agree; and the palpable circumstance, that the East was the cradle of mankind and the centre whence every postdiluvian emigration took place, clearly demonstrates that the ship can only have come to land in the continent of Asia.

I may add, that the supposition before us does not at all account for a matter, which involves no slight degree of difficulty.

The progenitors of the present existing birds and beasts must have been preserved from the general deluge, as well as the ancestors of the present existing race of mankind. Now the testimony of history and the researches of geology agree in declaring, that the deluge was not more a great than a SUDDEN revolution.* If then man received no warning from heaven of its approach, and if he merely fled to such ships as had previously and accidentally been constructed; how happened it, that the various genera of birds and beasts and reptiles, which are now in actual existence, were preserved no less than man? Is it likely, that there would be a curious research after land-animals and a painful endeavour to take alive the several tribes of birds which wing their airy way through the midst of heaven, while the waters were rapidly rising and threatening immediate destruction? Or, if any such extraordinary efforts should have been made, is it possible that they could have been crowned with success? Nay, even granting the rise of the waters to have been gradual, even granting it to have afforded sufficient time to catch every variety of animals; would man, if left to himself, have been anxious to preserve noxious creatures? Would he have painfully saved the lion, the tiger, the bear, the serpent? Would he have been careful to preserve those smaller animals; which, though not formidable to him as combatants, are troublesome

* Cuvier's Essay on the theory of the earth. § 34. p. 174.

or destructive to his property, and which therefore he now incessantly labours to exterminate? The present supposition is clearly quite insufficient to account for the fact of the existence of animals as they now exist, notwithstanding the certain occurrence of the deluge at a comparatively recent period. Their progenitors could not have been collected together in order to embarkation, without a previous knowledge of the approaching flood on the part of their collector. But this previous knowledge he could not have had, 'save by a divine communication. Therefore a divine communication must have taken place: otherwise, the progenitors of our present birds and beasts and reptiles could not have been preserved.

3. Thus we are finally brought to the very same conclusion as before.

Admit the fact of that great and sudden revolution, which, according to Mr. Cuvier, is a circumstance in geology most thoroughly established and the epoch of which cannot be dated much farther back than five or six thousand years: admit, I say, this fact; and you must inevitably admit the additional fact also, that a revelation of God's purposes to his creature man has assuredly taken place as we find it recorded in Holy Scripture.

On the other hand, deny the fact of the deluge; and you must then run counter to the testimony both of universal history and of strictly corresponding geology, and shaking all moral evidence to its very basis, and thus introducing a complete uncertainty as to every past event both ancient and modern.

Which of these two involves a greater difficulty, an admission of the historical fact of the deluge or a denial of it in the face of the strongest and most varied evidence, does not, I think, require any prolonged discussion.

SECTION IV.

THE DIFFICULTIES ATTENDANT

UPON DEISTICAL

INFIDELITY IN REGARD ΤΟ ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED PROPHECY.

THE same, or (if possible) still greater, difficulties attend upon deistical I fidelity in regard to actually accomplished prophecy.

Political sagacity may sometimes anticipate events, on the mere principle of cause and effect: but this sagacity can penetrate to no very great distance of time; it is uncertain in its operation, even when causes are accurately known; and, if the causes of future events be altogether unknown, its operation wholly ceases.

Prophetic sagacity, on the other hand, is so totally different from political sagacity, that, on no rational grounds, can the two be ever confounded together. Various instances may be easily produced, in which matters most remotely distant in point of time have been accurately foretold, in which such unerring certainty is exhibited that not a failure can be detected even in the most minute circumstance, and in which the prophet must clearly have been ignorant of all those political causes which in the course of God's providence were destined to bring about the predicted effects.

Such being the case, we have an undoubted fact to explain. A mere man, like ourselves, authoritatively and confidently declares, that a particular tissue of events will assuredly come to pass. His word is accurately accomplished: and yet, so far as his own

natural powers were concerned, he possessed no greater facility of developing futurity than any other man. This is the fact to be accounted for; and, as the fact itself is indisputable, we certainly have a right to expect, either that the infidel on his own principles should give a satisfactory solution of it, or that he should renounce his principles as clogged with too many difficulties to be rationally tenable.

To run through the whole volume of prophecy would far exceed my present limits: I must therefore, as in the recent case of the historical fact of the deluge, select some one special prediction, which may serve as a specimen of the mode of reasoning from accomplished prophecy in general.

The prediction, selected for this purpose, shall be that of Moses respecting the future condition of a people, who, at the time of its delivery, were on the eve of victoriously taking possession of the land of Palestine and I the rather select this prediction, both on account of its remote antiquity, for it was uttered fifteen centuries before it began to be accomplished i and on account of the demonstration, which, by a necessary consequence, it affords to the divine authority of the Levitical Dispensation.

I. In a somewhat abbreviated form, the prophecy in question, runs as follows.

66

"It shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee-And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.

"The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young,

And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed; which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

"And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee -The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear : for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, where with thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates

"Then the Lord will make thy plague wonderful and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses and of long continuance

"And it shall come to pass, that, as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you ; so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and to bring you to nought: and ye shall be plucked from the land, whither thou goest to possess it.

"And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other

"And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind and thy life shall