48 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



it was not the work of a day : he must have foreseen so as- 

 tonishing an event a considerable time previous to its actual 

 occurrence. Whence did he receive this foreknowledge? Did 

 the earth inform him that at twenty, thirty, forty years' distance 

 it would disgorge a flood ? Surely not. Did the -stars announce 

 that they would dissolve the terrestrial atmosphere in terrific 

 rains ? Surely not. Whence, then, had Noah his foreknowledge ? 

 Did he begin to build when the first showers descended ? It was 

 too late. Had he been accustomed to rains, formerly? Why 

 think them now of importance? Had he never seen rain? 

 What could induce him to provide against it ? Why this year 

 more than last year ? Why last year more than the year before ? 

 These inquiries are direct: we cannot flinch from the fact. 

 Erase it from the Mosaic records, still it is recorded in Greece, 

 in Egypt, in India, in Britain ; it is registered in the very sacra 

 of the pagan world. Go, infidel, take your choice of difficulties : 

 either disparage all mankind as fools, as willing dupes to 

 superstitious commemoration, or allow that this fact, this one 

 fact, is established by testimony abundantly sufficient; but re- 

 member that if it be established, it implies a communication 

 from God to man. Who could inform Noah? Why did not 

 that great patriarch provide against fire ? against earthquakes ? 

 against explosions ? Why against water ? why against a deluge ? 

 Away with subterfuge ! confess frankly it was the dictation of 

 Deity. Say that He only who made the world could predict the 

 time and causes of this devastation, that He only could excite 

 the hope of restoration, or suggest a method of deliverance." 



It is a remarkable fact, and one which goes far to support the 

 argument often urged to combat the opinions of atheists, that the 

 ark could not have been built by man, unassisted by the divine 

 intelligence, at that age of the world, — that the ark, the first 

 and largest ship ever built, had precisely the same proportions 

 as the ocean steamers of our own day. Its dimensions were, as 

 we have said, three hundred cubits, by fifty, by thirty. Those of 



