I PROLOGUE 33 



criticism ; when scientific physical criticism, after 

 exploding the geocentric theory of the universe 

 and reducing the solar system itself to one of 

 millions of groups of like cosmic specks, circling, at 

 unimaginable distances from one another through 

 infinite space, showed the supernatural istic theories 

 of the duration of the earth and of life upon it, to 

 be as inadequate as those of its relative dimensions 

 and importance had been ; it needed no prophetic 

 gift to spe that, sooner or later, the Jewish and 

 the early Christian records would be treated in 

 the same manner ; that the authorship of the 

 Hexateuch and of the Gospels would be as severely 

 tested ; and that the evidence in favour of the 

 veracity of many of the statements found in the 

 Scriptures would have to be strong indeed, if they 

 were to be opposed to the conclusions of physical 

 science. In point of fact, so far as I can discover, 

 no one competent to judge of the evidential 

 strength of these conclusions, ventures now to say 

 that the biblical accounts of the creation and of 

 the deluge are true in the natural sense of the 

 words of the narratives. The most modern Re- 

 concilers venture upon is to affirm, that some 

 quite different sense may be put upon the words ; 

 and that this non-natural sense may, with a little 

 trouble, be manipulated into some sort of non- 

 contradiction of scientific truth. 



My purpose, in the essay (XVI.) which treats 

 of the narrative of the Deluge, was to prove, by 



