deluge is infinitely more simple, and natural, and probable, more consistent with the wisdom and justice of God, and with the nature and circumstances of men, than any other account which has ever been given; and it is in a high degree unlikely, that amongst all the people of the earth, there should not have been one, who had preserved, in some tolerable degree of exactness, the leading circumstances of the most wonderful and awful event which had ever happened to the world. So that, historically speaking, there is sufficient reason for believing, that a general deluge did take place; and that the remembrance of it would be preserved by some people, the descendants of those who survived it. Now unquestionably amongst many accounts of that great event, circumstantially differing, and yet, to a certain degree, substantially agreeing with one another, that of Moses, as it is by far the most ancient, is also by far the most simple and probable.

But we assert, in the second place, that we have, in the present state of the world itself, an irrefragable evidence to the fact of a general deluge. The surface of the earth presents unquestionable marks of its devastating force. The phenomena which it presents, are such

I

as render unnecessary, in the present state of human knowledge, any laboured proof of the fact. Thus far, therefore, the evidence of nature itself tends to establish the truth of the sacred historian. It is beyond question that there has been a general deluge. But we are told, that if the appearances of nature establish the fact of a deluge, they are at variance with the account which has been given of it by Moses; and so, as to the credibility of the Bible history, we lose one way more than we gain another.

When first this objection was urged, great stress was laid upon it by those who denied the inspiration of the sacred historian; and the scoffer exulted, and the unsteady believer trembled. But they, who had other and higher grounds for being convinced that Moses was an inspired interpreter of the will and counsels of God, waited patiently till the subject should be more thoroughly investigated; satisfied that natural philosophy, if followed in a spirit of truth, would never land them in conclusions at variance with the disclosures of revelation. And such has been the result. In proportion as the science of geology, which concerns itself with the superficial phenomena of the globe, has been rendered more exact and certain, by the collection and combination of

facts, and by sound and rational induction, have its conclusions been found to correspond with the principal features of the Mosaic history. The most celebrated and the most acute of those who have reduced it to a system, declare it to be a truth thoroughly established by that science, "that the crust of our globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the date of which cannot be fixed at a remoter period than five or six thousand years from the present time; and that the small number of men, and other animals, which escaped from that revolution, have since propagated and spread over the lands which were then left dry by the flood."

The minor features of the history are less important, as far as its authenticity is concerned. The traces of one or more still earlier deluges, which philosophers think they have discovered in the appearances presented by the earth, may or may not be rightly construed. The question in no way involves the truth of the Mosaic history. As we are not called upon by Scripture to admit, so neither are we required to deny the supposition, that the matter without form and void, out of which this globe of earth was framed,

Cuvier's Essay, p. 171, quoted in Bishop Sumner's Records of Creation, I. p. 352.

may have consisted of the wrecks and relics of more ancient worlds, created and destroyed by the same Almighty Power, which called our world into being, and will one day cause it to pass away.

It may not, however, be out of place, to notice a difficulty, which lies on the surface of the sacred narrative, and is likely to attract the notice of the most cursory reader. The Almighty is represented as declaring to Noah, after the waters had subsided, and he was establishing his covenant with the children of men, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations; I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. But it is objected, that if the sun shone, and the rain fell before the flood, the rainbow must have been seen in the sky, and could not then for the first time have been set in the clouds by a new and special ordinance of God. Now, in the first place, if it were necessary to meet this objection at all, we might say, that it was certainly possible for the Almighty Maker and Preserver of the world, who giveth forth the rain out of his treasures, and withholdeth it at his pleasure, so to have constituted

the atmosphere, as to prevent the appearance of that phenomenon to the fathers before the flood. But we are not constrained to have recourse to that supposition. The glorious circle bent by the hand of the Most High, as it is termed by the Son of Sirach, may have been an object of wonder and admiration to all the descendants of Adam: but it was not till after the deluge that the Almighty was pleased to adopt it, as an everlasting memorial of the covenant which he then made with those who survived that visitation; that as often as men should look up to the clouds pouring forth their treasures, and see that glorious arch stretched across the heavens, they might remember the promise of God, whose goodness endureth for ever, and who now, mindful of his covenant, sendeth his rain upon the just and unjust, not to desolate but to fertilize the earth. The religious man never fails to read, in that beautiful appearance of nature, the signature of the Creator to the covenant of preservation; under the provisions of which the world which we inhabit continues to move in its accustomed course; and seed time and harvest come round, and man reaps the fruit of his labours; and all things proceed in uniform, harmonious order, towards the final consummation; when this