the heavenly home, perhaps bind him, and cast him out of his own kingdom. What superlative nonsense is the whole story! And yet millions believe it to be divinely inspired, and many thousands of dollars have been spent in printing it, and circulating it over the world.