Read Ebook: The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science: A Discourse by Denton William

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But the writer says, "The fountains of the great deep were broken up." To the Jews, who supposed, with David, that God had founded the earth upon the seas, and established it upon the floods, this meant something; but, in the light of geology, we see that it only demonstrates the ignorance of the man who wrote and the people that believed the story.

Adam Clarke, commenting on this passage, says, "It appears that an immense quantity of water occupied the centre of the antediluvian earth; and, as this burst forth by the order of God, the circumambient strata must sink in order to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the elevated waters." If true, it would not have assisted in drowning the world one spoonful. For if the strata sank anywhere to fill the hollow previously occupied by the water, it would only make the mountains so much higher in comparison: hence it would require just that much extra water to cover them. In the light of geology, however, the notion is sufficiently absurd. A mile and a half deep, the earth's interior is hot enough to convert water into steam; there is, therefore, no chance for water to exist in its centre, or anywhere near it.

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 zo?logy 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.

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."

Archaeology 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.

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 other Bible apologists, it is evident from their writings, were ready to resort to any scheme, however wild.

The Bible states, however, that it was intended to destroy every thing wherein was the breath of life; and your account and the Bible account do not at all agree. But, if man was intended to be destroyed, the flood must have been wide-spread. We know that Africa was occupied before that time, and had been for thousands of years, by various races. We learn, from the recent discoveries in the Swiss Lakes, that man was in Switzerland before that time; in France, as Boucher's and Rigollet's discoveries prove; in Great Britain, as the caves in Devonshire show; in North America, as the fossil human skull beneath Table Mountain demonstrates. Hence, for the flood to destroy man alone at so recent a period, it must have been as wide spread as the earth.

Even according to the Bible account, the garden of Eden, where man was first placed, was somewhere near the Euphrates; and in sixteen hundred years the race must have rambled over a large part of the earth's surface. The highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas, are within two thousand miles of the Euphrates. That splendid country, India, would have been occupied long before the time of the deluge; and, on the flanks of the Himalayas, man could have laughed at any flood that natural causes could possibly produce.

Nothing more easy. In all times floods have occurred; some by heavy and long-continued rains, others by the bursting of lake-barriers or the irruption of the sea; and wherever traditions of these have been met with, men with the Bible story in their minds have at once attributed their origin to the Noachian deluge.

Granted; but does that transform a fable into a fact? They believed the story just as our modern theologians believe it; because they were taught it when they were children, and had not learned better. Jesus says , "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For, as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." If the man had regarded the story as false, he never would have referred to it in such a manner. And, in this manifestation of credulity on the part of Jesus, we can see the very false estimate placed upon him by so large a portion of the people of this country. Let the truth be spoken, though Jesus and all other idols be overthrown. So he would say, if alive, or he was not as good and intelligent a man as I think he was.

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant spellings have been retained. Hyphenation has been standardised.

Aivan tendenssitt?m?n?, huumorin valaisema

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