There are events so striking in themselves or from their accompaniments,
that they powerfully impress the memories of children but little removed
from infancy, and are retained by them in a sort of troubled
recollection ever after, however extended their term of life. Samuel
Johnson was only two and a half years old when, in accordance with the
belief of the time, he was touched by Queen Anne for the "Evil;" but
more than seventy years after, he could call up in memory a dream-like
recollection of the lady dressed in a black hood, and glittering with
diamonds, into whose awful presence he had been ushered on that
occasion, and who had done for the cure of his complaint all that
legitimate royalty could do. And an ancient lady of the north country,
who had been carried, when a child, in her nurse's arms, to witness the
last witch execution that took place in Scotland, could distinctly tell,
after the lapse of nearly a century, that the fire was surrounded by an
awe-struck crowd, and that the smoke of the burning, when blown about
her by a cross breeze, had a foul and suffocating odor. In this respect
the memory of infant tribes and nations seems to resemble that of
individuals. There are characters and events which impress it so
strongly, that they seem never to be forgotten, but live as traditions,
sometimes mayhap very vague, and much modified by the inventions of an
after time, but which, in floating downwards to late ages, always bear
about them a certain strong impress of their pristine reality. They are
shadows that have become ill defined from the vast distance of the
objects that cast them,--like the shadows of great birds flung, in a
summer's day, from the blue depths of the sky to the landscape far
below,--but whose very presence, however diffused they may have become,
testifies to the existence of the remote realities from which they are
thrown, and without which they could have had no being at all. The old
mythologies are filled with shadowy traditions of this kind,--shadows of
the world's "gray fathers,"--which, like those shadows seen reflected on
clouds by travellers who ascend lofty mountains, are exaggerated into
the most gigantic proportions, and bear radiant glories around their
heads.
There is, however, one special tradition which seems to be more deeply
impressed and more widely spread than any of the others. The destruction
of well nigh the whole human race, in an early age of the world's
history, by a great deluge, appears to have so impressed the minds of
the few survivors, and seems to have been handed down to their children,
in consequence, with such terror-struck impressiveness, that their
remote descendants of the present day have not even yet forgotten it. It
appears in almost every mythology, and lives in the most distant
countries, and among the most barbarous tribes. It was the laudable
ambition of Humboldt,--first entertained at a very early period of
life,--to penetrate into distant regions, unknown to the natives of
Europe at the time, that he might acquaint himself, in fields of
research altogether fresh and new, with men and with nature in their
most primitive conditions. In carrying out his design, he journeyed far
into the woody wilderness that surrounds the Orinoco, and found himself
among tribes of wild Indians whose very names were unknown to the
civilized world. And yet among even these forgotten races of the human
family he found the tradition of the deluge still fresh and distinct;
not confined to single tribes, but general among the scattered nations
of that great region, and intertwined with curious additions, suggestive
of the inventions of classic mythology in the Old World. "The belief in
a great deluge," we find him saying, "is not confined to one nation
singly,--the Tamanacs: it makes part of a system of historical
tradition, of which we find scattered notions among the Maypures of the
great cataracts; among the Indians of the Rio Erevato, which runs into
the Caura; and among almost all the tribes of the Upper Orinoco. When
the Tamanacs are asked how the human race survived this great
deluge,--'_the age of water_' of the Mexicans,--they say, a man and
woman saved themselves on a high mountain called Tamanacu, situated on
the banks of the Asiveru, and, _casting behind them over their heads_
the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, they saw the seeds contained in
these fruits produce men and women, who re-peopled the earth. Thus,"
adds the philosophic traveller, "we find in all simplicity, among
nations now in a savage state, a tradition which the Greeks embellished
with all the charms of imagination." The resemblance is certainly very
striking. "Quit the temple," said the Oracle to Deucalion and Pyrrha,
when they had consulted it, after the great deluge, regarding the mode
in which the earth was to be re-peopled,--"vail your heads, unloose your
girdles, and throw behind your backs the bones of your grandmother."
Rightly interpreting what seemed darkest and most obscure in the reply,
they took "stones of the earth," and, casting them behind them, the
stones flung by Deucalion became men, and those by Pyrrha became women,
and thus the disfurnished world was peopled anew. The navigator always
regards himself as sure of his position when he has _two_ landmarks to
determine it by, or when in the open ocean he can ascertain, not only
his latitude, but his longitude also. And this curious American
tradition seems to have its two such marks,--its two bisecting lines of
determination,--to identify it with the classic tradition of the Old
World that refers evidently to the same great event.
There are other portions of America in which the tradition of the Flood
is still more distinct than among the forests of the Orinoco. It is
related by Herrera, one of the Spanish historians of America, that even
the most barbarous of the Brazilians had some knowledge of a general
deluge; that in Peru the ancient Indians reported, that many years
before there were any Incas, all the people were drowned by a great
flood, save six persons, the progenitors of the existing races, who were
saved on a float; that among the Mechoachans it was believed that a
single family was preserved, during the outburst of the waters, in an
ark, with a sufficient number of animals to replenish the new world;
and, more curious still, that it used to be told by the original
inhabitants of Cuba, that "an old man, knowing the deluge was to come,
built a great ship, and went into it with his family and abundance of
animals; and that, wearying during the continuance of the flood, he sent
out a crow, which at first did not return, staying to feed on the dead
bodies, but afterwards returned bearing with it a green branch." The
resemblance borne by this last tradition to the Mosaic narrative is so
close as to awaken a doubt whether it may not have been but a mere
recollection of the teaching of some early missionary. Nor can its
genuineness now be tested, seeing that the race which cherished it has
been long since extinct. It may be stated, however, that a similar
suspicion crossed the mind of Humboldt when he was engaged in collecting
the traditions of the Indians of the Orinoco; but that on further
reflection and inquiry he dismissed the doubt as groundless. He even set
himself to examine whether the district was not a fossiliferous one, and
whether beds of sea shells, or deposits charged with the petrified
remains of corals or of fishes, might not have originated among the
aborigines some mere myth of a great inundation sufficient to account
for the appearances in the rocks. But he found that the region was
mainly a primary one, in which he could detect only a single patch of
sedimentary rock, existing as an unfossiliferous sandstone. And so,
though little prejudiced in favor of the Mosaic record, he could not
avoid arriving at the conclusion, simply in his character as a
philosophic inquirer, who had no other object than to attain to the real
and the true, that the legend of the wild Maypures and Tamanacs
regarding a great destructive deluge was simply one of the many forms of
that oldest of traditions which appears to be well nigh coextensive with
the human family, and which, in all its varied editions, seems to point
at one and the same signal event. Very varied some of these editions
are. The inhabitants of Tahiti tell, for instance, that the Supreme God,
a long time ago, being angry, dragged the earth through the sea, but
that by a happy accident _their_ island broke off and was preserved; the
Indians of Terra Firma believe, that when the great deluge took place,
one man, with his wife and children, escaped in a canoe; and the Indians
of the North American lakes hold, that the father of all their tribes
being warned in a dream that a flood was coming, built a raft, on which
he preserved his family, and pairs of all the animals, and which drifted
about for many months, until at length a new earth was made for their
reception by the "Mighty Man above."
