(3.) What then is the plain inference from these well known and familiar facts?

Doubtless it is this: that the population of the world is comparatively recent.

For, had the world begun to be peopled at some immensely distant period, or had the human race existed from all eternity though the individual man be liable to death, civilization and good polity, with the arts and sciences in their train, must many ages ago have diffused themselves over the whole habitable globe; the savage and barbaric states must long since have become extinct; and, even on what is called the doctrine of chances, every modern invention must already have been ancient in the days of our remote ancestors. Not more sure is the physical progress of alluvial depositions and encroaching sands, than the moral progress of knowledge and of civilization. Each alike proclaims the recent population of the earth. But what shall we place before the commencement of this recent population? The voice of all nations, and the indelible marks imprinted upon the globe itself, concur in declaring, that the recent population of the present world was immediately preceded by an awful diluvian revolution, from which a few individuals only of men and animals were suffered to escape.

II. Such are the proofs, upon which the fact of the universal deluge is firmly established: nor do I see, how any man can resist such evidence, unless he will throw aside all history, resolutely shut his eyes against the researches of physiology, and boldly controvert the necessity of moral , testimony. The fact therefore of the universal

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deluge I consider as demonstrated whence we may fairly claim to argue from it, as we would do from any other established fact. On these reasonable principles, I may be allowed to employ it as a medium of proving the additional fact, of a direct intercourse between man and his Creator, or, in other words, of a revelation of God's purposes to his creature man.

The established fact is, that an universal deluge took place not more than five or six millenaries ago; from which a few individuals only of men and animals, the progenitors of the present race of men and animals, effected their escape.

If then these few individuals only, human and bestial, effected their escape; the question is, how they happened to effect it, while the great mass of their respective fellows perished?

To such a question it is unanimously replied by the voice of all nations, that the pious head of a single pious family constructed an immense ship, and that in this vessel were preserved those individuals of men and animals by whose descendants the present world has been replenished.

Now here another question arises. If a ship were constructed and used for this special purpose, the person, who so constructed and used it, must have foreseen the approaching deluge, But man, naturally, possesses not foreknowledge. Whence then did the builder of the ship derive that prescience, by which he foresaw and provided against the approaching deluge?

It is not easy to conceive, what reply can be given to this question, save what is doubtless the true one. The builder of the ship must have de

rived his prescience from an immediate intercourse with God. But, if this be admitted (and surely we have here a knot, which nothing, save the intervention of a Deity, can untie ;) the fact of a direct intercourse between man and his Creator, or, in other words, the fact of a revelation of God's purposes to his creature man, is fully and incontrovertibly established.

Against such a conclusion I see not what can be urged, save either the one or the other of the two following solutions of the difficulty.

It may be said, that the deluge, though universal in one sense of the word, yet did not cover the tops of all the highest hills; and that, upon their summits, certain individuals, human and bestail, preserved themselves from destruction.

Or it may be admitted, that the deluge was strictly universal; while it may be contended, that the individuals in question fortunately saved themselves on board of a ship, which, without any necessary revelation from heaven, had been previously built just as many other ships might have been previously built.

Neither of these solutions, I fear, will untie the knot: they shall, however, be considered in their order.

1. Let us first suppose, that the deluge did not cover the tops of the highest mountains, and that certain individuals of each genus preserved themselves upon their summits. What will be the result of this supposition? It will, I presume be the following.

Though many men and many animals would perish, many men and many animals in every quarter of the globe would escape: for, as the

summits of the mountains would be open to all, we may be quite sure, that great numbers would eagerly seize such an opportunity of self-preservation. Had this then been the mode of escape afforded to men and animals, it is perfectly clear, that no tradition of any escape effected through the medium of a ship could have been in existence. The accounts of the several nations of the earth would indeed have so far agreed, that their respective ancestors had saved themselves upon the tops of their own territorial mountains: but their accounts could never have agreed in the single striking circumstance, that the preservation both of men and animals was effected by the instrumentality of a large ship built for that special purpose, if all the while no such circumstance had ever occurred.

Upon the supposition before us, it is abundantly manifest, that traditions of the deluge must have exhibited a totally different aspect from what they do at present. In some chance country, we might possibly have heard of an individual who escaped in a ship: but the generally prevailing account would certainly have been, that men and animals took refuge on the tops of the mountains, which remained dry while the plains were inundated.

2. Let us next suppose, that, although the deluge was strictly universal, yet the mode, in which individual men and animals escaped, was not in a ship specially built for the purpose by reason of a divine revelation, but in a ship which (like many other ships) had been accidentally built in the ordinary course of war or traffic. Now what will be the result of this supposition? It will, apprehend, be the following.

If one family thus escaped, there is no assignable reason why many other families might not equally have escaped. Hence, under such circumstances, though tradition would have made a ship. the medium of preservation, it would have told the thousand escapes in a thousand different manners.

But this is not the fact. In every quarter of the globe, the matter is related with surprizing uniformity. We are invariably told, not that many families, but that a single family alone, escaped; that this family consisted of eight persons; that the head of it was the father of three. sons; and that from these three sons descended all the nations of the present world. It is true indeed, that, with a not unnatural vanity, every people has delighted to claim the father of the preserved family as their own peculiar countryman and to place the appulse of the ship upon some lofty mountain in their own peculiar territory: but still, in the fact that only a single family was saved, all nations agree; and the palpable circumstance, that the East was the cradle of mankind and the centre whence every postdiluvian emigration took place, clearly demonstrates that the ship can only have come to land in the continent of Asia.

I may add, that the supposition before us does not at all account for a matter, which involves no slight degree of difficulty.

The progenitors of the present existing birds and beasts must have been preserved from the general deluge, as well as the ancestors of the present existing race of mankind. Now the testimony of history and the researches of geology agree in declaring, that the deluge was not more