THE DELUGE OF NOAH 141 



man, from his greater knowledge of natural laws and 

 command over natural energies, can do much that is 

 incomprehensible to a savage ; and in this direction 

 science teaches us that, given an omnipotent God, 

 the field of miracle is infinite. As signs, on the other 

 hand, such displays of power connect themselves with 

 the moral and spiritual world, and become teachers of 

 higher truths and proofs of Divine interference. The 

 true position of miracles as signs is remarkably 

 brought out in that argument of Christ, in which He 

 says, ' If ye believe not My words, believe Me for the 

 works' sake.' It is as if a civilised visitor to some 

 barbarous land, who had been describing to an in- 

 credulous audience the wonders of his own country, 

 were to exhibit to them a watch or a microscope, and 

 then to appeal to them that these were things just as 

 mysterious and incredible as those of which he had 

 been speaking. 



Returning to the Deluge, we may observe that 

 such an invasion of the great deep is paralleled by 

 many of which geology presents to us the evidence, 

 and that our knowledge of nature enables us to con- 

 ceive of the possibility of greater miracles of physical 

 change than any on record, such as, for instance, the 

 explosion of the earth itself into an infinity of particles, 

 the final extinction of the solar heat, or the accession 

 to this heat of such additional fierceness as to burn 

 up the attendant planets. All this might take place 

 without any interference with God's laws, but merely 

 by correlations and adjustments of them, as much 



