Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark."

Such is the Scripture account of the most terrible catastrophe that has befallen our world since it has been inhabited by man-an event so appalling that it so strongly impressed itself on the mind of the race that it has never been forgotten, but has lived and floated down through the ages, in one form or another, in the traditions of all the branches of the human family. The mythologies and histories of all the ancient nations are full of the remembrances of it. It is described in the stories of the Greeks and sung in the verses of the Latins. Its memory is enshrined in the sacred books of the Parsee, the Brahmin, and the Mahomedan, and has been assigned a place in the Legend of the Scandinavian and in the mythic records of the Chinaman. Its symbols are found stamped on the coins of ancient Greece, may be traced amid the hoary hieroglyphics of Egypt, recognized in the sculptured caves of Hindoostan, and detected even in the pictured writings of Mexico. In Cuba and Tahiti, on the banks of the Orinoco, on the pampas of Brazil, in the mountains of Peru, and in the Islands of the Pacific, the traveller has met with traces or traditions of the Flood, the Ark, and the rescue of the Favored Few. "The tradition of the Flood," says Hugh Miller, "may be properly regarded as universal, seeing there is scarcely any considerable race of man among which, in some of its forms, it is not to be found." And Humboldt speaking of this fact says, "These ancient traditions of the human race, which we find dispersed

over the whole surface of the globe, like the relics of a vast shipwreck, are highly interesting in the philosophical study of our own species. How many different tongues, belonging to branches that appear totally distinct, transmit to us the same facts. The traditions concerning races that have been destroyed, and the renewal of nature, scarcely vary in reality, though every nation gives them a local coloring. In the great continents, as in the smallest islands of the Pacific Ocean, it is always on the loftiest and nearest mountain that the remains of the human race have been saved; and this event appears the more recent in proportion as the nations are uncultivated, and as the knowledge they have of their own existence has no very remote date." So long as the descendants of Noah remained together in one region, the story of the Deluge would be one and the same among all. But as they multiplied and became dispersed the account which the different tribes carried with them would unavoidably grow more or less blurred, and in time more or less distorted, as affected by the events of their own history, and by the features of their respective localities, till, though retaining the main facts, it assumed the varied forms and colorings in which we now find it among the different nations of the globe. In these wide-spread but wonderfully concurrent traditions, therefore, we have a remarkable corroboration of the sacred history; for on no other ground can we rationally or credibly account for them, than that they have had their origin in one and the same eventthe Deluge of the Bible.

1. Moral aspect of the Deluge.-The Scripture history represents the Deluge as a judgment inflicted by God;"Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth." In this particular, also, the Bible is singularly corroborated by the ancient traditions. The historic and traditionary proof of the Noahian Deluge is so clear and conclusive, that the very enemies of Scripture have been obliged to acknowledge its force. M. Boné, for example, an eminent writer and scoffer of the French school, has said, "I shall be vexed to be thought stupid enough to deny that an inundation or catastrophe has taken place in the world, or rather in the region inhab ited by the antediluvians. To me this seems to be as really a fact in history as the reign of Cæsar at Rome." But there are those who cannot receive this statement, and who choose rather to reject the whole Bible account than to believe that the all-wise and righteous Creator could have thus by one fearful swoop destroyed a whole world's population. They maintain that whatever of Flood might have taken place, it was the result of mere natural causes, the hand of God was not in it, and the Great Father of all is not to be charged with the cruelty of thus destroying an entire race of beings. It is to be admitted, indeed, that the mind cannot but recoil with horror from the idea of such an immense mass of life and intelligence being thus in a moment swept into eternity! But human feelings and human reason are not competent to pronounce judgment on the wisdom or rectitude of a dispensation such as this. We are incapable of rightly estimating either its antecedents or its consequents.

God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, neither are his ways as our ways. The Father and Ruler of all must ever have contemplated the welfare, not of one generation only-not of that one generation alone on which a fate so awful descended-but of all the countless generations of men to the end of time. His wisdom and rectitude and love consulted, indeed, the interests of each individual, but of each individual in his connection with the great whole. Without departing from justice and without failing in kindness, even to one, God must ever have consulted the greatest good of the whole race. Mere forbearance, mere love to one man, himself only considered, might have proved the deepest injury to multitudes; mere forbearance, mere love to a single generation, itself only considered, might have proved the deepest injury to countless generations to come. We have seen that in the times immediately preceding the Deluge, the condition of the world was one of deep and widespread degeneracy. In spite of all the Divine warnings and Divine forbearance continued through a period of more than two thousand years, mankind waxed worse and worse, until they finally reached a pitch of corruption and iniquity past all hope of reformation. And if men, descending from a pure origin such as Adam was by creation, had thus degenerated, and sin had spread its ravages so wide and so far and so deep-the result must have been terrible beyond conception, if the race, as it then had become, had been suffered to perpetuate and propagate itself. It was, therefore, an act of mercy no less than of justice to arrest the onflow

of the pestilential deluge of corruption by a deluge of waters. Suddenly, awfully, the fountain was stopped from which the polluted stream of human life issued; and from a new source, and that comparatively pure, the future generations of men were appointed to spring forth. Dark and terrible as was the diluvial storm that swept over the face of our world, as we look back and thoughtfully gaze upon it, we behold shooting through it, ever and again, gleams of light and mercy, that constrain us to believe that all was appointed and controlled by allcomprehending wisdom, and by benevolence which cannot change nor be defeated of its end. The deluge was indeed emphatically an act of judgment-yet not of this alone, but of mercy also. In its first and prominent aspect, it was an appalling judgment; in its second and consequent bearing, it was designed to benefit the world's population to the end of time. This act of Divine judgment, like a massive and lofty column, which all mankind thereafter might see, rises up at the commencement of the second epoch of human history; and upon it is written the warning, in letters which all the world may read,-THE LORD REIGNETH, LET ALL THE PEOPLE TREMBLE; LET THE WHOLE EARTH STAND IN AWE OF HIM.

2. Physical character of the Deluge.-There are those who withhold faith in the Bible history of the Deluge on the ground that no visible trace or evidence of such a catastrophe has been discovered on the face of the earth, -the fossil shells, animals and vegetables and even the superficial drifts and deposits, that were once regarded as such evidence, being now proved to be vastly older