640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



beasts of the land and of the fowls of the air were preserved along with them, and 

 along with them went forth to replenish the now desolated continent. The words 

 of Scripture (confirmed as they are by universal tradition) appear at least to mean 

 as much as this. They do not necessarily mean more.* 



In the third edition of Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Bibical Literature 

 (1876), the article Deluge, written by my friend the present distin- 

 guished head of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, extin- 

 guishes the universality doctrine as thoroughly as might be ex- 

 pected from its authorship; and, since the writer of the article 

 Noah refers his readers to that entitled Deluge, it is to be sup- 

 posed, notwithstanding his generally orthodox tone, that he does 

 not dissent from its conclusions. Again, the writers in Herzog's 

 Keal-Encyclopadie (Bd. X, 1882) and in Riehm's Handworterbuch 

 (1884) — both works with a conservative leaning — are on the same 

 side ; and Diestel,f in his full discussion of the subject, remorse- 

 lessly rejects the universality doctrine. Even that stanch oppo- 

 nent of scientific rationalism — may I say rationality ? — Z6ckler,J 

 flinches from a distinct defense of the thesis, any opposition to 

 which, well within my recollection, was howled down by the or- 

 thodox as mere " infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zock- 

 ler is able to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a par- 

 ticularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out 

 the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the 

 end of the Glacial epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle 

 of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing ; and 

 which, if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about 

 the fact of the deluge, would leave the details of his account as 

 irreconciliable with the truths of elementary physical science as 

 ever. Thus I may be permitted to spare myself and my readers 

 the weariness of a recapitulation of the overwhelming arguments 

 against the universality of the deluge, which they will now find 

 for themselves stated, as fully and forcibly as could be wished, 

 by Anglican and other theologians, whose orthodoxy and con- 

 servative tendencies have, hitherto, been above suspicion. Yet 

 many fully admit (and, indeed, nothing can be plainer) that the 

 Pentateuchal narrator means to convey that, as a matter of fact, 

 the whole earth known to him was inundated ; nor is it less obvi- 

 ous that unless all mankind, with the exception of Noah and his 

 family, were actually destroyed, the references to the flood in the 

 New Testament are unintelligible. 



But I am quite aware that the strength of the demonstration 

 that no universal deluge ever took place has produced a change of 

 front in the army of apologetic writers. They have imagined that 



* Commentary on Genesis, by the Bishop of Ely, p. 77. f Die Sintflut, 1876. 



X Theologie und Naturmssenschaft, ii, 784-791 (1877). 