In that widely extended portion of the Old World over which Christianity
has spread in its three great types,--Greek, Romish, and
Protestant,--and in the scarce less extended portion occupied by the
followers of Mohammed, the Scriptural account of the deluge, or the
imperfect reflection of it borrowed by the Koran, has, of course,
supplanted the old traditions. But outside these regions we find the
traditions existing still. One of the sacred books of the Parsees
(representatives of the ancient Persians) records, that "the world
having been corrupted by Ahriman the Evil One, it was thought necessary
to bring over it a universal flood of waters, that all impurity might be
washed away. Accordingly the rain came down in drops as large as the
head of a bull, until the earth was wholly covered with water, and all
the creatures of the Evil One perished. And then the flood gradually
subsided, and first the mountains, and next the plains, appeared once
more." In the Scandinavian Edda, between whose wild fables and those of
the sacred books of the Parsees there has been a resemblance traced by
accomplished antiquaries such as Mallet, the tradition of the deluge
takes a singularly monstrous form. On the death of the great giant Ymir,
whose flesh and bones form the rocks and soils of the earth, and who was
slain by the early gods, his blood, which now constitutes the ocean,
rushed so copiously out of his wounds, that all the old race of the
lesser giants, his offspring, were drowned in the flood which it
occasioned, save one; and he, by escaping on board his bark with his
wife, outlived the deluge. The tradition here is evidently allegorized,
but it is by no means lost in the allegory.
Sir William Jones, perhaps the most learned and accomplished man of his
age (such at least was the estimate of Johnson), and the first who
fairly opened up the great storehouse of eastern antiquities, describes
the tradition of the deluge as prevalent also in the vast Chinese
empire, with its three hundred millions of people. He states that it was
there believed that, just ere the appearance of Fohi in the mountains, a
mighty flood, which first "flowed abundantly, and then subsided, covered
for a time the whole earth, and separated the higher from the lower age
of mankind." The Hindu tradition, as related by Sir William, though
disfigured by strange additions, is still more explicit. An evil demon
having purloined the sacred books from Brahma, the whole race of men
became corrupt except the seven Nishis, and in especial the holy
Satyavrata, the prince of a maritime region, who, when one day bathing
in a river, was visited by the god Vishnu in the shape of a fish, and
thus addressed by him:--"In seven days all creatures who have offended
me shall be destroyed by a deluge; but thou shalt be secured in a
capacious vessel, miraculously formed. Take, therefore, all kinds of
medicinal herbs, and esculent grain for food, and, together with the
seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter
the ark without fear: then shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy
questions shall be answered." The god then disappeared; and after seven
days, during which Satyavrata had conformed in all respects to the
instructions given him, the ocean began to overflow the coasts, and the
earth to be flooded by constant rains, when a large vessel was seen
coming floating shore-wards on the rising waters; into which the Prince
and the seven virtuous Nishis entered, with their wives, all laden with
plants and grain, and accompanied by the animals. During the deluge
Vishnu preserved the ark by again taking the form of a fish, and tying
it fast to himself; and when the waters had subsided, he communicated
the contents of the sacred books to the holy Satyavrata, after first
slaying the demon who had stolen them. It is added, however, that the
good man having, on one occasion long after, by "the act of destiny,"
drunk mead, he became senseless, and lay asleep naked, and that Charma,
one of three sons who had been born to him, finding him in that sad
state, called on his two brothers to witness the shame of their father,
and said to them, What has now befallen? In what state is this our sire?
But by the two brothers,--more dutiful than Charma,--he was hidden with
clothes, and recalled to his senses; and, having recovered his
intellect, and perfectly knowing what had passed, he cursed Charma,
saying, "Thou shalt be a servant of servants." It would be difficult
certainly to produce a more curious legend, or one more strikingly
illustrative of the mixture of truth and fable which must ever be looked
for in that tradition which some are content to accept even in religion
as a trustworthy guide. In ever varying tradition, as in those difficult
problems in physical science which have to be wrought out from a
multitude of differing observations, it is, if I may so express myself,
the mean result of the whole that must be accepted as approximately the
true one. And the mean result of those dim and distorted recollections
of the various tribes of men which refer to the Flood is a result which
bears simply to this effect,--that in some early age of the world a
great deluge took place, in which well nigh the whole human family was
destroyed.
