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tlie inundation expressed in these several terms is co-extensive 
with that described by the Psalmist in Psalm civ. : “ Thou 
coveredst it (the earth) with the deep as with a garment ; 
the waters stood above the hills.” Surely the expressions I 
have just now repeated are equivalent to those in Gen. i. 9, — 
“ Let the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, 
and let the dry land appear.” They are literal and exact-, 
beyond question, in the one case ; and they cannot, with any 
consistency, be regarded as figurative or exaggerated in the 
other. But further, we learn from the Book of J ob 
(xxxviii. 8) that the pre- Adamite inundation was occasioned 
by the breaking forth of the waters of the earth from 
restraint ; and to this same restraint they were driven back. 
And in the description of the rising and of the abating of the 
Noachian Flood, exactly the same ideas are presented to the 
mind. The sources from which the waters rise and descend, 
and to which they return, are evidently the same. Thus as 
to the rising of the waters, — In the same day were all the 
fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of 
heaven were opened.” The latter of these, which might be 
called the floodgates or the cataracts of heaven, are clearly 
the waterspouts, caused by a vast and sudden depression of 
the atmosphere, the small drops or globules of vapour flowing 
together into a torrent. While “ the fountains of the great 
deep ” are evidently the same as those spoken of by Wisdom 
(Prov. viii. 27), which Jehovah strengthened, “ when He 
established the clouds above, when He set a compass on the 
face of the depth and when He prepared the heavens.” They 
are the reservoirs in which He shut up the sea with doors 
when ” (on that former occasion) it brake forth as if it had 
issued out of the womb” (Job xxxviii. 8). With this last 
passage, expressing, as it does, restoration from a state of 
confusion into an original and normal state of order, how 
exactly does the language agree in which Moses describes the 
cessation of the Flood ! (Gen. viii. 2 ) — “ The fountains of the 
great deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the 
rain from heaven was stayed.” 
The whole narrative in the Book of Genesis, in either case, 
though brief, yet, when combined with the information 
afiorded by the Book of Job, the Psalms, and the Proverbs, 
plainly shows that the sources of the two deluges were the 
same, viz., the waters sustained in the form of vapour in the 
atmosphere and those in the depths of the sea and in the 
recesses of the earth ; the depth of the covering waters in 
both deluges was the same — the highest mountains were 
covered ; no dry land appeared ; and the extent was the 
