Water

Dr. L.J. Henderson enumerates some of the remarkable properties of water.

Water has a high specific heat. This means that chemical reactions within the [human] body will be kept stable. If water has a low specific heat we would "boil over" with the least activity. If we raise the temperature of a solution by ten degrees Centigrade we speed up the reaction by two. Without this particular property of water, life would be hardly possible. The ocean is the world thermostat. It takes a great loss of heat for water to pass liquid to ice, and for water to become steam quite an intake of energy is required. Hence the ocean is a cushion against the heat of the sun and the freezing blast of the winter. Unless the temperatures of the earth surface were modulated by the ocean and kept within certain limits, life would be cooked to death or frozen to death.

Water is the universal solvent. It dissolves acids, bases and salts. Chemically, it is relatively inert, providing a medium for reactions without partaking in them. In the bloodstream it holds in solution the minimum of sixty-four substances… Any other solvent would be a pure sludge. Without the peculiar properties of water, life as we know would be impossible.

Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1954), p.148