The ancient traditions which have come down to us embalmed in classic
literature form but a small portion of what seems once to have existed
in the wide region now overspread by Christianity and Mohammedanism. A
second deluge, more fatal to at least the productions of the human mind
than the first had been, overspread the earth during what are known as
the Middle Ages; and so signal was the wreck which it occasioned, that
of seven heathen writers[24] whose testimony regarding the Flood
Josephus cites as corroborative of his own, not one has descended in his
writings to these later times. We learn, however, from the Jewish
historian, that one of their number, Berosus, was a Chaldean; that two
of the others, Hieronymus and Manetho, were Egyptians; and that a third,
Nicolaus, whose history he quotes, was a citizen of Damascus. "There
is," said this latter writer, in his perished history, "a great mountain
in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported that
many who fled at the time of the deluge were saved; and that one who was
carried in an ark came on shore on the top of it; and that the remains
of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man,"
added this forgotten writer, "about whom Moses, the legislator of the
Jews, wrote." The works of the Chaldean, Berosus, have long since been
lost, all save a few extracts preserved by the Patristic writers. One of
these, however, which embodies the Chaldean tradition of the Flood, is
very remarkable. Like the Scandinavian legend, it represents the
antediluvians as giants, all of whom, save one, became exceedingly
impious and depraved. "But there was one among the giants," says
Berosus, "that reverenced the gods, and was more wise and prudent than
all the rest. His name was Noa; he dwelt in Syria, with his three sons,
Sem, Japet, Chem, and their wives, the great Tidea, Pandora, Noela, and
Noegla. This man, fearing the destruction which, he foresaw from the
stars, would come to pass, began, in the seventy-eighth year before the
inundation, to build a ship covered like an ark. Seventy-eight years
from the time he began to build this ship, the ocean of a sudden broke
out, and all the inland seas and the rivers and fountains bursting from
beneath (attended by the most violent rains from heaven for many days),
overflowed all the mountains; so that the whole human race was buried in
the waters, except Noa and his family, who were saved by means of the
ship, which, being lifted up by the waters, rested at last upon the top
of the Gendyae or Mountain, on which, it is reported, there now
remaineth some part, and that men take away the bitumen from it, and
make use of it by way of charm or expiation, to avoid evil." A more
general Assyrian tradition, somewhat different in its details, also
survives.[25] The god Chronus, it was said, appeared in a vision to
Xisuthrus, the tenth king of Babylon; and, warning him that on a certain
day there would be a great flood upon the earth, by which mankind would
be destroyed, he enjoined him to build a vessel, and to bring into it
his friends and relatives, with everything necessary to sustain life,
and all the various animals, birds, and quadrupeds. In obedience to the
command, the king built a vessel about three quarters of a mile in
length and half a mile in breadth, which he loaded with stores and the
different kinds of animals; and into which, on the day of the flood, he
himself entered, accompanied by his wife and children, and all his
friends. The flood broke out. After, however, accomplishing its work of
destruction, it abated; and the king sent out birds from the vessel,
which, at first finding no food or place of rest, returned to him; but
which, when, after the lapse of some days, he sent them forth again,
came back to him with their feet tinged with mud. On a third trial they
returned no more; upon which, judging that the surface of the earth was
laid dry, he made an opening in the vessel, and, looking forth, found it
stranded on a mountain of the land of Armenia.
There seems to exist no such definite outline of the Egyptian tradition
referred to by Josephus as that preserved of the Chaldean one. Plato, In
his "Timæus," makes the Egyptian priest whom he introduces as
discoursing with Solon, to attribute that clear recollection of a remote
antiquity which survived in Egypt, to its comparative freedom from those
great floods which had at various times desolated Greece, and destroyed
the memory of remote events by the destruction of the people and their
records; and Bacon had evidently this passage in view when he poetically
remarked, in his magnificent essay on the "Vicissitude of Things," that
"the great winding sheets that bury all things in oblivion are
two,--deluges and earthquakes; from which two destructions is to be
noted," he adds, "that the remnant of people that happen to be preserved
are commonly ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no account
of the time past." Even in Egypt, however, the recollection of the
deluge seems to have survived, though it lay entangled amid what seem to
be symbolized memories of unusual floodings of the river Nile. "The Noah
of Egypt," says Professor Hitchcock, in his singularly ingenious essay
(Historical and Geological Deluges Compared), "appears to have been
Osiris. Typhon, a personification of the ocean, enticed him into an ark,
which, being closed, he was forced to sea; and it was a curious fact,
that he embarked on the seventeenth day of the month Athyr,--the very
day, most probably, when Noah entered the ark." The classical tradition
of Greece, as if the events whence it took its rise had been viewed
through a multiplying glass, appears to have been increased from one to
many. Plutarch enumerates no fewer than five great floods; and Plato
makes his Egyptian priest describe the Greek deluges as oft repeated and
numerous. There was the flood of Deucalion, the flood of Ogyges, and
several other floods; and no little time and learning have been wasted
in attempting to fix their several periods. But, lying far within the
mythologic ages,--the last of them to which any determining
circumstances are attached, in the days of that Prometheus who stole
fire from heaven, and was chained by Jupiter to Mount Caucasus,--it
appears greatly more probable that the traditions respecting them should
be the mere repeated and re-repeated echoes of one signal event, than
that many wide-spread and destructive floods should have taken place in
the obscure, fabulous ages of Grecian story, while not one such flood
has happened during its two thousand five hundred years of authentic
history. Nor is it difficult to conceive how such repetitions of the
original tradition _should_ have taken place. The traditions of the same
event preserved by tribes living in even the same tract of country come
in course of time considerably to differ from each other in their
adjuncts and circumstances; those, for instance, of the various tribes
of the Orinoco do so; and should these tribes come to be fused
ultimately into one nation, nothing seems more probable than that their
varying editions, instead of being also fused together, should remain
distinct, as the recollections of separate and independent catastrophes.
And thus the several deluges of Grecian mythology may in reality
testify, not to the occurrence of several floods, but to the existence
merely of several independent tribes, among whom the one great tradition
has been so altered and modified ere they came to possess a common
literature, that when at length they became skilful enough to place it
on record, it appeared to them not as one, but as many. The admirable
reflection of Humboldt suggested by the South American traditions seems,
incidentally at least, to bear out this view. "Those ancient traditions
of the human race," he says, "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." And it seems at
least not improbable, that the several traditions of apparently special
deluges,--deluges each with its own set of circumstances, and from which
the progenitors of one nation were saved on a hill-top, those of another
on a raft, and those of yet another in an ark or canoe, and which in one
instance destroyed only giants, and had in another the loss which they
occasioned repaired by date-stones, and in yet another by stones of the
earth,--should come to be regarded among a people composed of various
tribes, and but little accustomed to sift the evidence on which they
founded, rather as all diverse narratives of diverse events, than as in
reality but varied accounts of one and the same tremendous catastrophe.
Taking it for granted, then, that the several Greek traditions refer to
but one great event, let us accept that which records what is known as
the flood of Deucalion, as more adequately representative of the general
type of its class, especially in the edition given by Lucian (in his
work "De Dea Syria"), than any of the others. "The present world," says
this writer, "is peopled from the sons of Deucalion. In respect to the
former brood, they were men of violence, and lawless in their dealings;
they regarded not oaths, nor observed the rites of hospitality, nor
showed mercy to those who sued for it. On this account they were doomed
to destruction; and for this purpose there was a mighty eruption of
water from the earth, attended with heavy showers from above, so that
the rivers swelled and the sea overflowed, till the whole earth was
covered with a flood, and all flesh drowned. Deucalion alone was
preserved, to people the world. This mercy was shown him on account of
his justice and piety. His preservation was effected in this manner:--He
put all his family, both his sons and their wives, into a vast ark which
he had provided, and he then went into it himself. At the same time,
animals of every species,--boars, horses, lions, serpents,--whatever
lived upon the face of the earth,--followed him by pairs; all which he
received into the ark, and experienced no evil from them." Such is the
tradition of Deucalion, as preserved by Lucian. It is added by his
contemporary Plutarch, that "Deucalion, as his voyage was drawing to a
close, sent out a dove, which coming in a short time back to him,
indicated that the waters still covered the earth; but which on a second
occasion failed to return; or, as some say, returned to him with
mud-stained feet, and thus intimated the abatement of the flood." It
cannot, I think, be rationally doubted that we have in this ancient
legend one other tradition of the Noachian Deluge. Even as related by
Ovid, with all the license of the poet, we find in it the great leading
traits that indicate its parentage. I quote from the vigorous
translation of Dryden.
