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ordinary modes of operation ; while thankfully accepting St. 
Paul's declaration that God is never far from any one of us, 
and that in him “we live and move and have our being/' I 
cannot sympathize with those who would resolve all the diffi- 
culties of a universal flood by calling in the miraculous power 
of Deity. Scripture says nothing of such miraculous inter- 
positions. On the contrary, it tells us that by Divine direction 
Noah constructed the Ark ; that Noah selected and brought 
into the Ark those animals which were to be preserved ; that 
Noah stored up food for himself and for them ; that by the 
breaking up of the fountains of the deep, and the opening of 
the windows of heaven, a deluge was produced which destroyed 
the then human race, with the exception of the Noachian 
family. That a Divine judgment was executed upon a depraved 
race by the Deluge, is made sufficiently plain by the sacred 
history ; but the means which God employed in its execution 
belong not to the miraculous. The building of the Ark, the 
collection of the animals to be preserved, the storage of their 
food, the eruption of the sea upon the land, and the descent 
of unceasing floods of rain, cannot, in the proper sense of the 
term, be called miracles. Hence, taking our stand upon the 
Mosaic history of the Deluge itself, we are entitled to protest 
against the procedure of those who, encompassed with inex- 
tricable difficulties in their attempt to uphold a universal flood, 
meet our arguments by calling in supposititious miracles. The 
Bible says nothing of such miracles ; and we, in our argu- 
mentative straits, may not conjure them up. 
BIBLICAL. 
We are now face to face with the important question “ What 
saith the Scripture?" It must be candidly acknowledged that, 
if taken literally, its testimony regarding the extent of the 
Deluge is not at all dubious. The terms in which the catas- 
trophe is described seem, at first sight, as if they had been 
purposely chosen to put the universality of the Flood beyond 
doubt. “ The waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, 
and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were 
covered"; “and all flesh died, that moved upon the earth, 
both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping 
thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man "; “ Every 
living substance was destroyed, which was upon the face of 
the ground." No terms could be conceived less restricted 
than these. One cannot wonder, therefore, that before geo- 
logical, and other considerations which go in the teeth of a 
