THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND OF SCIENCE. 639 



Their respect for revealed religion has prevented them from arraying them- 

 selves 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 evi- 

 dently 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 teach- 

 ing 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 compen- 

 dium 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 theo- 

 logian who wrote it, I supplied him, may have in some degree con- 

 tributed toward this happy result. 



Notwithstanding diligent search, I have been unable to dis- 

 cover that the universality of the deluge has any defender left, at 

 least among those who have so far mastered the rudiments of nat- 

 ural 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 word- 

 ing 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 



