Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/657

Rh Their respect for revealed religion has prevented them from arraying themselves openly against the scriptural account of it—much less do they deny its truth—but they are in a great hurry to escape from the consideration of it, and evidently concur in the opinion of Linnaeus, that no proofs whatever of the deluge are to be discovered in the structure of the earth (p. 1).

And after an attempt to reply to some of Lyell's arguments, which it would be cruel to reproduce, the writer continues:

When, therefore, upon such slender grounds, it is determined, in answer to those who insist upon its universality, that the Mosaic Deluge must be considered a preternatural event, far beyond the reach of philosophical inquiry; not only as to the causes employed to produce it, but also as to the effects most likely to result from it; that determination wears an aspect of skepticism, which, however much soever it may be unintentional in the mind of the writer, yet can not but produce an evil impression on those who are already predisposed to carp and cavil at the evidences of revelation (pp. 8, 9).

The kindly and courteous writer of these curious passages is evidently unwilling to make the geologists the victims of general opprobrium by pressing the obvious consequences of their teaching home. One is, therefore, pained to think of the feelings with which, if he lived so long as to become acquainted with the Dictionary of the Bible, he must have perused the article Noah, written by a dignitary of the Church for that standard compendium and published in 1863. For the doctrine of the universality of the deluge is therein altogether given up; and I permit myself to hope that a long criticism of the story from the point of view of natural science, with which, at the request of the learned theologian who wrote it, I supplied him, may have in some degree contributed toward this happy result.

Notwithstanding diligent search, I have been unable to discover that the universality of the deluge has any defender left, at least among those who have so far mastered the rudiments of natural knowledge as to be able to appreciate the weight of evidence against it. For example, when I turned to the Speaker's Bible, published under the sanction of high Anglican authority, I found the following judicial and judicious deliverance, the skillful wording of which may adorn, but does not hide, the completeness of the surrender of the old teaching:

Without pronouncing too hastily on any fair inferences from the words of Scripture, we may reasonably say that their most natural interpretation is that the whole race of man had become grievously corrupted since the faithful had intermingled with the ungodly; that the inhabited world was consequently filled with violence, and that God had decreed to destroy all mankind except one single family; that, therefore, all that portion of the earth, perhaps as yet a very small portion, into which mankind had spread was overwhelmed by water. The ark was ordained to save one faithful family; and lest that family, on the subsidence of the waters, should find the whole country round them a desert, a pair of all the