"Impetuous rain descends;
Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down;
But from his brother of the seas he craves
To help him with auxiliary waves.
Then with his mace the monarch struck the ground;
With inward trembling earth received the wound,
And rising streams a ready passage found.
Now seas and earth were in confusion lost,--
A world of waters, and without a coast.
A mountain of tremendous height there stands
Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands:
Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise
Mounts through the clouds, and mates the lofty skies.
High on the summit of this dubious cliff,
Deucalion, wafting, moored his little skiff:
He, with his wife, were only left behind
Of perished man; they two were human kind:
The most upright of mortal men was he,--
The most serene and holy woman she."
[Illustration: Fig. 109.
APAMÆAN MEDAL.]
Such are some of the traditions of that great catastrophe which overtook
the human family in its infancy, and made so deep an impression on the
memories of the few awe-struck survivors, that the race never forgot it.
Ere the dispersal of the family it would have of course existed as but
one unique recollection,--a single reflection on the face of an unbroken
mirror. But the mirror has since been shattered into a thousand pieces;
and we now find the object, originally but one, pictured in each broken
fragment, with various degrees of distinctness, according to the various
degrees of injury received by the reflecting medium. _Picture_, too,
scarce less certainly than language spoken and written, testifies to the
wide extent of the tradition. Its symbols are found stamped on coins of
old classical Greece; they have been traced amid the ancient
hieroglyphics of Egypt, recognized in the sculptured caves of Hindustan,
and detected even in the far west, among the picture writings of Mexico.
The several glyphic representatives of the tradition bear, like its
various written or oral editions, a considerable resemblance to each
other. Even in the rude paintings of the old Mexican, the same leading
idea may be traced as in the classic sculpture of the Greek. On what is
known to antiquaries as the Apamæan medal, struck during the reign of
Philip the elder, we find the familiar name of _Noe_ inscribed on a
floating chest or ark, within which a man and woman are seen seated, and
to which a bird on the wing is represented as bearing a branch.[26] And
in an ancient Mexican painting, figured by Humboldt, "the man and woman
who survived the age of water" are shown similarly inclosed in a
leaf-tufted box, or hollow trunk of a tree; while a gigantic
female,--Matalcueje, the goddess of water,--is seen pouring down her
floods around them, and upon an overwhelmed human figure, representative
apparently of the victims of the catastrophe. All is classical in the
forms of the one representation, and uncouth in those of the other. They
bear the same sort of _artistic_ relation to each other that the rude
Tamanac tradition bears, in a _literary_ point of view, to the well
constructed story and elegant verse of Ovid; but they are charged
apparently with the same meaning, and shadow forth the same event.
[Illustration: Fig. 110.
OLD MEXICAN PICTURE.
(_Humboldt._)]
The tradition of the Flood may, I repeat, be properly regarded as
universal; seeing there is scarce any considerable race of man among
which, in some of its many forms, it is not to be found. Now, it has
been argued by some of the older theologians, with a not very cogent
logic, that the universality of the tradition establishes the
universality of the Flood,--that where the tradition _is to be found_,
the Flood _must have been_;--an argument which would have force if it
could also be shown that each tribe had had its own Noah, saved by ark,
raft, or canoe, or on some tall mountain summit, in the region in which
his descendants continued to reside; but of no force whatever if the
Noah of the race was but one, and if the scene of his danger and
deliverance was restricted, as of necessity it must have been in that
case, to a single locality. Further, if, as we believe, there was but
one Noah,--if, according to the Scriptural account, condensed into a
single sentence by the Apostle, only "eight souls" were saved in the
great catastrophe of the race,--there could have existed no human
testimony to determine whether the exterminating deluge that occasioned
their destruction was a universal deluge, or merely a partial one. It
could not be known by men shut up in an ark, nor even though from a mast
top they could have swept the horizon with a telescope, whether the
waters that spread out on every side of them, covering the old familiar
mountains, and occupying the entire range of their vision, extended all
around the globe, or found their limits some eight or ten hundred miles
away. The point is one respecting which, as certainly as respecting the
creation of the world itself, or of the world's inhabitants, there could
have existed no human _witness-bearing_: contemporary man, left to the
unassisted evidence of his senses, _must_ of necessity have been
ignorant of the extent of the deluge. True, what man could never have
known of himself, God could have told him, and in many cases _has_ told
him; but then, God's revelations have in most instances been made to
effect exclusively moral purposes; and we know that those who have
perilously held that, along with the moral facts, definite physical
facts, geographic, geologic, or astronomical, had also been imparted,
have almost invariably found themselves involved in monstrous error. And
in this matter of the Flood, though it be a fact of great moral
significancy that God in an early period of the human history destroyed
the whole race for their wickedness,--all save one just man and his
family,--it is not in the least a matter of moral significancy whether
or no the deluge by which the judgment was effected covered not only the
parts of the earth occupied by man at the time, but extended also to
Terra del Fuego, Tahiti, and the Falkland Islands. In fine, though the
question whether the Noachian deluge was universal, or merely partial,
is an interesting question in physics, it is in no higher degree a moral
one than those questions which relate to the right figure or age of the
earth, or to the true motions of the heavenly bodies. And it will be
found that the only passages in Scripture which refer to this strictly
physical subject, instead of determining the geographic extent of the
Flood, serve only to raise a question regarding their own extent of
meaning.
It is known to all students of the sacred writings, that there is a
numerous class of passages in both the Old and New Testaments in which,
by a sort of metonymy common in the East, a considerable part is spoken
of as the whole, though in reality often greatly less than a moiety of
the whole. Of this class are the passages in which it is said, that on
the day of Pentecost there were Jews assembled at Jerusalem "out of
_every nation under heaven_;" "that the gospel was preached to _every
creature under heaven_;" that the Queen of Sheba came to hear the wisdom
of Solomon from the "_uttermost parts of the earth_;" that God put the
dread and fear of the children of Israel upon the nations that were
"_under the whole heaven_;" and that "_all countries_ came into Egypt to
Joseph to buy corn." And of course the universally admitted existence
of such a class of passages, in which words are _not_ to be accepted in
their rigidly literal meanings, but with certain great modifications,
renders the task of determining and distinguishing such passages from
others in which the meaning is definite and strict, not only legitimate,
but also laudable; and justifies us in inquiring whether those passages
descriptive of the Flood or its effects, in which it is said that the
"waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth," so that "_all_ the high
hills that were under _the whole heavens_ were covered," or that "_all_
flesh died that moved upon the earth," belong to their number or no.
