f my instinct,) but
because I had slid into a new rule of interpretation,--that _I must
not obtrude miracles on the Scripture narrative_. The writers tell
their story without showing any consciousness that it involves
physiological difficulties. To invent a miracle in order to defend
this, began to seem to me unwarrantable.

It had become notorious to the public, that Geologists rejected the
idea of a universal deluge as physically impossible. Whence could
the water come, to cover the highest mountains? Two replies were
attempted: 1. The flood of Noah is not described as universal: 2. The
flood was indeed universal, but the water was added and removed
by miracle.--Neither reply however seemed to me valid. First, the
language respecting the universality of the flood is as strong as any
that could be written: moreover it is stated that the tops of the
high hills _were all covered_, and after the water subsides, the ark
settles on the mountains of Armenia. Now in Armenia, of necessity
numerous peaks would be seen, unless the water covered them, and
especially Ararat. But a flood that covered Ararat would overspread
all the continents, and leave only a few summits above. If then
the account in Genesis is to be received, the flood was universal.
Secondly: the narrator represents the surplus water to have come from
the clouds and perhaps from the sea, and again to drain back into the
sea. Of a miraculous _creation and destruction_ of water, he evidently
does not dream.

Other impossibilities came forward: the insufficient dimensions of
the ark to take in all the creatures; the unsuitability of the
same climate to arctic and tropical animals for a full year; the
impossibility of feeding them and avoiding pestilence; and especially,
the total disagreement of the modern facts of the dispersion of
animals, with the idea that they spread anew from Armenia as their
centre. We have no right to call in a series of miracles to solve
difficulties, of which the writer was unconscious. The ark itself was
expressly devised to economize miracle, by making a fresh creation of
animals needless.

Different in kind was the objection which I felt to the story, which
is told twice concerning Abraham and once concerning Isaac, of passing
off a wife as a sister. Allowing that such a thing was barely not
impossible, the improbability was so intense, as to demand the
strictest and most cogent proof: yet when we asked, Who testifies it?
no proof