from so large an addition of fresh water. For months, there could have been no shore: what is now the margin of the sea was buried miles deep; and all the fucoidal vegetation, upon which myriads of animals subsist, must have perished, and the animals with it, if the change in the constitution of the water had not killed them. Every time a man swallows an oyster, he has evidence that the Noachian deluge did not take place.

The plants must have perished also. How many of our trees, to say nothing of the grasses and feeble plants, could endure a soaking of nearly twelve months' duration? Some of the very hardiest seeds might survive, but the number could not be large. The present condition of vegetation upon the globe is another evidence, then, that this deluge did not take place.

When the ark landed on Mount Ararat, and the animals went forth, how did they subsist? As they went down the mountains, the carnivorous animals would have devoured a large portion of the herbivorous animals saved in the ark. Beside the lions, tigers, leopards, ounces, and other carnivorous mammals, amounting to eight hundred and ninety-two, there were in the ark six hundred and sixty-six eagles, for there are forty-eight species; one hundred and forty-four buzzards, fourteen hundred and forty-two falcons, one hundred and forty hawks, two hundred and thirty-eight vultures, and eight hundred and ninety six owls. What chance would a few sheep, rabbits and squirrels, rats and mice, doves and chickens, have, among this ravenous multitude? How could the ants escape, with ant-eaters, aard-varks and pangolins on the watch for them as soon as they made their appearance? There were as many dogs as hares, as many cats as mice. How long a lease of life could the sheep, hares, and mice, calculate upon? Before the herbivorous animals had multiplied, so as to furnish the carnivorous animals with food, they must all have been destroyed, after all the pains taken for their preservation. Noah should have given the herbivora, at least a year's start, especially since the vegetation of the globe was so deficient.

But we are told that the species of animals may have been much fewer in the days of Noah; and, therefore, much less room would be necessary. A single pair of cats, say some, may have produced all the animals of the cat kind; a pair of dogs, all the animals that belong to the dog family. Such an explanation might have been given when zoölogy was little known, and geology had no existence; but there is no place for it now. Animals change, it is true, and all species have probably been produced from a few originals; but the process by which this is accomplished is so slow in its operation, that we have no knowledge of the formation of a new species. We know that lions, tigers, and cats of various species, existed long before the time of the deluge, and dogs, wolves and foxes; and we find mummied cats, dogs, and other animals in Egypt, as old or older than the deluge, so little changed from those of the present time in the same locality, that we cannot recognize any difference between them.

"You seem to forget that all things are possible with God: he could have packed these animals into an ark of one-half the size, brought them altogether in the twinkling of an eye, and returned them as rapidly."

And you seem to forget that the account in Genesis gives us no hint of any such miracle. Noah was to take the animals to him, and to take unto him of all food that is eaten; and, as Hugh Miller remarks, "the expedient of having recourse to supposititious miracle in order to get over a difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not of the nature of an argument, but simply an evidence of the want of it. Argument is at an end when supposititious miracle is introduced." But, if a miracle was worked, it was not one, but ten thousand of the most stupendous miracles, and entirely unnecessary ones. This, the Rev. Dr. Pye Smith saw, when he said, "We cannot represent to ourselves the idea of all land animals being brought into one small spot, from the polar regions, the torrid zone, and all the other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, Australia, and the thousands of islands,—their preservation and provision, and the final disposal of them,—without bringing up the idea of miracles more stupendous than any that are recorded in Scripture. The great decisive miracle of Christianity,—the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,—sinks down before it."

It is a favorite method with the advocates of special revelations to show their agreement with the operations of natural law, till a difficulty is met with that cannot be answered, when they flee at once to miracle to save them. But, in this case, miracle itself cannot save them.

Geology furnishes us with evidence that no such deluge has taken place. According to Hugh Miller, "In various parts of the world, such as Auvergne in Central France, and along the flanks of Etna, there are cones of long-extinct or long-slumbering volcanoes, which, though of at least triple the antiquity of the Noachian deluge, and though composed of the ordinary incoherent materials, exhibit no marks of denudation. According to the calculations of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastating flood could have passed over the forest-zone of Etna during the last twelve thousand years."

Archæology enters her protest equally against it. We have abundance of Egyptian mummies, statues, inscriptions, paintings, and other representations of Egyptian life belonging to a much earlier period than the deluge. With only such modifications as time slowly introduced, we find the people, their language, and their habits, continuing after that time, as they had done for centuries before. Lepsius, writing from the pyramids of Memphis, in 1843, says, "We are still busy with structures, sculptures, and inscriptions, which are to be classed, by means of the now more accurately determined groups of kings, in an epoch of highly flourishing civilization, as far back as the fourth millennium before Christ." That is one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years before the time of the flood. Lyell says that "Chevalier Bunsen, in his elaborate and philosophical work on ancient Egypt, has satisfied not a few of the learned, by an appeal to monumental inscriptions still extant, that the successive dynasties of kings may be traced back without a break, to Menes, and that the date of his reign would correspond with the year 3,640 B.C.;" that is nearly thirteen hundred years before the time of the deluge. Strange that the whole world should have been drowned and the Egyptians never knew it!

From the "Types of Mankind," we learn that the fact is "asserted by Lepsius, and familiar to all Egyptologists, that negro and other races already existed in Northern Africa, on the Upper Nile, 2,300 years B.C."

But this is only forty-eight years after the deluge. What kind of a family had Noah? Was amalgamation practised by any of Noah's sons? If all the human occupants of the ark were Caucasians, how did they produce negro races in forty-eight years? The facts again compel us to announce the fabulous character of this Genesical story of the deluge.

"No intelligent person now believes that it was a total deluge: Buckland, Pye Smith, Miller, Hitchcock, and all Christian geologists, agree that it was a partial deluge, and the account can be so explained."

How strange that God should dictate an account of the deluge that led everybody to a false conclusion with regard to it, till science taught them a better. But let us read what the account says, and see whether it can be explained to signify a partial deluge. To save the Bible from its inevitable fate, such men as Buckland, Smith, Miller, Hitchcock, and