and many of them had originally some historical basis. Any other supposition is not only gratuitous, but absurd. Those who have studied the gradual encroachment of idolatry upon Christianity, in the history of the Romish Church, are at no loss to account for heathen idolatry. Now it is a striking fact that an ark has been held in great veneration in some of the most wide-spread systems of worship. This was true in the worship of Osiris in Egypt, of Adonis in various countries, of Bacchus and Ceres in Rome; and, to the astonishment of scholars, this same mysterious veneration of the ark has been detected among the Mexicans, North American Indians, and South Sea islanders. Is not this strange attesting evidence of the fact, that all men were once under great obligation to the ark ?* It would seem also that the triads of gods, in various systems of prevalent heathen worship, have arisen from the deification of Noah's three sons, who, confounded with Adam's three sons, came to be looked upon as the three great tute © The critical reader will find this subject elaborated in Bryant's Ancient Mythology, a prodigy of diligence and research; and also in Faber's Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri. lar divinities of men. The one, Cain or Ham, was regarded as an unpropitious or gloomy god. “Hence we have in all pagan mythologies a triad of principal gods. In the Greek, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; in the Hindoo, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; in the Egyptian, Osiris, Horus, and Typhon, one of whom, in each case, is a divinity of a dark nature, like Cain or Ham. The Persians had their Ormuzd, Mithrad, and Ahriman; the Syrians their Merinnus, Azis, and Ares; the Canaanites their Baal-Shelisha, or self-triplicated Baal; the Goths their Odin, Vilo, and Ve, who are described as the three sons of the mysterious cow, a symbol of the ark; the Jakutha Tartars their Artagon, Schugo-tengon, and Tanguru—the last, even in name, the Tangu-tangu of the Peruvians : for this singular fact stops not with the great primitive nations ; it extends itself to all others, even to those discovered in modern times. Like China and Japan, the Peruvians were found, on the discovery of America, to have their triads, Apemiti, Churunti, and. Intiquoque, or the fathersun, brother-sun, and son-sun. The Mexicans had also their Mexilli, Haloc, and Tercallipuca, the last the god of repentance. The New-Zealanders believe that three gods made the first man and the first woman from the man's rib; and their general term for love is Eve. The Otaheitans had a similar idea."* This traditions and customs combine to confirm this Biblical account. It should never be forgotten that the evidence of the divine origin and the truth of the Bible is cumulative, and consists of almost innumerable parts, all harmoniously cohering. Well has it been said that “the moral certainty of the Mosaic history of the flood is established on a basis sufficiently firm to bid defiance to the cavils of scepticism.' It follows from this great fact, that the human family had its second origin where the ark rested, on the mountainous region of Ararat, which was probably Armenia, in Western Asia, perhaps the most beautiful region of the earth. A German historian + has remarked that there seems to be no better way of determining this, than to seek where wheat, rye, oats, and barley— grains which civilized men have always with them-grow spontaneously; and where the horse, and ox, and other domestic animals, always attendant upon men, run wild: for we may with propriety suppose that the first emigrants car • Howitt's Priestcraft, pp. 19, 20. ried with them the vegetables and animals which they had at home, just as emigrants now carry with them the utensils and vegetables of their fatherland. Now barley grows wild behind the Caspian Sea. Other grains there grow spontaneously, and there our household animals roam without owners. There are found, indigenous with the soil, the vine, the olive, rice, legumina, and other plants on which man has depended in all ages for sustenance; and all of those animals which he has tamed and led with him over the whole earth, there run wild upon the mountains, as the ox, the horse, the ass, the sheep, the goat, the camel, the hog, the dog, the cat, and even the gentle reindeer, which accompanies him to the icy polar tract. As far as this strange evidence goes, how beautifully and singularly does it authenticate Holy Writ! The unity of the human race is a fact directly flowing from the doctrine of a universal deluge, and will be considered in a following chapter. We cannot conclude this chapter without the remark, that if any are not convinced by the above arguments that the great deluge was local, extending only so far as man extended, still all the other facts and reasonings adduced a |