The advocates of the diluvial origin of petrifactions soon found themselves hard pressed with the question, how these relics could be scattered through strata many thousand feet thick, by one transient flood. They, therefore, came to the conclusion, in the words of Woodward, a distinguished cosmogonist of the eighteenth century, that the “whole terrestrial globe was taken to pieces and dissolved at the flood, and the strata settled down from this promiscuous mass, as any earthy sediment from a fluid.” During that century, many works appeared upon cosmogony, defending similar views, by such men as Burnet, Scheuchzer, and Catcott. Some of these works exhibited no little ability, mixed, however, with hypotheses so extravagant that they have ever since been the butt of ridicule. The very title of Burnet’s work cannot but provoke a smile. It is called “The Sacred Theory of the Earth, containing an Account of the Original of the Earth, and of all the general Changes it bath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the Consummation of all Things.” He maintained that the primitive earth was only “an orbicular crust, smooth, regular, and uniform, without mountains and without a sea.” This crust rested on the surface of a watery abyss, and, being heated by the sun, became chinky; and in consequence of the rarefaction of the included vapors, it burst asunder, and fell down into the waters, and so was comminuted and dissolved, while the inhabitants perished. Catcott’s work was confined exclusively to the deluge, and exhibited a good deal of ability. He endeavored to show, that this dissolution of the earth by the deluge was taught in the Scriptures, and his reasoning on that point is a fine example of the state of biblical interpretation in his day. “As there are other texts,” says he, “which mention the dissolution of the earth, it may be proper to cite them. Ps. xlvi. 2. God is our refuge; therefore will we not fear though the earth be removed, [be changed, be quite altered, as it was at the deluge.] God uttered his voice, the earth melted, [flowed, dissolved to atoms.] Again, Job xxviii. 9. He sent his hand [the expansion, his instrument, or the agent by which he worked] against the rock, he overturned the mountains by the roots, he caused the rivers to burst forth from between the rocks, [or broke open the fountains of the abyss.] His eye [symbolically placed for light] saw [passed through, or between] every minute thing, [every-atom, and so dissolved the whole.] He [at last] bound up the waters from weeping, [i. e. from pressing through the shell of the earth, as tears make their way through the orb of the eye; or, as it is related, (Gen. viii. 2,) He stopped the fountains of the abyss and the windows of heaven,] and brought out the light from its hiding-place, [i. e., from the inward parts of the earth, from between every atom where it lay hid, and kept each atom separate from the other, and so the whole in a state of dissolution; his bringing out those parts of the light which caused the dissolution would of course permit the agents to act in their usual way, and so reform the earth.”]—Treatise on the Deluge, p. 43, (London, 1761.)
We can hardly believe at the present day, that a logical and scientific mind, like that of Catcott, could satisfy itself, by such a dreamy exegesis, that the Scriptures teach the earth’s dissolution at the deluge; especially when they so distinctly describe the waters of the deluge, as first rising over the land, and then sinking back to their original position. Still more strange is it how Burnet could have thought it consistent with Scripture to suppose the earth, before the flood, “to have been covered with an orbicular crust, smooth, regular, and uniform, without mountains and without a sea,” when the Bible so distinctly states, as the work of the third day, that the waters under the heavens were gathered together unto one place, and the dry land appeared; and that God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called seas; and further, that, by the deluge, all the high hills were covered. Yet these men doubtless supposed that, by the views which they advocated, they were defending the Holy Scriptures. Nay, their views were long regarded as exclusively the orthodox views, and opposition to them was considered, for one or two centuries, as virtual opposition to the Bible. Truly, this, in biblical interpretation, was straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.
It is quite convenient to explain such anomalies in human belief, by referring them to the spirit of the age, or to the want of the light of modern science. But in the present case, we cannot thus easily dispose of the difficulty. For in our own day, we have seen these same absurdities of opinion maintained by a really scientific man, selected to write one of the Bridgewater Treatises, as one of the most learned men in Great Britain. I refer to Rev. William Kirby, evidently a thorough entomologist and a sincere Christian. But he adopts the opinion, not only that there exists a subterranean abyss of waters, but a subterranean metropolis of animals, where the huge leviathians, the gigantic saurians, dug out of the rocks by the geologist, still survive; and this he endeavors to prove from the Bible. For this purpose he quotes the passage in Psalms, though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death. His exposition of this text is much in the style of that already given from Catcott. Following that writer and Hutchinson, he endeavors to show, by a still more fanciful interpretation, that the phrase “windows of heaven,” in Genesis, means cracks and volcanic rents in the earth, through which air and water rushed inwardly and outwardly with such violence as to tear the crust to pieces. This was the effect of the increasing waters of the deluge; the bringing together of these comminuted particles, so as to form the present strata, was the work of the subsiding waters.
These views will seem very strange to those not familiar with the history of geology. But we shall find their origin, if a few facts be stated respecting what has been called the physico-theological school of writers, that originated with one Hutchinson, in the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a disciple of the distinguished cosmogonist Woodward. But he attacked the views of his master, as well as those of Sir Isaac Newton on gravitation, in a work which he published in twelve octavo volumes, entitled “Moses’s Principia.” He there maintains that the Scriptures, when rightly understood, contain a complete system of natural philosophy.
