Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/34

 cient strength to wrest from his hands. Had theologians manifested one half that persevering love for the truth, in dependent of the creeds or doctrines of men, which has been manifested by inquirers into the laws and operations of nature, such caution would never have been necessary. But his article shows a full and decided conviction that the doctrine of a general deluge, however plainly it may seem to be taught in the bible, can derive no positive support or confirmation from geology. He says that "the facts revealed by geology indicate many partial deluges"—that "a general deluge will not account for them;" that "amidst the vast exuberance of diluvial remains, it is impossible to appropriate to the general deluge those that belong to it." But the article is long, and it is impossible to do justice to its full meaning without transcribing more than we have space for. The bearing of it is simply and plainly that there are no distinct geological indications of any great or general flood corresponding to the one supposed to be described by Moses. The writer does not intimate a doubt that the flood there described literally occurred, but inclines to the opinion expressed by Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgwater Treatise, that "the flood described in the inspired narative, was comparatively a tranquil inundation;" one which has left no distinct traces of its occurrence, or at least none which have yet been distinguished from ordinary cases of diluvial action. A very able and candid examination of this question may be found in a work entitled "Scripture and Geology," by J. P. Smith, D. D., and member of the Geological Society of London. That the author of this work sustains a high reputation as a geologist and a general scholar, may be seen from the following notice which is part of an editorial article found in Silliman's Journal, vol. 41, page 9. After speaking of the "high character of Dr. S. as a religious man, a learned theologian, and a distinguished lecturer," of his "great anxiety to reconcile the facts of geology with the Mosaic history," and of the writer's sympathy with his views—the