minds, that what the archaic annalist has recorded concerning the deluge said to have occurred in the days of Noah, is true? Even if we had no testimony but that of Moses to the fact; and no evidence that this man was anything more than an uninspired but credible historian, would we act irrationally in believing firmly that such a diluvial event occurred as he relates? Do we receive as credible no professed history in regard to any matter, unless we have other evidence than that of the testimony of the historian in its support? and, we may add, what is in point, unless we can find inscribed on even the tablet of nature unquestionable evidence of its truth? Are we not prepared to say that the man, whoever he be, acts unbecomingly, irrationally, who refuses to believe such an event as that of the Noachian deluge, so called, to have actually occurred, unless he finds other evidence to sustain it than that which he has or can obtain?

EVENING THIRTEENTH.

YOUNG GENTLEMEN:

Something relative to the extent of the Noachian deluge you will not be unsolicitous to hear. Was it universal, or partial? Better satisfied you probably will or may reasonably be, to have a brief synopsis of the arguments on both sides of this question laid before you, rather than to have an expression of the opinion of an individual so humble as myself. Suffer me first to state the chief arguments which may be adduced in favour of the absolute universality of the Noachic cataclysm.

First. The Sacred Scriptures seem to teach this. Let a believer in Holy Writ come without prejudice or prepossession to the perusal of the Mosaic account of this event, and he will hardly fail of arriving at the conclusion that the Flood of Noah extended over the entire globe. Just open your Bible and read Gen. 7: 19-23. What limitation, it might with emphasis be asked, can be assigned to that language in the first of those verses?- "All the high hills that were under the whole heaven, were covered." And the next verse, "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered," appears to indicate that the waters prevailed so many cubits above all the mountains of the earth. And the universal destruction, declared in the three succeeding verses, of all sentient and animal existence, save alone the ark's tenantry, implies the absolutely universal spread of the destroying element. Let it be added, that the covenant spoken of in Genesis 9: 11, with the language there used, appears plainly to indicate that no other inundation, up to the end of time, should be comparable to the deluge of Noah. Yet many partial and somewhat destructive inundations have happened since the time of that cataclysm's oc

currence, and many more doubtless will. It seems inferable that so peculiarly great and extensive must have been the Flood of Genesis, as to be wellnigh or quite universal. "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, etc., shall not cease" as it is of course implied they had done during the prevalence of more than the twelvemonth of this desolating judgment's continuance.

Secondly. All who are willing to rely on the testimony of Moses, so interpret his language as to concede that all mankind, save the "eight souls" in the ark, were reached and submerged by the flood. But according to what we have (may it not be said,) pretty conclusively, on a former occasion, shown, the population of the antediluvian world must have been very numerous and wide-spread, so much so, that their universal submergence must have required so extensive a flow of the diluvial waters as to reach wellnigh, if not entirely, "earth's remotest bounds." I know that Dr. Pye Smith, in order to bring the population of the Old World within such numerical limits as not to overstock the extremely circumscribed territory marked out by him as exclusively reached by the Noachic inundation, has computed the number to which mankind attained before that cataclysm, as exceedingly small,-so small that he will find few, if any, to accord with him in opinion. Any theory which makes the antediluvian population much if any less numerous than the present population of the globe, will probably appear to you unworthy to be entertained. That population whom the flood came and took away, might have lived within narrower geographical limits than the present,we are disposed to imagine they did so, yet within limits by no means so circumscribed, that the before-named eminent author's little inundation could have reached more than a modicum of the entire number.

Thirdly. If the deluge of the Mosaic history were local, limited, instead of universal, there would have seemed little necessity for such a direction as Noah received from God, to build that immense structure, the ark;-little occasion for incurring such an expenditure of time and toil as was encountered in its construction. That enormous vessel could, we would think, have been easily dispensed with. The "eight souls" could have been directed by the Supreme to repair to

some district of country uninhabited by any of the wicked progeny of Adam whom God purposed to destroy; a region beyond the confines of the territory inhabited by the doomed. population, and which the Almighty had in such case determined to inundate; and all the living creatures which he wished to preserve could have been caused to move to that exempt locality and thus find escape from destruction by the diluvial judgment. Or, if the specimens of the various living creatures which entered the ark could be found existing in the locality to which the eight souls should be directed to repair, or any other locality indeed which the waters of the local inundation should not reach, then the change of location of aught beside the eight souls might have apparently been dispensed with. The inference which may be legitimately drawn is, that no escape by such means, or by other than the ark, was feasible; and so that the deluge of Noah was universal.

Or if, to preserve all beside, an ark should, even in case of a partial inundation, be deemed requisite; or, for the display of God's holiness and justice, if both a deluge and an ark should be regarded as essential,-why, if the Flood was but local, could there be need to take into the floating vessel, birds, and, among the feathered tribe, so widely diffused ones, as the dove and raven? "It is," says Kitto, speaking on this point -"it is altogether a most remarkable circumstance, that the only creatures, of those contained in the ark which are named, are those whose existence upon earth would not have been affected by any deluge much less than universal. And if the diluvial waters rose fifteen cubits above all the mountains of the countries which the raven and the dove inhabit, the level must have been high enough to give universality to the deluge."

You recollect we referred you, a few evenings since, to the traditions existing among all nations relative to the Noachic Flood. From the universality of those traditions an argument has sometimes been deduced, to support the doctrine of the universality of the historic or Mosaic deluge. The argument is not conclusive. Nothing indeed is proved by it on either side. The existence of such traditions in different nations does not prove that the deluge to which they refer prevailed

in all those several nations. The people of those several nations springing all from a common ancestry, and that ancestry those whom the ark had been the instrument in saving from the flood, this circumstance is sufficient to account for the so wide prevalence of the traditions spoken of. It was natural that every nation indeed should in its tradition make its own land the scene of the calamity to which such tradition had reference, to localize the event, and in their own territory. This at least to a great extent was done. Though such a use as that we have alluded to, may not,-yet no less than two other important uses may, be made of those traditions of all people. One of these has been formerly availed of, viz.: to confirm the Mosaic account of the Flood; to show, as the Sacred Scriptures affirm, that there was an inundation by which the whole family of man, Noah and his household excepted, were destroyed. The other use-and it is one which speculating infidelity will not like-is, to serve as an auxiliary in proving, in further conformity with the Scripture record, that all the existing nations and tribes of men are descended from that one little family which survived the Deluge.

Nor is that old argument of any appositeness or validity toward proving the universality of the Flood, which Stackhouse, in his Bible History, has stated thus: "We need only turn aside the surface a little, and look into the bowels of the earth, and we shall find arguments enough for our conviction,” i. e., that the Flood was universal. "For the beds of shells, which are often found on the tops of the highest mountains, and the petrified bones, and teeth of fishes, which are dug up some hundreds of miles from the sea, are the clearest evidences in the world, that the waters have some time or other, overflowed the highest parts of the earth; nor can it, with any colour of reason, be asserted that these subterraneous bodies are only the mimicry or mock productions of nature; for, that they are real shells the nicest examination, both of the eye and microscope, does evince; and that they are true bones, may be proved by burning them, which, as it does other bones, turns them first into a coal, and afterwards into calx." We have before offered reasons why the fossil remains, marine and other, found in the rocky strata of six or seven miles in thickness, as well as those found in the detritus nearer the surface, cannot rightly be re