There are some instances in which the Scriptures themselves reveal the
character and limit the meaning of the metonymic passages. They do so
with respect to the passage already quoted regarding the stranger Jews
assembled in Jerusalem at the Pentecostal feast,--"out of every nation
under heaven." For further on we read that these Jews had come from but
the various countries extending around Judea, as far as Italy on the one
hand, and the Persian Gulf on the other;--an area large, indeed, but
scarce equal to a one fiftieth part of the earth's surface. But there is
no such explanation given to limit or restrict most of the other
passages; the modifying element must be sought for outside the sacred
volume,--in ancient history or ancient geography. The reader must, for
instance, acquaint himself with the progress of discovery in early ages,
or the boundaries of the Roman Empire under the first Cæsars, ere he can
form a probable conjecture regarding the extent of that "all the earth"
which sought the presence of Solomon, or a correct estimate respecting
the limits of that "all the world" which Cæsar Augustus could have
taxed. And to this last class, which fail to explain themselves, the
passages respecting the Flood evidently belong. Like the passages cited,
and, with these, almost all the texts of Scripture in which questions
of physical science are involved, the limiting, modifying, explaining
facts and circumstances must be sought for in that outside region of
secular research, historic and scientific, from which of late years so
much valuable biblical illustration has been derived, and with which it
is so imperatively the duty of the Church to keep up an acquaintance at
least as close and intimate as that maintained with it by her gainsayers
and assailants.
That the Noachian deluge might have been but partial, not universal, was
held, let me here remark, by distinguished theologians in our own
country, at least as early as the seventeenth century. It was held, for
instance, by the learned biblical commentator, old Matthew Poole, whom
we find saying, in his Synopsis on Genesis, that "it is not to be
supposed that the entire globe of the earth was covered with water;" for
"where," he adds, "was the need of overwhelming those regions in which
there were no human beings?" It was held also by that distinguished
Protestant churchman of the reign of Charles II., Bishop Stillingfleet,
whom Principal Cunningham of Edinburgh well describes, in his elaborate
edition of the Bishop's work, "The Doctrines and Practices of the Church
of Rome," as a divine of "great talents and prodigious learning." "I
cannot see," says the Bishop, in his "Origines Sacra," "any urgent
necessity from the Scriptures to assert that the Flood did spread over
all the surface of the earth. That all mankind, those in the ark
excepted, were destroyed by it, is most certain, according to the
Scriptures. The Flood was universal as to mankind; but from thence
follows no necessity at all of asserting the universality of it as to
the globe of the earth, unless it be sufficiently proved that the whole
earth was peopled before the Flood, which I despair of ever seeing
proved." It was not, however, until the comparatively recent times in
which the belief entertained by Poole and Stillingfleet was adopted and
enforced by writers such as Dr. Pye Smith, and Professor Hitchcock of
the United States, that there was any show of argument displayed against
the theory of a partial deluge which would now be deemed worthy of
consideration. And these modern objections may be found ingeniously
arrayed by the late Dr. John Kitto, in his "Daily Bible Illustrations,"
published only six years ago (in 1850), and by the learned Dr. William
Hamilton of Mobile, in his "Friend of Moses," published in 1852. Both
these writers, however, virtually agree with their opponents in holding
that the strict meaning of the terms employed by Moses in describing the
deluge is to be determined on considerations apart from the mere
philological ones. After marshalling his objections to the theory of a
local flood, Dr. Kitto goes on to say, "We yield our judgment to what
appears to us the _force of these arguments_ as to the _meaning_ of
Scripture;" and we find Dr. Hamilton prefacing his objections as
follows:--"Were the mere universality of some of the terms employed in
the Mosaic narrative the _sole_ ground of objection to the hypothesis of
a _local_ inundation only in the days of Noah, that hypothesis might
perhaps be deemed admissible. But there are," he adds, "other and more
serious difficulties attending it." Let us, then, briefly examine these
supposed difficulties and objections; and as they have been better and
more amply stated by Dr. Kitto than by any other writer with whom I am
acquainted,--for Dr. Hamilton takes up rather the arguments in favor of
a universal, than the objections against a merely partial flood,--let us
take them as they occur in his writings, especially in the excellent
work now before me,--his "Daily Bible Illustrations." It will scarce be
suspected that such an accomplished writer, who did so much for
Biblical Illustration, and whose admirable Pictorial Bible formed, with
but four works more, what Chalmers used to term with peculiar emphasis
his "Biblical Library,"[27] would do injustice to any cause, or any line
of argument which he adopted, if it was in reality a good and sound one.
It may be well, however, not to test too rigidly the value of the
remark,--meant to be at least of the nature of argument,--when we find
him saying that "a plain man sitting down to read the Scripture account
of the deluge would have no doubt of its universality." Perhaps not. But
it is at least equally certain, that plain men who set themselves to
deduce from Scripture the figure of the planet we inhabit had as little
doubt, until corrected by the geographer, that the earth was a great
plane,--not a sphere; that plain men who set themselves to acquire from
Scripture some notion of the planetary motions had no doubt, in the same
way, until corrected by the astronomer, that it was the earth that
rested, and the sun that moved round it; and that plain men who have
sought to determine from Scripture the age of the earth have had no
doubt, until corrected by the geologist, that it was at most not much
more than six thousand years old. In fine, when plain men, who,
according to Cowper, "know, and know no more, their Bible true," have in
perhaps every instance learned from it what it was in reality intended
to teach,--the way of salvation,--it seems scarce less certain, that in
every instance in which they have sought to deduce from it what it was
_not_ intended to teach,--the truths of physical science,--they have
fallen into extravagant error. And as any question which, bearing, not
on the punitory extent and ethical consequences of the Flood, but merely
on its geographic limits and natural effects, is not a moral, but a
purely physical question, it would be but a fair presumption, founded on
the almost invariable experience of ages, that the deductions from
Scripture of the "plain men" regarding it would be, not true, but false
deductions. Of apparently not more real weight and importance is the
doctor's further remark, that there seems, after all, to be a marked
difference between the terms in which the universality of the deluge is
spoken of, and the terms employed in those admittedly metonymic passages
in which the whole is substituted for a part. "What limitation," he
asks, "can we assign to such a phrase as this:--'all the high hills that
were UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVENS were covered?' If here the phrase had been,
'upon the face of the whole earth,' we should have been told that 'the
whole earth' had sometimes the meaning of 'the whole land;' but, as if
designedly to obviate such a limitation of meaning, we have here the
largest phrase of universality which the language of man
affords,--'under the whole heavens!'" So far Dr. Kitto. But his argument
seems to be not more valuable in this case than in the other. It was
upon the nations that were "UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVENS" that Deity
represented himself as putting the fear and dread of the children of
Israel; but he would be certainly a very "plain man" who would infer
from the universality of a passage so evidently metonymic, that that
fear extended to the people of Japan on the one hand, or to the Red
Indians of the Rocky Mountains on the other. The phrase "_under the
whole heavens_" seems to be but coextensive in meaning with the phrase
"upon the face of the whole earth." The "whole earth" is evidently
tantamount to the whole terrestrial floor,--the "whole heavens," to the
whole celestial roof that arches over it; and on what principle the
whole terrestrial floor is to be deemed less extensive than the floor
under the whole celestial roof, really does not appear. Further, nothing
can be more certain than that both the phrases contrasted by Dr. Kitto
are equally employed in the metonymic form.
