manded to take into the ark with him animals of various kinds, if the deluge was not strictly universal? We reply, There were probably then, as now, many animals domesticated and supported by man, and these, too, the most valuable for man, living nowhere else; besides various other species that may not have wandered far from what seems to have been the birth-place of men, and of the most, if not of all animals, which would have been exterminated by the deluge but for this provision. These Noah was commanded to save. This view seems to us plausible and natural, and at the same time completely to remove the strongest objections to the more common view, growing out of the immense number of species, and the apparent mathematical impossibility of crowding them into a vessel of the given dimensions of the ark.*

Again, the earth's surface bears marks of repeated local deluges, which are brought about by the regular action of the laws of nature, any one of which would have been amply sufficient to sweep away an entire race equal to that inhabiting the antediluvian world.

a

Do any object that this view seems to strip the account of its miraculous character? I answer, We are bound to understand all Scriptural

, narratives in the simplest manner possible; and this event was truly miraculous, in its time, in its purpose, in the prophetic revelation of it given to Noah, and in its stupendous effects, sweeping, as it did, the world of its guilty progeny, and preparing the earth for a new commencement of human history; after which the nature of man was surprisingly changed, his term of life greatly diminished, and the temptations to sin, and the severity of man’s trial, probably, greatly lessened.

Such is the view of the deluge which we are compelled to take ; if others entertain different views, we cannot object to it; but these views have not been selected by us to accommodate any particular theory, but are forced upon our minds by a careful examination of the Bible itself.

Having determined what the deluge was, and what was its object, it is our purpose now to inquire into the evidence of this historical fact now existing among men, apart from the sacred record. This evidence we shall find abundant and satisfactory, and such as to force conviction upon every candid mind.

Observe the many obstacles standing in the way of a clear traditional account of this event. Letters were not invented, perhaps, till centuries after the deluge: they certainly were not in common use for many hundred years; and all history that was preserved was transmitted by word of mouth. When writing was first employed, the deluge was a subject of no more immediate interest than it is now. Those who then lived had not seen its waves. Still, the tremendousness of the event did preserve it in the minds of men till language was written; and one of the earliest efforts of writing was to make an imperishable record of this history.

The Assyrians had a very exact account of the deluge,* in which they state that the tenth man in descent from the first was saved in an ark, which rested finally at Armenia. Berosus preserves the name Noah, and of his sons Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

The ancient Persians have a similar tradition. Zoroaster is said to have affirmed that the deluge was occasioned by the wickedness of a person

Berosus, as quoted by Eusebius, in Praep. Evangel., lib. ix, c. xii.

called Malsus; and the Persians now pretend to designate a place where the waters gushed from the earth.* A poem, called Bagavat, written in the language of Hindostan, centuries before Christ, has a similar account. The description of it is strikingly similar to that given by Moses.

There is also a Chinese tradition to the same effect. “They believe the earth to have been wholly covered with water, flowing abundantly, then subsiding, and separating the higher from the lower age of mankind. I

The ancient Egyptians do not seem to have overlooked the stupendous fact. Their Osiris, who seems to have been Noah, according to Plutarch, entered an ark on the seventeenth of the month Athyr, corresponding exactly with the Hebrew account.g

The story of Deucalion's deluge is familiar to every classical scholar.

Of him, Philo, an Alexandrian Jew, well states: “The Grecians call him Deucalion, but the Chaldeans style him Noah, in whose time the great deluge occurred.”

Plutarch, a Grecian writer after Christ, mentions a tradition, that Deucalion sent out a dove from the vessel, to explore the waste of waters.

It is very remarkable that many nations that have been shut off, till lately, from intercourse with others from time immemorial, have preserved such traditions. The natives of the Sandwich Islands, and the New Zealanders, both, when visited, had such traditions. The Peruvians, Mexicans, and North American Indians had similar traditions.

It has been attempted to accoint for these traditions by supposing many local deluges in ancient times; but this is very unphilosophical, begging the question, and multiplying difficulties. No candid mind can resist the influence of these traditions, nor deny that on the supposition of a universal deluge, like that described in the Bible, in the infancy of the world, these distorted and yet agreeing traditions are what might have been anticipated. We do not adduce them as a demonstration, but as valuable subsidiary evidence.

Still other evidence of the universal deluge is extant. A remembrance of it is perpetuated in the most ancient systems of heathen worship. These systems of idolatry were of gradual growth,