40 THE NOACHIAN FLOOD. 



this supposed epitome of the world's inhabitants, shut up 

 for months within the ark, who were the scavengers ? 



But suppose every one of these problems to be solved 

 by a miracle, although of such miracles not a hint is 

 given, there still remains the statement to be dealt with, 

 that ' God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the 

 waters assuaged.' Surely this, if nothing else, is con- 

 clusive that the writer had all along been describing a 

 local and partial deluge upon which a wind could have 

 some sensible effect, not an universal flood wrapping all 

 the mountains of the globe in water, in which case the 

 mightiest wind that ever was, or could be dreamed of, 

 could only have laid bare the surface of the land by 

 piling up great hills and precipices of water upon the 

 ocean. 



When we wish to expose the miracles of a false 

 religion or of a superstitious aberrant creed, we point 

 out, as the case may be, that they are frivolous, useless, 

 unmeaning, devoid of adequate motive, the end achieved 

 and the means employed bearing no reasonable propor- 

 tion ; or we show that the testimony in their favour is 

 inconsistent with itself, or that the consequences which 

 should have flowed from the miracle, had it been gen- 

 uine, are certainly wanting, unless, to bolster up one 

 extreme improbability, a hundred others are invented 

 and swallowed. To every one of these imputations the 

 common theory of the Noachian Deluge lies open. But 

 concede a few grains of common sense to the narrator ; 

 read his narrative in the spirit in which such a person 

 must have written it ; remember that he is not writing 