When, however, the doctor passes to argument based upon natural science,
we find what he adduces worthy of our attention, were it but for the
inquiries which it suggests. "If the deluge were but local," we find him
saying, "what was the need of taking _birds_ into the ark; and among
them birds so widely diffused as the raven and the dove? A deluge which
could overspread the region which these birds inhabit could hardly have
been less than universal. If the deluge were local, and all the birds of
these kinds in that district perished,--though we should think they
might have fled to the uninundated regions,--it would have been useless
to encumber the ark with them, seeing that the birds of the same species
which survived in the lands not overflowed would speedily replenish the
inundated tract as soon as the waters subsided." It will be found that
the reasoning here is mainly based upon an error in natural science,
into which even naturalists of the last century, such as Buffon, not
unfrequently fell, and which was almost universal among the earlier
voyagers and travellers,--the error of confounding as identical the
merely allied birds and beasts of distant countries, and of thus
assigning to _species_ wide areas in creation which in reality they do
not occupy. The grouse, for instance, is a widely spread genus, or
rather _family_; for it consists of more genera than one. It is so
extensively present over the northern hemisphere, that Siberia, Norway,
Iceland, and North America, have all their grouse,--the latter
continent, indeed, from five to eight different kinds; and yet so
restricted are some of the species of which they consist, that, were the
British islands to be submerged, one of the best known of the
family,--the red grouse, or moor-fowl (_Lagopus Scoticus_),--would
disappear from creation. This bird, which, rated at its money value, is
one of the most important in Europe,--for the barren moors which it
frequents in the Highlands of Scotland alone are let every season almost
entirely for its sake for hundreds of thousands of pounds,--is
exclusively a British bird; and, unless by miracle a new migratory
instinct were given to it, a complete submersion of the British islands
would secure its destruction. If the submergence amounted to but a few
hundred miles in lateral extent, the moor-fowl would to a certainty not
seek the distant uninundated land. Nor is it at all to be inferred, that
in a merely local but wide spread deluge, birds occupying a more
extensive area than that overspread by the Flood would, according to Dr.
Kitto, "speedily replenish the inundated tract as soon as the waters had
subsided." The statement must have been hazarded in ignorance of the
peculiar habits of many of the non-migratory birds. Up till about the
middle of the last century, the capercailzie, or great cock of the
woods, was a native of Scotland. It was exterminated, however, about the
time of the last Rebellion, or not long after: the last specimen seen
among the pine forests of Strathspey was killed, it is said, in the year
1745: the last specimen seen among the woods of Strathglass survived
till the year 1760. Pennant relates that he saw in 1769 a specimen,
probably a stuffed one, that had been killed shortly before in the
neighborhood of Inverness. But from at least that time the species
disappeared from the British islands; and, though it continued to exist
in Norway, did not "replenish the tracts from which it had been
extirpated." The late Marquis of Breadalbane was at no small cost and
trouble in re-introducing the species, and to some extent he succeeded;
but the capercailzie is, I understand, still restricted to the
Breadalbane woods. I have seen the golden eagle annihilated as a species
in move than one district of the north of Scotland; nor, though it still
exists in other parts of the kingdom, and is comparatively common among
the mountains of Norway, have I known it in any instance to spread anew
over the tracts from which it had been extirpated. So much for the
general reasonings of Dr. Kitto. Further, we find him stating, that a
deluge which could overspread the region inhabited by birds so widely
diffused as the raven and the dove, could hardly have been less than
universal. The doctor, however, ought to have known that the _dove_ is a
_family_, not a _species_. All the American species of doves, for
example, differ from the six European species, three of which are to be
found in Scotland. Of even the American passenger pigeons (_Ectopistes
migratoria_), which occur in such numbers in their native country as
actually to eclipse, during their migratory flights, the light of day,
only a single straggler,--the one whose chance visit has been recorded
by Dr. Fleming,--seems to have been ever seen in Britain. And the East
has also its own peculiar species, unknown to Europe. The golden-green
pigeons and the great crowned pigeons of the Indian isles are never seen
in northern and western latitudes, save in stuffed specimens in a
museum. The Vinago pigeons, with their vividly bright plumes, though
they exist in several species, are all restricted to the woods of the
torrid zone. Even the collared dove of Africa and the Levant rarely
visits, and then only as a straggler, the western and northern parts of
Europe. The blue-capped turteline pigeon is restricted, as a species, to
the island of Celebes; the blue and green turteline pigeon is a native
of New Guinea; the Cape turtle occurs in but the southern parts of
Africa; the Nicobar ground pigeon in but the Indian Archipelago; the
magnificent fruit pigeon in the eastern parts of Australia; and the
crowned goura pigeon, the giant of its family, in the Molucca Islands.
