CHAPTER IX 



THE DELUGE OF NOAH 



To the older men of this generation, who have 

 followed the changes of scientific and historical 

 opinion, the story of the Deluge, old though it is, 

 has passed through a variety of phases like the 

 changes of a kaleidoscope, and which may afford an 

 instructive illustration of the modifications of belief 

 in other, and some of them to us more important, 

 matters, whether of history or of religion, which have 

 presented themselves in like varied aspects, and may 

 be variously viewed in the future. 



As children we listened with awe and wonder to 

 the story of the wicked antediluvians, and of their 

 terrible fate and the salvation of righteous Noah, and 

 received a deep and abiding impression of the 

 enormity of moral evil and of the just retribution 

 of the Great Ruler of the Universe. A little later, 

 though the idea that all the fossil remains im- 

 bedded in the rocks are memorials of the Deluge 

 had passed away from the minds of the better 



