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twenty -four hours/ the Lord made this earth, and all that/ 
in it is ; the natural philosopher asserts that the world was 
not made for many thousand years. 
So that, while both authorities are able to confirm one 
another in the great fact that all things were created with the 
knowledge and power of an infinite God, both were not capable 
of giving a minute explanation of the manner and the time m 
which this event was completed. 
And there was ample reason to show why inductive philo- 
sophy was unable to furnish this more detailed explanation, 
and why nothing less than divine inspiration could do so. 
The creation having at first been made perfect, it was, 
after a certain period, to become so far interrupted, as that a 
large portion of the then living part should be destroyed 
by water. This was a catastrophe not reasonably to be 
inferred or expected. There was nothing in the chain o 
perfect creation to lead to or to link this event with anything 
that had gone before, without the aid of Eevelation to guide us. 
It formed no part, it was not in fulfilment, of any of those 
laws which had been attached to creation at the time it was 
originally formed. It was even brought about by means that 
were not only independent of those laws, but that actually 
defied them. As if to show us that, as creation was first 
brought into existence before those laws were made which 
were destined to regulate it, so here, by the same Power, the 
earth could be destroyed without making any appeal to those 
laws which were given to it for its continuance. 
As, in the first instance, all things were made by miraculous 
and supernatural power, before those laws were brought into 
action which were to guide them, so, when the time came 
that the creatures were to be destroyed which were upon its 
surface, their destruction was effected by supernatural means ; 
and, as such, they could furnish no more evidence as found 
in the earth, how or when the Deluge occurred, than they 
could tell us how the earth was formed in six days. 
There was nothing in the bowels of the earth to satisfy 
man of the reason of this catastrophe, and without Revelation 
we should be ignorant of its causes at this time, though we 
might see and adduce abundant evidences of the fact having 
taken place. 
It was not necessary to show that that act of creative power, 
which marked the operations of the Divine hand in the six days 
creation, was an operation so strictly limited that man could 
not contemplate God in the capacity of a natural Creator 
subsequent to those six days. 
But, as we limit these higher truths to the light of Revela- 