No single species of dove seems to be so widely spread but that it might
be exterminated in a merely partial deluge; and of course conjecture may
in vain weary itself in striving to determine what that particular
species was which Noah sent forth as a messenger from the ark, or in
inquiring what was the extent of the area which it occupied? The common
raven is more widely spread than any single species of pigeon. Even the
raven, however, seems restricted to the northern hemisphere. India and
Southern Africa have both their ravens; but the species differ from each
other, and from the widely spread northern one. It is a question whether
even the pied raven of the Faroe Isles be not a distinct bird from the
black raven of our own country: if not an independent species, it is at
least a very remarkable variety. Further, when extirpated in a district,
it is found that, as in the case of the capercailzie and the golden
eagle, the neighboring regions in which the raven continues to exist
fail for ages to furnish a fresh supply. There are counties in England
in which the raven is now never seen; and I am acquainted with a
district in the north of Scotland from which, when a pair that were
known to breed for more than a century in a tall cliff were destroyed by
the fowler, the species disappeared.[28] Such, when examined, are the
arguments drawn by Dr. Kitto from natural science; nor is he in any
degree happier when he resorts to arguments more restrictedly physical.
"If," we find him saying, "the waters of the Deluge rose fifteen cubits
above all the mountains of the countries which the raven and the dove
inhabit, _the level must have been high enough to give universality to
the Deluge_." The only point here not already dealt with,--for I have
just shown that certain species of the dove and the raven might have of
necessity been inmates of the ark, though the Flood had been only a
partial one,--is that which refers to the submergence of the hills over
at least an extensive tract, and to the inference, evident in the
passage, that if lofty mountains were covered in one portion of the
globe, mountains of similar altitude must have been equally covered in
every other portion of it.
The inference here seems to be founded on a common but altogether
mistaken view of some of the grandest operations of nature with which
modern science has brought us acquainted. It has been well remarked,
that when two opposing explanations of extraordinary natural phenomena
are given,--one of a simple and seemingly common sense character, the
other complex and apparently absurd,--it is almost always safer to adopt
the apparently absurd than the seemingly common sense one. Dr. Kitto's
"plain man," yielding to the dictates of what he would deem common
sense,--which, of course, in questions of natural science is tantamount
to common nonsense,--would be sure to go wrong. And we find the remark
not inaptly illustrated by the now well established fact, that while the
medium level of the ocean is one of the most fixed lines in nature, the
level of the great continents, with their table-lands and mountains, is
an ever fluctuating line. It may seem strange that land should be less
stable than water. We see the tide rising and falling twice every
twenty-four hours, and the rock ever remaining in its place;--we speak
of the fixed earth and the unstable sea. And yet, while we have no
evidence whatever that the sea level has changed during at least the
ages of the Tertiary formations, and absolutely know that it could not
have varied more than a few yards, or at most a few fathoms, we have
direct evidence that during that time great mountain chains, many
thousand feet in height, such as the Alps, have arisen from the bottom
of the ocean, and that great continents have sunk beneath it and
disappeared. The larger part of northern Europe and America have been
covered by the sea since our present group of shells began to exist; and
it seems not improbable that the lower portion of the valley of the
Jordan was depressed to its present low level of thirteen hundred feet
beneath the Mediterranean since the times of the deluge. On several
parts of the coasts of Britain and Ireland the voyager can look down
through the clear sea, in depths to which the tide never falls, on the
remains of submerged forests; and it is a demonstrable fact, that even
during the present age there are certain extensive tracts of land which
have sunk beneath the sea level, while certain other extensive tracts
have been elevated over it. In 1819, a wide expanse of country in the
delta of the Indus, containing fully two thousand square miles of flat
meadow, was converted by a sudden depression of the land, accompanied by
an earthquake, into an inland sea; and the tower of a small fort, which
occupied nearly the middle of the sunken area, and on which many of the
inhabitants of a neighboring village succeeded in saving themselves, may
still be seen raising its shattered head over the surface,--the only
object visible in a waste of waters of which the eye fails to determine
the extent. About three years after this event, a tract of country,
interposed between the foot of the Andes and the Pacific, more than
equal in area to all Great Britain, was elevated from two to seven feet
over its former level, and rocks laid bare in the sea, which the pilots
and fishermen of the coast had never before seen. On the Indian coast
the sea _seemed_ to be rising at nearly the same time when it _appeared_
to be falling on the American one; and on the latter such was the actual
impression entertained by the people. It is stated by Sir Charles Lyell,
in his "Elements," that he was informed by Mr. Cruickshanks, an English
botanist who resided in Chili at the time, "that it was the general
belief of the fishermen and inhabitants, _not_ that the land had risen,
but that the ocean had permanently retreated." But if it had retreated
from the Chilian shore, how could it have risen on the Indian one? In
like manner the sea appears to be receding from the north-eastern shores
of Sweden at the rate of nearly four vertical feet in the century; while
it seems to be advancing on the western coasts of Greenland at
apparently a rate more considerable, though there the ratio of its rise
has not been marked with equal care. It seems to be rising on even the
Swedish province of Scania; while all the time, however, the actual
motion,--upwards in one region, downwards in another,--is in the solid
earth,--not in the unstable water, which merely serves as a sort of
hydrostatic _level_, to indicate this fact of subsidence or elevation in
the land. And of course all the reasoning, founded on mere appearances,
that would reverse the process by assigning permanency to the level of
the land, and fluctuation to that of the sea, would lead to inevitable
error.
Let us, for the illustration's sake, suppose that the British islands
had been the scene of the Deluge; and that it had been occasioned by a
gradual depression in the earth's surface of about fifteen hundred miles
in length, a thousand miles in breadth, five thousand feet in depth in
its centre, and which gradually trended all around towards the sides.
