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deposits, since, allowing its universality, its action would not 
be of a violent kind. But tbis we cannot allow. It is im- 
possible to conceive of suck a catastrophe otherwise than as 
accompanied with most violent aqueous action. Conceive 
what a world-wide deluge implies — a depth of about five 
miles of water above the ordinary sea-level. Consider the 
causes by which it was produced — deluging rains without 
intermission, for six weeks, and the irruption of the sea upon 
the land. Then say if it is credible, that the action of such 
a deluge so produced should be so tranquil, as to leave no 
marks of its devastations ? It seems to us that there is no 
satisfactory answer to those who point us to the absence of 
any such deposit as we might reasonably expect a universal 
deluge to leave behind it ; and to the undisturbed superficial 
beds, over which a universal deluge must have passed ; except 
the reply, that the Noachian Deluge being local, evidences of 
its occurrence can be demanded only in those regions which 
formed the cradle of the race, and over which the Deluge 
swept. 
The scoriae and ashes of which volcanic craters are for the 
most part composed, are well known to be of the lightest and 
least coherent kind. Exposed to the action of a flood, or the 
waves of the sea, a whole mountain of them would speedily be 
washed away. A case in point is afforded by the remarkable 
history of Graham's Island, a submarine volcano, which 
emerged from the sea in 1831. In a single month it rose to 
an altitude of 200 feet, and formed an island three miles in 
circumference. Yet within three months, the sea had entirely 
washed it away. Now in Auvergne, as everybody knows, 
there are extinct volcanoes which have not been active at least 
since the Adamic period. Their cones are composed of those 
light materials already referred to. Yet there they remain as 
they were before man appeared upon the world's stage. A 
universal deluge must have denuded them at least to their 
latest lava deposits, and therefore the presumption is strong, 
that no flood has submerged central France since these 
volcanoes were in a state of activity ; in other words, since 
the Adamic race appeared upon the globe. 
But while the testimony of Geology seems to me decisive 
against a universal deluge, it supplies interesting illustrations 
of the existence of forces, adequate, if the Most High so 
willed it, to produce this very day such a deluge as destroyed 
the godless race in the days of Noah. Alterations of level, 
both on land and in the bottom of the sea, are known to be 
every-day phenomena. Scandinavia is slowly but steadily 
rising from the sea ; while the bed of the Baltic is becoming 
