vain to conjecture, as no portion of the globe has yet been found where there is any evidence of this primary condition; on the contrary, every part of the earth's strata hitherto examined evidently appears to have been formed out of previously existing dry land, and exhibits unequivocal proofs of having been a deposit in the bed of a former ocean.

The general tenor of the narrative of Moses seems, however, to imply a consecutive and uninterrupted process of creation from the first production of light to the establishment of man upon the earth.*

* Note XI.

87

SECTION II.

MOSAICAL AND GEOLOGICAL VIEWS OF
THE DELUGE.

MAN, by his superior endowments, has been enabled to stamp on the periods through which he has existed, a physical and moral impression entirely different from the other organized beings by which he is surrounded, while his future destiny connects him with intelligences beyond this sublunary scene. Of other animals, generation succeeds to generation; they live and die, and occupy no page in the records of time; they originate nothing, they accumulate nothing, and we could have had no trace that they had ever been, were it not for the scattered remains of a few species which are left to attest their former existence. But of man we can trace the origin and progress from the first period of his creation to the present time. It is true we have no physical proofs of his existence previous to the era of the deluge, when the repeopling of the earth commenced a second time from the stock of Noah: we have no traces of a city older than that of Babel, built by

the mighty hunter Nimrod, in the plains of Shinar, a short period after the catastrophe of the deluge, or of its contemporary Nineveh : we have no hint even of a monarchy older than the great Assyrian, which existed about a thousand years after the deluge: yet these remote times have not passed altogether unknown, till tradition, joining the stream of history, brings us through the Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman dynasties. But of Babylon and Nineveh we have indications. In the ruins of those cities we have proofs not only of what they were the elaborately constructed abodes of busy, active beings-but we have also a confirmation of those prophetic predictions of what they were to be, the mouldering remnants of desolate, solitary, and now barren regions—thus affording a two-fold confirmation of the truth and accuracy of inspired writ, and its intimate connection with the history of man, and the secular events of this world.*

Yet, previous to the deluge, there existed cities, the arts of industry were known, there were “artificers in brass and iron," as well as agriculturists, "such as dwell in tents, and have cattle."+ This interval, too, between the creation of man and the deluge, amounted, according to the Septuagint calculation, to two thousand two hundred and forty two years, a sufficient period, joined to the extreme

* Note XII.

† Genesis, iv. 17-21.

longevity of the ancient patriarchs, to produce a large population. How should it be, then, that we can trace man by his works alone up to this period and no farther, and that all beyond is matter of history? In order to solve this difficulty we 'must first inquire what were the nature and effects of the deluge.

We find a tradition of this great catastrophe very generally existing among the nations of the earth. Not only do we trace it passing from one to the other of those anciently civilized states which were the means of diffusing knowledge and refinement over the world, but even in the most remote and barbarous tribes who had branched out from the parent stock at a very early period,-all retain more or less traditions of this extraordinary occurrence. Many of these accounts, it is true, are mixed up with the legends and fables of the peculiar races, but enough of the original remains to indicate that they all received the first impressions from one original source; thus affording evidence in an extraordinary manner, not only of the original fact of the deluge, but that all the nations of the earth must have had a common origin.

From Chaldea and Egypt the history of the deluge passed into Phenicia and Greece, where the subject was invested with the legendary and fabulous mythology of that imaginative people, and Noah merged into Deucalion. From Greece the

Romans derived similar traditions along with their other learning.

The Hindoos and Persians, nations immediately derived from or coeval with the Egyptians, among many catastrophes which their theology records, place the last destruction of the earth at a period coeval with the deluge of Noah, and in terms nearly allied to the details of Moses.

The Chinese, a people of very ancient establishment, keeping carefully aloof from all others, and of such peculiar features and manners as to lead us to suppose that they branched off almost immediately from the family of Noah, possess also unequivocal traces of a "deluge said to be caused by Yoa their king, who let loose the waters, which bathed the feet even of the highest mountains, covered the less elevated hills, and rendered the plains impassable." The period of this deluge, too, remarkably coincides with that of the Hindoo traditions.

Among the Mexicans of South America, Humboldt has discovered some hieroglyphics typical of a deluge. And among the South Sea Islanders, -the extreme wanderers of the human race, who have scattered themselves over those more recently formed islands, which rise up as myriads of green specks in a vast ocean, Ellis has distinctly recognized legends bearing upon this catastrophe.

Moses, who flourished a thousand years after the