4. There is no proof of a distinct separation between the primæval and the recent fauna and flora; on the contrary, it seems as if by degrees, long before the first appearance of man, many species of plants and animals had died out, and had been replaced by others; and that this took place in consequence of geological convulsions, changes of climate, and other causes, and occurred at different times, and in different countries.

Under these circumstances, the theory of Restitution must be regarded as untenable. The Scotch geologist, Hugh Miller, who has been so often quoted in these pages, rejects it in the following words: "I certainly did once believe with Chalmers and with Buckland, that the six days were simply natural days of 24 hours each, that they had compressed the entire work of the existing creation,-and that the latest of the geologic ages was separated by a great chaotic gap from our own. My labours at the time, as a practical geologist, had been very much restricted to the paleozoic and secondary rocks, . . . and the long extinct organisms which I found in them certainly did not conflict with the view of Chalmers. All I found necessary at the time to the work of reconciliation was some scheme that would permit me to assign to the earth a high antiquity, and to regard it as the scene of many succeeding creations. During the last nine years, however, I have spent a few weeks every autumn in exploring the later formations, and acquainting myself with their peculiar organisms. . . . And the conclusion at which I have been compelled to arrive is, that for many long ages ere man was ushered into being, not a few of his humbler contemporaries of the fields and

That

woods enjoyed life in their present haunts, and that for thousands of years anterior to even their appearance, many of the existing molluscs lived in our seas. day during which the present creation came into being, and in which God, when He had made the beast of the earth after his kind, and the cattle after their kind,' at length terminated His work by moulding a creature in His own image, to whom He gave dominion over them all, was not a brief period of a few hours' duration, but extended over mayhap millenniums of centuries. No blank chaotic gap of death and darkness separated the creation to which man belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyæna; . . . and so I have been compelled to hold, that the days of creation were not natural, but prophetic days, and stretched far back into the bygone eternity. After, in some degree, committing myself to the other side, I have yielded to evidence which I found it impossible to resist; and such, in this matter, has been my inconsistency, an inconsistency of which the world has furnished examples in all the sciences, and will, I trust, in its onward progress, continue to furnish many more.'

Here I close the discussion of the Biblical account of creation, and I turn to the narrative given in the Bible of a historical event, which has a certain relation to the geological history of the earth, and which has been repeatedly mentioned in this lecture. I mean the Deluge.

1 Testimony of the Rocks, p. x.

XXI.

THE DELUGE.

THE Mosaic account of the Deluge differs from that of the creation in one point, which is not quite immaterial. The creation and formation of the earth occurs in the pre-human age; Moses therefore could only give an account of it in consequence of a Divine Revelation, which either was vouchsafed to him, or, as we have seen is more likely, had already been vouchsafed to the first men, and was handed down by them to posterity. Such a revelation was not necessary in the case of the Deluge. Noah and his family were eye-witnesses of all its details, and, no doubt, handed on the narrative of their experiences to their descendants. Moses could therefore write down an account of the Deluge, simply by repeating the tradition which had come down to him from Noah, and without having received any divine revelation on the subject. Perhaps he may have discovered a manuscript already in existence, giving an account of this and some other events, and may have simply included this older writing in his narrative, without making any, or any important, alterations on it. The whole character of the description of the Flood, its circumstantiality and breadth, its picturesqueness and attention to detail, gives us the impression that it is, if not the description given by an

403

eye-witness, at least the transcription of a narrative which had been carefully passed on by an eye-witness.1 According to the chronological statements in Genesis, Abraham might have heard from Noah's lips the narrative of this great event. We may begin by supposing it probable that this narrative would be accurately handed down in the family of the patriarch, so that we may safely say that Moses could get the information for his narrative from a good source.

2

We are confirmed in this favourable opinion of the historical value of the Mosaic record by the legends of the Deluge among other nations, which stand in a similar relation to the Mosaic narrative as do their accounts of the creation to the Mosaic account. Although much which has been collected and affirmed about these Flood - legends, and about their relation to the Biblical narrative, will not stand criticism, yet there still remain several of such legends; and the fact that they exist, and agree with the narrative in Genesis, in the main points, and in peculiar details, can only be explained on the supposition that there was a common source for them all; and this can be no other than the tradition which the nations took with them when they departed from the home of their ancestors. But if all the records are compared, the Mosaic clearly gives us the impression of being rela

1 "The narrative of the Flood is like a carefully-kept diary.”—Kurtz, Geschichte des A. B. i. § 26. Herder calls it "a journal out of the ark.” 2 Lüken, Traditionen, p. 170. Stiefelhagen, Theologie, p. 528. Zöckler, Op. cit. p. 321. For the Babylonian account of the Deluge, discovered by G. Smith, see Fr. Lenormant, Le Déluge et l'Epopée Babylonienne, Paris 1873. (Correspondant, 1873. N. S. T. 54, p. 324.) Jahrb. für Deutsche Theologie, 1873, 69.

3 Cf. Dillmann, Genesis, p. 145. L. Diestel, Die Sündfluth und die Flut sagen des Alterthums, Berlin 1871.

tively the truest and most historical.

"The legends

of the Flood among various peoples," says Delitzsch with truth, "are corrected by the Biblical record, just as they, in their turn, afford proof of its historical truth. For the same foundation underlies the heathen legends of the Flood, only they are mythologically exaggerated, and thereby so transformed that the moral meaning of the event is lost; the locality is brought as near as possible to the home of the nation, the idea of a general Flood is more or less lost in that of a national and particular Flood, and the national manners and customs are carried back to the time before the Flood. But the Biblical record, with its freedom from all mythological and national elements, is the true and purely historical reflection of the great universal tradition."

I will also quote an interesting observation of Humboldt's "The ancient legends of the human race, which we find dispersed throughout the whole world like the fragments of a great shipwreck, are of the deepest interest to the philosophical inquirer into the history of mankind. Like certain families of plants which preserve the type of a common ancestry in spite of the influences of height and the differences of climate, the cosmogonic traditions of nations everywhere display a similarity of form and feature which moves us to admiration. The most various languages, apparently belonging to entirely isolated tribes, give us the same facts. The essential part of the record which treats of the destroyed peoples, and the renewal of nature, hardly varies at all; but each nation has given to it its own local colouring. On the largest

1 Genesis, 3rd ed. p. 242 (4th ed. p. 199).