is only forty-eight years after the deluge. What kind of a
family had Noah? Was amalgamation practised by any of Noah's sons? If
all the human occupants of the ark were Caucasians, how did they produce
negro races in forty-eight years? The facts again compel us to announce
the fabulous character of this Genesical story of the deluge.
_"No intelligent person now believes that it was a total deluge:
Buckland, Pye Smith, Miller, Hitchcock, and all Christian geologists,
agree that it was a partial deluge, and the account can be so
explained."_
How strange that God should dictate an account of the deluge that led
everybody to a false conclusion with regard to it, till science taught
them a better. But let us read what the account says, and see whether it
can be explained to signify a partial deluge. To save the Bible from its
inevitable fate, such men as Buckland, Smith, Miller, Hitchcock, and
other Bible apologists, it is evident from their writings, were ready to
resort to any scheme, however wild.
I read (Gen. vi. 7), "I will destroy both man and beast, and the
creeping thing." How could a partial deluge accomplish this? (v. 13);
"The end of all flesh is come before me. I will destroy them with the
earth." How could all flesh be destroyed with the earth by any other
than a total deluge? (v. 17); "I do bring a flood of waters upon the
earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life, from under
heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." Not only is man
to be destroyed, but all flesh wherein is the breath of life, from under
heaven, and every thing in the earth is to die. Can this be tortured to
mean a partial deluge? (vii. 19); "And the waters prevailed exceedingly
upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven
were covered; and all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of
fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of
life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance
was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man and
cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they
were destroyed from the earth, and Noah only remained alive, and they
that were with him in the ark." Had the man who wrote this story been a
lawyer, and had he known how these would-be-Bible-believers, and at the
same time geologists, would seek to perv
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