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occurring in an appointed order. We may thus see the pro- 
bability (which, to the believer in the inspiration of Scripture, 
becomes a certainty) that the vast upheavings of the Alps, 
the Andes, and the Himalayas, for instance, occurred not 
confusedly nor by chance, nor by undirected force, but ac- 
cording to law and order, instituted by the Eternal, the 
Omniscient, the Almighty God. And is it to wander too far 
into the region of conjecture to suppose that in the chemical 
action, in the flowing, and in the vast power of the subter- 
ranean waters, so revealed to us in Scripture, may be seen the 
true explanation of many a natural phenomenon ? Is it not 
in them that we are to find the true laboratory in which our 
limestone rocks and our deeply mysterious chalk cliffs were 
formed ? Can we not see in them the sources of fresh springs 
and salt springs ; and, when they come into close contact with 
the masses of fire within the earth, can we not see the sources 
of hot springs and the origin of salt rocks ? Once more, may 
we not, in time, be able to trace to them the cause of that 
gradual upheaving of the earth's surface, often as mysterious 
as sudden disruption ? 
But I must check myself, and turn to the question before 
me, the extent to which in the Ark life was preserved. I 
would not on any account close my eyes to the geological 
truth that in far-distant periods the distribution of animal 
life was similar to that now existing. Nor would I evade 
the question : “ Does Moses, in his statement that every kind 
of beast and bird and fowl and creeping thing was taken into 
the Ark by Noah, include the creatures indigenous to New 
Zealand and Australia and America ? You take the expres- 
sions literally, which set forth the universality of the Deluge ; 
do you put no limit on these ? " And in reply to this I would 
first observe that, from the dimensions of the Ark and from 
the exact detail of the narrative, the number and variety of 
creatures must have been very great. Then, having myself 
assuredly gathered from the Scriptures that man was created 
not a savage, but a civilized being, and seeing unmistakable 
indications of a high state of civilization and of a very large 
population in the old world, I can see no difficulty in such a 
gathering having been effected during a period of 120 years, 
and by one, who must have possessed vast influence of a 
certain kind, and no little wealth. 
The observation, however, often loosely made, is strictly true, 
that a limitation must not unfrequently be placed on these uni- 
versal expressions of Scripture, such as "all men," "every man," 
the world," &c. Such limitation, however, is to be set not by 
the science, the reasoning, the fancy, nor the fears of unin- 