Such a depression would form a scarce appreciable inequality on the
surface of even a three feet globe; in a twelve inch globe it might be
represented by the abrasion of a small patch of the varnish; nor would
it have in nature one sixth the depth, or one sixteenth the area, of the
bed of the Atlantic Ocean. Let us suppose further, that it had been
produced by an equable sinking of the surface, prolonged for forty days
at the rate of one hundred and twenty-five feet per day,--a motion not
equal to that of the minute-hand of a clock whose dial plate measures
two feet in diameter. Further, let us suppose that a thoroughly
intelligent man,--let us say Dr. Kitto himself,--secure from all
personal danger in an ark perched on some such commanding eminence as
Arthur's Seat, had been a witness of the catastrophe; and that, instead
of having merely to reason respecting it after the lapse of more than
four thousand years, he had been enabled to bear testimony regarding it
from the evidence of his senses. In the first place, let me remark that
the sinking or downward motion of the earth's crust would be altogether
inappreciable by sense; in the next, that the depression, even when it
had reached its acme, would in no sensible degree affect the contour of
surrounding objects. Even at the end of the forty days, when the five
thousand feet of depression had been reached, the gradient of
declination across the sunken area would not exceed _ten_ feet per mile,
and across the larger diameter would amount to but _six feet eight
inches_ per mile. Of course, at the end of the twentieth day the
gradients would be represented by but one half these sums, and would be
altogether inappreciable in the landscape; the hills would seem quite as
high as before, and the valleys not more profound. The only sensible
sign felt or visible of what was taking place would be simply a
persistent rising of the sea at somewhat less than twice its rate of
flow during stream tides. Ocean, as if forgetful of its ancient bounds,
would continue to encroach upon the land. On the second day the greater
part of what is now the site of Edinburgh would be covered; on the
seventh day the tide would have reached the vessel perched on the top of
the hill now known as Arthur's Seat; on the sixteenth day the highest
peak of the Pentlands would have disappeared; and in nine days more the
distant summit of Ben Lomond. From the roof of the slowly drifting ark
nothing would then have appeared save a shoreless ocean. But it would
have taken yet other eleven days ere the proud crest of Ben Nevis, the
highest land in the British islands, would have been submerged; and the
eve of the fortieth day would have seen it covered by little more than
five hundred feet of water. An actual witness, in such circumstances,
however intelligent, could have but testified to the persistent rise of
the sea, accompanied mayhap by rain and tempest; he could but tell how
that for many days together it had been flood without ebb, as if the
fountains of the great deep had been broken up; and that at length he
was encompassed by what seemed a shoreless ocean. But he would certainly
depart perilously from his position as a witness-bearer, were he to
argue, that when his ark had begun to float on a hill eight hundred feet
in height, all hills upon the surface of the globe of a corresponding
altitude must have been also covered; or that, from what was in reality
but a local depression, a universal deluge might be legitimately
inferred. His error would be of the same nature (though of course
immensely greater) as that of the native of Chili who held, that
because the ocean had retreated from the coasts of his own country, it
had of necessity also retreated from the delta of the Indus; or as that
of the inhabitant of Cutch who held, that as the sea had risen high over
his native districts, it had also of necessity overflowed the coasts of
Chili and Aracan.
Dr. Kitto brings forward but one other objection to a Flood only
partial, and that the one virtually disposed of by Bishop Stillingfleet
in the terminal half of a short sentence. The Bishop "despaired," as he
well might, "of ever seeing it proved that the whole earth had been
peopled before the Deluge." "It has been much urged of late," says Dr.
Kitto, "that the Deluge was not universal, but was confined to a
particular region, which man inhabited. It may be freely admitted that,
seeing the object of the Flood was to drown mankind, there was no need
that it should extend beyond the region of man's habitation. But this
theory necessarily assigns to the world before the Flood a lower
population, and a more limited extension of it, than we are prepared to
concede." He then goes on to argue, that, as the species increased very
rapidly immediately after the Deluge, it must have increased in a ratio
at least equally rapid before that catastrophe took place. But how
gratuitous the assumption! It would be quite as safe to infer, that as
the human race multiplied greatly in Ireland during the first half of
the present century, it must have also multiplied greatly in Italy, a
much finer country, during the first half of the fifth century, or in
the wealthier portions of Kurdistan during the first half of the
thirteenth. Ere applying, however, the Irish ratio of increase to either
the Italy of thirteen hundred years ago, or to the Kurdistan of five
hundred years ago, it would surely be necessary to take into account the
important fact, that these were the ages of Zingis Khan and of Attila;
of Zingis Khan, who, on possessing himself of the three capitals of the
one country, coolly butchered four millions three hundred and
forty-seven thousand persons, their inhabitants; and of that Attila,
"the scourge of God," who used to say, more especially in reference to
the other country, that "whenever his horse-hoofs had once trod, the
grass never afterwards grew," and before whose ravages the human race
seemed melting away. The terms in which the great wickedness of the
antediluvians is described indicate a period of violence and
outrage;--the age which preceded the Flood was an age of "giants" and of
"mighty men," and of "men of renown,"--forgotten Attilas, Alarics, and
Zingis Khans, mayhap,--"giants of mighty bone and bold emprise," who
became famous for their "infinite manslaughter," and the thousands whom
they destroyed. Such is decidedly the view which the brief Scriptural
description suggested to the poets; and certainly, when a question comes
to be one of guess work, no other class of persons guess half so
sagaciously as they. It has not unfrequently occurred to me,--and in a
question of this kind one suggestion may be quite as admissible as
another,--that the Deluge may have been more a visitation of mercy to
the race than of judgment. Even in our own times, as happened in New
Zealand during the present century, and in Tahiti about the close of the
last, tribes restricted to one tract of country, when seized by the
madness of conquest, have narrowly escaped extermination. We know that
in some instances better have been destroyed by worse races,--that the
more refined have at times yielded to the more barbarous,--yielded so
entirely, that all that survived of vast populations and a comparatively
high civilization have been broken temples, and great burial mounds
locked up in the solitudes of deep forests; and further, that whole
peoples, exhausted by their vices, have sunk into such a state of
depression and decline, that, unable any longer to supply the inevitable
waste of nature, they have dropt into extinction. And such may have been
the condition of the human race during that period of portentous evil
and violence which preceded the deluge. We know that the good came at
length to be restricted to a single family; and even the evil, instead
of being numbered, as now, by hundreds of millions, may have been
comprised in a few thousands, or at most a few hundred thousands, that
were becoming fewer every year, from the indulgence of fierce and evil
passions, in a time of outrage and violence. The Creator of the race may
have dealt with it on this occasion of judgment, as a florist does with
some decaying plant, which he cuts down to the ground in order to secure
a fresh shoot from the root. At all events, the _proof_ of an
antediluvian population at once enormously great and very largely spread
must rest with those who hold, with Dr. Kitto, that its numbers and
extent were such as to militate against the probability of a deluge
merely partial; and any such proof we may, with the good old Bishop of
Worcester, well "despair of ever seeing" produced. Even admitting,
however, for the argument's sake, that the inhabitants of the Old World
may have been as numerous as those of China are now,--a number estimated
by the recent authorities at more than three hundred and fifty
millions,--and the admission is certainly greatly larger than there is
argument enough on the other side to extort,--a comparatively partial
deluge would have been sufficient to secure their destruction. In short,
it may be fairly concluded, that if there be a show of reason against
the theory of a flood merely local, it has not yet been exhibited. Even
Dr. Kitto, with all his ingenuity and learning, has failed to array
against it arguments of any real weight or cogency; and in my next
address I may be perhaps able to show you that the objections which, on
the other hand, bear against the antagonist hypothesis, are at once
solid and numerous. I may be mistaken in my estimate; but for some years
past I have regarded them as altogether insurmountable.
LECTURE EIGHTH.
THE NOACHIAN DELUGE.