HISTORY OF THE DELUGE. 



39 



was fully completed he gathered his family into it, with pairs of 

 all living creatures. Then were the fountains of the great deep 

 broken up and the windows of heaven opened. The rains de- 

 scended during forty days and forty nights. The waters arose 

 and lifted up the ark from the earth. The mountains were covered 

 to a depth of twenty-two feet, and all flesh died that moved 

 upon the earth : Noah alone remained alive, and they that were 

 with him in the ark. 



The flood commenced in the second month of Noah's six 

 hundredth year. During five months the waters prevailed ; in 

 the seventh the ark rested upon the summit of Mount Ararat. 

 In the tenth month the tops of the mountains were seen ; in the 

 eleventh Noah sent forth a dove, which speedily returned, hav- 

 ing found no rest for the sole of her foot ; on the seventeenth day 

 he again sent forth the dove, which returned, bringing an olive- 

 leaf in her bill, and, being again sent forth, returned no more. 

 On the first day of the first month of his six hundred and first 

 year, Noah removed the covering of the ark and saw that the face 

 of the ground was dry. Toward the close of the second month 

 the earth was dried, and Noah went forth with his sons, his wife, 

 and his sons' wives.' He built an altar and offered burnt-offer- 

 ings of every beast and fowl to the Lord. God then made a 

 promise to Noah that he would no more destroy the earth by 

 flood, and stretched the rainbow in the clouds in token of this 

 solemn covenant between himself and the children of men. 



Such is the scriptural history of the Deluge, — the first great 

 chronological event in the annals of the world after the Creation. 

 The investigations of philosophy and of infidelity into the 

 accuracy of the Mosaic account have resulted in furnishing 

 confirmation of the most direct and positive kind. The prin- 

 cipal objections of cavillers turn upon three points: 1st, the 

 absence of any concurrent testimony by the profane writers of 

 antiquity; 2d, the apparent impossibility of accounting for 

 the quantity of water necessary to overflow the whole earth to 



