over with the rock-boulders, clays, gravels, and organic debris of deep sea-bottoms. And these cataclysms they regard as perfectly natural, though of course very unusual, events. Nor would the gradual depression of a continent, or, as in the supposed case, of a portion of a continent, be in any degree less natural than the sudden upheaval of a continent. It would, on the contrary, be much more according to experience. Nay, were such a depression and elevation of the great Asiatic basin to take place during the coming twelvemonth as that of which I have conceived as the probable cause of the Deluge, though the geologists would have to describe it as beyond comparison the most remarkable oscillation of level which had taken place within the historic period, they would certainly regard it as no more miraculous than the great earthquake of Lisbon, or than that exhibition of the volcanic forces which elevated the mountain of Jorullo in a single night sixteen hundred feet over the plain. And why have recourse, in speculating on the real event of four thousand years ago, to supposititious miracle, if an event of apparently the same kind would not be regarded as miraculous now? May we not in this matter take our stand beside the poet, who, when recognising a Providence in the great Calabrian earthquake, and in the overwhelming wave by which it was accompanied, pertinently inquired of the sceptics,

"Has not God

Still wrought by means since first he made the world?
And did He not of old employ his means

To drown it? What is His creation less

Than a capacious reservoir of means,

Formed for His use, and ready at His will?"

The revelation to Noah, which warned him of a com

ing Flood, and taught him how to prepare for it, was evidently miraculous: the Flood itself may have been purely providential. But on this part of the subject I need not dwell. I have accomplished my purpose if I have shown, as was attempted of old by divines such as Stillingfleet and Poole, that there "seems to be no reason why the Deluge should be extended beyond the occasion of it, which was the corruption of man," but, on the contrary, much reason against it; and that, on the other hand, a Flood restricted and partial, and yet sufficient to destroy the race in an early age, while still congregating in their original centre, cannot be regarded as by any means an incredible event. The incredibility lies in the mere human glosses and misinterpretations in which its history has been enveloped. Divested of these, and viewed in its connection with those wonderful traditions which still float all over the world regarding it, it forms, not one of the stumblingblocks, but one of the evidences, of our faith; and renders the exercise a not unprofitable one, when, according to the poet,

"Back through the dusk

Of ages Contemplation turns her view,
To mark, as from its infancy, the world
Peopled again from that mysterious shrine
That rested on the top of Ararat."

LECTURE NINTH.

THE DISCOVERABLE AND THE REVEALED.

It seems natural, nay inevitable, that false revelations, which have descended from remote, unscientific ages, should be committed to a false science. Natural phenomena, when of an extraordinary character, powerfully impress the untutored human mind. In operating, through the curiosity or the fears of men, upon that instinct of humanity-never wholly inactive in even the rudest state-which cannot witness any remarkable effect without seeking to connect it with its producing cause, they excite into activity in the search the imaginative faculty,―always of earlier development than the judgment in both peoples and individuals, and which never fails, when so employed, to conduct to delusions and extravagances. And this state of mind gives birth simultaneously to both false religion and false science. Great tempests, inundations, eclipses, earthquakes, thunder and lightning, famine and pestilence, the births of monsters, or the rare visitation of strange fishes or wild animals, come all to be included in the mythologic domain. Even the untutored Indian "sees

God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." And when an order of priesthood springs up, a portion of the leisure of the class is usually employed in speculating on these phenomena; and to their speculations they give the form of direct revelation. Thus almost all the false religions of the old world—not grafted, like Mohammedanism, on the true one-have their pretended revelations regarding the form, structure, and origin of the earth, the mechanism of the heavens, the electric and meteoric phenomena, and even the arrangement of oceans and continents on the surface of our planet.

The old extinct forms of heathenism,-Etrurian, Egyptian, Phoenician, and Babylonian,-had all their cosmogonies. In the wild mythology of ancient Scandinavia, of which we find such distinct traces in the languages and superstitions of northern Europe, and which even in our own country continues to give the names of its uncouth deities to the days of our week, there is a strange genesis of not only the heavens and earth, but of the gods also. It has, besides, its scheme of the universe in its great mundane tree of three vast roots,-celestial, terrestrial, and infernal,which supports the land, the sea, the sky, and all things. The leading religions of the East which still survive, such as Buddhism, Brahminism, and Parseeism, have all their astronomy, geography, meteorology, and geology, existing as component parts of their several systems. Nor have there been wanting ingenious men who, though little tolerant of the various attempts made to reconcile the Mosaic account of creation with

*For a brief but masterly view of these ancient cosmogonies see the Rev. D. Macdonald's "Creation and the Fall." Edinburgh: Constable & Co.

the discoveries of modern science, have looked with a favourable eye on the wild science of the false religións, and professed to detect in it at least striking analogies with the deductions of both the geologist and the astronomer. When the sceptical wits of the last century wished to produce, by way of foil, a morality vastly superior, as they said, to that of Christianity, they had recourse to the Brahmins and the Chinese. And though we hear less of the ethics of these peoples since we have come to know them better, we are still occasionally reminded of the superiority of their science. Hinduism has been regarded as furnishing examples of the geologic doctrine of a succession of creations extended over immensely protracted geologic periods; and Buddhism represented as charged with both the geologic doctrine and the perhaps less certain astronomic deduction of a plurality of worlds. And before entering on our general argument, it may be well to show by specimen what mere chance hits these are, and how enormous the amount of the nonsense and absurdity really is in which they are set.

When Brahma, wearied with the work of producing and maintaining the universe, goes to sleep, say the Hindus, an occurrence which happens at the end of every four millions of years,-a deluge of water rises high above the sun and moon, and the worlds and their inhabitants are destroyed. When he awakes, however, he immediately sets himself to produce anew; and another universe springs up, consisting, like the former one, of ten worlds placed over each other, like the storeys of a tall building, and replenished with plants and animals. Of these our own world is the eighth in number, reckoning from the ground-floor upwards: there are seven worlds worse than itself beneath it,

Z