certainty of the fact. "Verily, Verily;" "I, even I;" “I have seen, I have seen," &c. And in addition to this fact, I believe that nowhere is the expression “under the whole heaven" used except where universality is intended. The Gospel is to be "preached to every creature under heaven," meaning universally. We have also another fact, that in consequence of the spherical form of the globe, Mount Ararat in Armenia, a mountain as high as Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe, could not have been covered unless the whole world were covered also, and this globe became suspended in water as it is now in atmosphere. To deny the possibility of this would be to deny the omnipotence of the Creator. The tradition of the flood also extends to every part of the globe.

Then as to the quiescent character of its approach, contended for by those geologists who do not quite like to throw it over altogether. This certainly is not consistent with the Mosaic account: "The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." Not very quiescent! And then as to the character of its subsidence: "God made a great wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged." Not a very quiescent wind to dry up all that mass of water in 150 days! Only imagine the fountains of the deep breaking up, and carrying as it would do from north to south all the ice of the North Pole and that of the

Heathen testimonies to the Deluge:-Berosus the Chaldæan, Abydenus, Diodorus Siculus, Alexander Polyhistor, Eusebius, Apollodorus, Hesiod, Lucian, Plato, Plutarch, Pindar, Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Solinus, Josephus, Lucretius, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal.

The Esquimaux have

a

tradition of the Delige

Cap. C. F. Hall. Life among Esquin aux

There is the tradition of the Deluge
Owyhee

2.525.

in

See Manley Hopkins account,

South Pole, and their meeting together in the midst of that which was once dry land. What a concussion! Anything but quiescent, I imagine. And then the rolling back of the stones, and rocks, and gravel with the subsidence of the waters, which as they retreated would form the valleys and hill-sides which are so interesting to trace as the result of that great cataclysm.

And is not the Scriptural description of the flood sufficient to account for those siltings, and drifts, and gravel-beds, and bogs, and caverns, into which have been washed the implements and utensils of preexisting races, to say nothing of later and more partial inundations, without giving that enormous antiquity to the human race which some geologists seem to claim for it.

It is not a little singular, that while the flint implements which are undoubtedly the work of human hands have been repeatedly found in positions connecting them with the bones of animals now extinct, the skeletons of the men who once wielded those weapons should have entirely disappeared; and yet one would suppose that human remains should be as commonly found as those of the brutes, and as durable. I have frequently asked medical men whether there is anything in the composition of human bone which prevents its receiving petrifaction, like that of other animals: the answer I have received has been invariably the same, "Undoubtedly not."

Why then should we find the bones of the brute creation, and the very implements with which those brutes were slain, but not the bones of the slayer? In

spite of the smile of incredulity with which references to Scripture, alas! are now-a-days received, I venture unhesitatingly to suggest the following as a solution of the question-the sentence of infallibility, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return

And with certain exceptions of circumstances, which prove the general rule, I do not believe that human bones left to the course of nature can be indefinitely preserved. The very way in which the skeletons of ancient Britons which I have recently discovered myself (which may claim perhaps an antiquity of 3,000 years) crumble away on exposure to the atmosphere, shews how entirely they would have perished centuries ago but for the way in which they had been kept as it were hermetically sealed up.

I take leave here humbly to enter my protest against the opinions of those persons who, finding a difficulty with regard to supposed recent discoveries in geology, which seem to require a longer period than that hitherto attributed to the existence of the human race upon earth, and unable to stretch the post-diluvian generations of mankind, in which the duration has been limited by God Himself to 120, and subsequently to "threescore years and ten," or exceptionally to "fourscore years," are willing to give an elasticity to the ante-diluvian generations, and suggest that the ages of man before the flood, as noted by Moses, may have been intended to represent indefinite periods, some perhaps of longer and some of shorter duration.

This desire to carry back the age of the human race

Gen. iii. 19.