408 Notices of Books. [July, 



trary, finds that the Bible may, at least in its account of the 

 deluge, be taken as throwing some light upon certain geological 

 facts, while these facts may serve to confirm or corroborate 

 biblical testimony. These views are undoubtedly those that will 

 afford most definite results. They are based ultimately on the 

 axiom that two truths cannot be more than apparently incom- 

 patible. And both our authors are men who have distinguished 

 themselves in the investigation ; Mr. Lucas is well known by his 

 work, ''The Biblical Antiquity of Man;" Mr. Ponton as the 

 author of " The Beginning, its When and its How," noticed in 

 these pages. Mr. Lucas states that he feels conscious that no 

 difficulties besetting his own solution have been designedly 

 overlooked or evaded ; and that no facts requisite to a just and 

 impartial view of the subject have been omitted or distorted. 

 Nothing, in short, has been assumed but the truth of Scripture 

 statement. Now this is as it should be. The scientific layman 

 is as convinced of biblical truth as the biblical layman may be 

 of scientific truth ; obviously their only method of detecting error 

 on either side is by reductio ad absurdum. But it is an open 

 question as to which may be living in the glass-house, and it is 

 better to continue to work, as our authors do, on the axiom of the 

 negation of incompatibility of truths. Proceeding, then, on this 

 common track, Mr. Lucas considers the deluge miraculous in its 

 origin, and that it could not have been produced by any natural 

 force. That it happened is shown by the evidence of present 

 effect. That the " breaking up of the waters," the quiescent 

 stage and the recession have been attended by well marked, 

 although suppository, geological phenomena. Having conceded 

 that the date of the Deluge admits, even upon Scriptural authority, 

 of the utmost elasticity, it is possible that implements but not 

 bones might be found pertaining to the antediluvian period, 

 while the phenomena of " inundation mud " might be shown to 

 be susceptible of explanation upon a diluvian theory. These 

 are the main points of the work ; the reader should exhaust it 

 for himself. 



With Mr. Ponton, in his " Glimpses of the Future," we are con- 

 fessedly more at home, for he brings forward scientific reasoning 

 in support of biblical statement. His treatment of Death and 

 Hades as abstract ideas, the interpretation of " heavens " as 

 meaning atmosphere, are especially characteristic of this author's 

 liberal views. Passing, however, to the Appendix on the 

 probable law of increase of the human race, we find it there 

 said : — " The prevalence of law and order in all the proceedings 

 of the Infinite Mind that rules the universe renders it probable 

 that the multiplication of mankind on the earth may have been 

 regulated by some law which a careful investigation may possibly 

 discover." Having assumed that the present races of mankind 

 have all sprung from the eight persons composing the family of 

 Noah, it appears that twenty-seven reduplications from those 



