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upheavals, because the Biblical narrative never hints at it, but the following quotations will show you what the connection may have been.

Leonhard says: "If we assume that the Deluge was general, or at least that it was spread over many lands, this event was very probably connected with the formation of a great mountain range, perhaps the range of the Andes. Why should not that which has taken place so repeatedly in the earth's history have happened once since man has inhabited the surface of the planet?

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We need entertain no

doubts as to things which would now perhaps be considered almost incredible displays of powerful agencies, and which to our imagination appear monstrous, such that mountains were lifted up even to the clouds. Such phenomena as these only appear to be gigantic when estimated by the measure of our power; but when compared with the greatness of the whole earth, these upheavals lose not a little of their importance."'

1

Hugh Miller gives us the following description:"There is a remarkable portion of the globe, chiefly in the Asiatic continent, though it extends into Europe, and which is nearly equal to all Europe in area, whose rivers (some of them such as the Volga, the Oural, the Sihon, the Kour, and the Amoo, of great size) do not fall into the ocean, or into any of the many seas which communicate with it. They are, on the contrary, all turned inwards, if I may so express myself; losing themselves in the eastern parts of the tract, in the lakes of a rainless district, in which they supply but the waste of evaporation, and falling, in the western parts,

1 Geologie, ii. 120, 123.

into seas such as the Caspian and the Aral. In this region there are extensive districts still under the level of the ocean. The shore-line of the Caspian, for instance, is rather more than 83 feet beneath that of the Black Sea; and some of the great flat steppes which spread out around it, such as what is known as the steppe of Astracan, have a mean level of about 30 feet beneath that of the Baltic. Were there a trench-like strip of country that communicated between the Caspian and the Gulf of Finland to be depressed beneath the level of the latter sea, it would so open up the fountains of the great deep, as to lay under water an extensive and populous region. Vast plains, white with salt, and charged with sea-shells, show that the Caspian Sea was at no distant period greatly more extensive than it is now. It is quite possible, that this great depressed area-the region covered of old by a Tertiary sea, which we know united the Sea of Aral with the Caspian, and rolled over many a wide steppe and vast plain-may have been covered for a brief period (after ages of upheaval) by the breaking in of the great deep during that season of judgment when, with the exception of one family, the whole human race was destroyed."

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"Let us suppose that the human family . were congregated in that tract of country which, extending eastwards from the modern Ararat to far beyond the Sea of Aral, includes the original Caucasian centre of the race; let us suppose that, the hour of judgment having at length arrived, the land began gradually to sink; .. . . . further, let us suppose that the depression took place slowly and equably for forty days together,

at the rate of about 400 feet per day,-a rate not twice greater than that at which the tide rises in the Straits of Magellan, and which would have rendered itself apparent as but a persistent inward flowing of the sea; let us yet further suppose, that from mayhap some volcanic outburst coincident with the depression, and an effect of the same deep-seated cause, the atmosphere was so affected that heavy drenching rains continued to descend during the whole time, and that though they could contribute but little to the actual volume of the flood-at most only some five or six inches per day-they at least seemed to constitute one of its main causes, and added greatly to its terrors, by swelling the rivers, and rushing downwards in torrents from the hills. The depression, which, by extending to the Euxine Sea and the Persian Gulf on the one hand, and to the Gulf of Finland on the other, would open up by three separate channels the fountains of the great deep, and which included, let us suppose, an area of about 2000 miles each way, would, at the end of the fortieth day, be sunk in its centre to a depth of 16,000 feet—a depth sufficiently profound to bury the loftiest mountains in the district. . . . And when, after 150 days had come and gone, the depressed hollow would have begun slowly to rise,-and when, after the fifth month had passed, the ark would have grounded on the summit of Mount Ararat-all that could have been seen from the upper window of the vessel would be simply a boundless sea, roughened by tides, now flowing outwards, with a reversed course, towards the distant ocean, by the three great outlets which during the period of depression had given access to the waters."

"Let me further remark, that in one important sense a partial flood, such as the one which I have conceived as adequate to the destruction, in an early age, of the whole human family, could scarce be regarded as miraculous. Several of our first geologists hold that some of the formidable cataclysms of the remote past may have been occasioned by the sudden upheaval of vast continents. . . And these cataclysms they regard as perfectly natural, though of course very unusual events. Nor would the gradual depression of a continent, or, as in the supposed case, of a portion of a continent, be in any degree less natural than the sudden upheaval of a continent. It would, on the contrary, be much more according to experience. Nay, were such a depression and elevation of the Asiatic basin to take place during the coming twelvemonth, as that of which I have conceived as the probable cause of the Deluge, though the geologists would have to describe it as beyond comparison the most remarkable oscillation of level which had taken place within the historic period, they would certainly regard it as no more miraculous than the great earthquake of Lisbon, or than that exhibition of the volcanic forces which elevated the mountain of Jorullo in a single night 1600 feet over the plains. . . . The revelation to Noah, which warned him of a coming flood, and taught him how to prepare for it, was evidently miraculous; the flood itself may have been purely providential.”1

1 H. Miller, Testimony, p. 344 seq.

XXIII.

THE DELUGE-Conclusion.

We have seen that the Deluge must be considered as universal, in so far as it was a divine judgment for the destruction of mankind. All the men then existing, with the exception of the eight who were in the ark, were destroyed. But what happened to the animal world? This is one of the most difficult questions which could here be raised.

Genesis does not speak expressly of the vegetable world. But the dove brings back an olive leaf, and according to this it seems as if we ought to believe that vegetation was not destroyed, that it at least partially outlived the Flood, and that from those places in which it had survived, it spread to those where it had been destroyed.1 Genesis says nothing of any new creation of vegetation after the Flood. But I should not like to assert that it is exegetically inadmissible to assume either that such a new creation occurred, or that the remaining vegetation was increased by a later creation. The silence of Genesis does not militate against it, and when it is said in the 2nd chapter that "God rested from His work," that is, that He left off creating, this

1 The statement that the olive can bring forth leaves under water is probably only founded on an expression of Pliny's. (Lambert, Le Déluge, p. 120.) The leaf which the dove brought back had probably come out after the Flood; but the tree had been covered by the water, and had remained alive. (Les Mondes, t. 20, 24, Juin 1869, pp. 318, 325.)

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