242 
earth : and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with 
him in the Ark.” This follows the statement that “ all the 
high hills under the whole heaven were covered ” (Gen. vii. 
19, 20). And it is only consistent both with this language 
and with the fact described, that we should interpret these 
statements of entire destruction literally. Such interpretation, 
moreover, is fully confirmed by the two following passages 
from St. Peter's second Epistle, “And spared not the old 
world; but spared Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of 
righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the 
ungodly.” Again, “ The world that then was, being over- 
flowed with w’ater, perished.” The destruction in all these 
passages is co-extensive with the Deluge. In neither class of 
passages, whether taken separately or taken together, is there 
the slightest ground for the limitation of the universality of 
the expressions employed. 
PART III. 
It will doubtless have been observed that my argument 
has been limited to the extent of the two deluges, to the 
sources or reservoirs of their waters, and to the destruction of 
life occasioned by the latter. No allusion has been made to the 
Scripture statements respecting the extent to which animal life 
is stated by Moses to have been preserved from that destruc- 
tion. I have considered that these two questions of uni- 
versality demand a separate investigation. Difficulties which, 
when confusedly thrown together, appear impossibilities, will 
generally be overcome if disentangled and taken in detail. If 
the Scriptures be correct and true in the record of the Deluge, 
they cannot contain impossibilities in the narrative of the Ark. 
That which I have shown to be the correct view of the Scrip- 
ture statements respecting creation, and respecting these two 
deluges, is a sufficient reply to all objections against the 
Scripture narrative drawn from the vast periods of time re- 
quired both for the formation of the various strata in the 
crust of the earth, and for various and successive disruptions 
and upheavings. In the period, illimitable by us, between 
the act of creation and the occasion of the earth becoming 
without form and void, and again in the undefined duration 
of that state of convulsion, there surely is ample space for the 
production of all those phenomena. And more than this. In 
the record of two deluges, occurring at the nearer approach to 
us of a succession of countless ages, we may see, as it seems 
to me, the probability of a vast series of such, convulsions 
