the fountains of the deep, and may have been of like extent and violence. If the one was necessary to the raising of the waters, the other was equally necessary to assuage them. If agitation and violence attended their rising, why should they not much more attend their subsidence, since the agent employed in the latter operation is known to be capable of producing effects of that nature to any conceivable extent? And why should such an agent be specially introduced and announced, if a gradual and tranquil subsidence took place?

But what degree of coolness must a geologist have, to contemplate such a description of a deluge, caused by the breaking up of all the fountains of the great deep, and the incessant pouring down of rain for forty days and nights, on the unequal surfaces of the earth, and perceive no likelihood of any torrents, any impetuous rushing of water, being occasioned; a geologist who can satisfy himself that the ordinary action of water, with the aid of the atmosphere, has in course of time worn down solid crystalline rocks enough

to constitute the whole mass of stratifications; a geologist, who must have witnessed the effects of an ordinary rain continued for three or four days, in overflowing the channels of rivers, swelling creeks into torrents, uprooting trees, excavating the soil, and inundating the lower levels of the region; a geologist, in short, who can discern the mighty effects of small causes, if they are but natural and philosophical, but who declines all consideration of causes not in that category.

Now, if any part of the Mosaic account of the Deluge is to be taken as meaning what it appears to mean; if that visitation was a curse previously denounced by the Creator and moral Governor of the world; if it was executed by his own direct interposition, causing a preternatural rain of forty days, and breaking up the fountains of the deep; if the tenants of the ark were preserved, during twelve months, in their pent-up condition; if the ark itself was preserved and safely grounded on an elevation above the reach of the agitations and convulsions which attended the subsidence of the waters; if these things took

place, then the same power which created the world was specially or supernaturally exerted on this occasion; the operations, to whatever extent they may appear to have been in harmony with the laws of nature, or the ordinary effects of second causes, were miraculous, and if miraculous, the magnitude of the results cannot be urged as an objection to the mode of their production. Nor can the details comprised in those operations, any more than the extent of the operations themselves, supposing them to have included all the principal changes in the crust of the globe, be urged as an objection. It is as conceivable and as credible that the materials of the sedimentary formations should, by miraculous interposition, be separated, disposed in layers or beds, and solidified in a rapid as in a gradual manner. Indeed, with respect to a large portion of the results, it can scarcely be said to be conceivable that they should ever have been produced by a slow process.

If the Scripture narrative of the Deluge be admitted, and if it involved a miracle, then the geological theory cannot be maintained;

for that account includes a denunciation and a reason for the catastrophe, which, on the geological theory, have had no accomplishment. And here is the point where geology and the Bible are at issue. It is because the geologist assumes to account for the phenomena of the earth by ordinary second causes, to the exclusion of preternatural interpositions, and to treat the subject as though it were wholly independent of moral causes, wholly disconnected from man, and from moral government, that his speculations unavoidably conflict with the Bible, and carry him into the field of skepticism; where, if he does not openly reject the whole of the sacred records, he rejects, or puts such construction on portions of them, as virtually to discredit and subvert the rest.

The suggestions and arguments of Dr. Smith in opposition to the universality of the Deluge, and to the supposition of its having produced any considerable effects, are only such as might be expected from a writer un der the double spell of a preconceived and favourite notion of a local and temporary sub

mergence of a certain region in Asia, and of the theory which assigns to the changes in the earth an inconceivable antiquity; and are deemed unworthy of any particular notice. Were his views to be taken as correct, a great deal more sagacity than they indicate would be necessary, to devise any tolerable reason why 120 years of preparation for the event was necessary, or why an Ark should have been constructed at all for the preservation of eight persons and certain animals, including the winged tribes. They might have all migrated from the scene of his local deluge, probably in three or four weeks; and unless the Indian Ocean was raised very suddenly, and at the same time that the region to be deluged settled down, so as to pour its waters at once into the cavity, instead of requiring six months for that operation, the rest of the inhabitants and animals might have escaped as well as Noah. Moreover, if such a region settled down, and such an ocean was poured into it, what occasion could there have been to increase the supply of water by opening the windows of heaven