THE NOACHIAN FLOOD. 41 



a scientific treatise, nor using the phraseology of modern 

 Europe ; bear in mind that he is speaking in an idiom 

 110 longer or now but seldom used, yet a just and noble 

 idiom, which ascribes to God all that is done upon 

 earth, whether good or evil, the works of man and the 

 common processes of nature, as well as things super- 

 human and miraculous ; and, with these considerations 

 before us, we shall save the venerable record from every 

 imputation, either of folly or of falsehood. 



That which we have described to us is a vast penal 

 catastrophe sweeping away some great centre of civili- 

 zation by means of a terrible inundation. Along some 

 ocean-border the far-stretching plains were dotted 

 thickly with towns and villages. There were fields 

 waving with corn ; the vine and the olive, the orange 

 and the palm abounded; there were cattle feeding in 

 green pastures beside the still waters ; there were popu- 

 lous tribes and nations carrying on all the business and 

 revelry of life ; they bought, they sold, they builded, 

 they planted, they were marrying and giving in mar- 

 riage, when suddenly the fountains of the great deep 

 were broken up, and the earthquake wave rolled in upon 

 them, and swept all the beauty and the glory and the 

 sin remorselessly away. At the same time, the angry 

 heavens were overcast, and the floodgates of the clouds 

 poured down their volumes of ceaselessly-descending 

 rain. The distant mountains were torn from the sight ; 

 nay, every high hill under the whole heaven was itself 

 covered and enfolded in a liquid veil, for every rill was 

 now a torrent, every tiny silver thread of a cascade now 