This dogma, advocated by Hutchinson with the most intolerant spirit, constitutes the leading peculiarity of the physico-theological school, and has been very widely adopted, and has exerted a most pernicious influence both upon religion and upon science. It is painful, therefore, to find so learned and excellent a man as Mr. Kirby so deeply imbued with it, so long after its absurdity has been shown again and again. It is devoutly to be wished that the cabalistic dreams of Hutchinsonianism are not to be extensively revived in our day. And, indeed, such is the advanced state of hermeneutical knowledge, that we have little reason to fear it. Nevertheless, its leaven is yet by no means thoroughly purged out from the literary community.
It was one of the settled principles of the physico-theological school, that, since the creation, the earth has undergone no important change beneath the surface, except at the deluge, because it was supposed that the Bible mentions no other event that could produce any important change. Hence all marks of changes in the rocks since their original creation must be referred to the deluge. And especially when it was found that most of the petrifactions in the rocks were of marine origin, not only were they supposed to be the result of the deluge, but a most conclusive proof of that event. And this opinion is even yet very widely received by the Christian world. The argument in its favor, when stated in a popular manner to those not familiar with geology, is indeed quite imposing. For if the land, almost every where, even to the tops of some of its highest mountains, abounds in sea shells, this is just what we should expect, if the sea flowed over those mountains at the deluge. But the moment we come to examine the details respecting marine petrifactions, we see that nothing can be more absurd than to suppose them the result of a transient deluge. Yet this view is maintained in nearly all the popular commentaries of the present day upon Genesis, and in many respectable periodicals. It is taught, therefore, in the Sabbath school and in the family; and the child, as he grows up, is shocked to find the geologist assailing it; and when he finds it false, he is in danger of becoming jealous of the other evidences of Christianity which he has been taught.
Another branch of the modern physico-theological school, embracing men who have read too much on the subject of geology to be able to believe in the dissolution of the globe by the deluge, have adopted a more plausible hypothesis. They suppose that between the creation and the deluge, or in sixteen hundred and fifty-six years, according to the received chronology, all the present fossiliferous rocks of our continents, more than six miles in thickness, were deposited at the bottom of the ocean. By that event, they were raised from beneath the waters, and the continents previously existing sunk down and disappeared; so that the land now inhabited was formerly the ocean’s bed. To prove that such a change took place at the deluge, Granville Penn and Fairholme quote the declaration of God, in Genesis, respecting the flood—I will destroy them, (i. e., men,) and the earth, or with the earth; also the statement of Peter—The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. The terms earth and world may mean either the solid globe, or the animals and plants upon it. If in these passages they have the latter meaning, then they simply teach that the deluge destroyed the natural life of organic beings. If they have the former meaning, then the inquiry arises, What are we to understand by the destruction here described? It may mean annihilation, or it may imply ruin in some respects. That annihilation did not result from the deluge is evident from the case of men, who suffered only temporal death, and even this was not universal; and we know, also, that the matter of the earth did not perish. We must resort, therefore, to the sacred history to learn how far the destruction extended That history seems very plain. There was a rain of forty days, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up; that is, as Professor Stuart happily expresses it, “The ocean overflowed while the rain descended in vast quantities.” The waters gradually rose over the dry land, and after a hundred and fifty days, began to subside, and at the end of a year and a few days they were gone. Such an overflowing could not take place without producing the almost entire destruction of organic life, and making extensive havoc with the soil, especially as a wind assisted in driving these waters from the land. But there is nothing in the narrative that would lead us to suppose either a comminution or dissolution of the earth, or the elevation of the ocean’s bed. The same land which was overflowed is described as again emerging. Indeed, a part of the rivers proceeding out of the garden of Eden are the same as those now existing on the globe. We must then admit that our present continents—certainly the Asiatic,—are the same as the antediluvian, or deny that the account of Eden, in Genesis, is a part of the Bible. The latter alternative is preferred by Penn and Fairholme. Surely such men ought to be cautious how they censure geologists for modifying the meaning of some verses in Genesis, when they thus, without any evidence of its spuriousness, unceremoniously erase so important a passage.
I might add to all this that the facts of geology forbid the idea that our present continents formed the bed of the ocean at so recent a date as that of Noah’s deluge, and that the supposition that all organic remains were deposited during the two thousand years between the six days’ work and the deluge is totally irreconcilable with all correct philosophy. Why, during the time when the fossiliferous rocks were in a course of formation, four or five entirely distinct races of animals and plants successively occupied the land and the waters, and passed away in regular order; and these races were so unlike, that they could not have been contemporaneous. Who will maintain that all this took place in the short period of two thousand years? I am sure that no geologist will.
But modern geologists have, until recently, supposed that the traces of Noah’s deluge might still be seen upon the earth’s surface. I say its surface; for none of them imagined those effects could have reached to a great depth. Over a large part of the northern hemisphere they found extensive accumulations of gravel and bowlders, which had been removed often a great distance from their parent rocks, while the ledges beneath were smoothed and striated, obviously by the grating over them of these piles of detritus. How very natural to refer these effects to the agency of currents of water; just such currents as might have resulted from a universal deluge. But the inference was a hasty one For when geologists came to study the phenomena of drift or diluvium, as these accumulations of travelled matter are called, they found that currents of water alone would not explain them all. Some other agency must have been concerned; and the general opinion now is, that drift has been the result of the joint action of water and ice; and nearly all geologists suppose that this action took place before man’s existence on the globe. Some suppose it to have been the result of oceanic currents, while yet our continents were beneath the waters; others think that the northern ocean may have been thrown southerly over the dry land by the elevation of its bed; and others maintain that vast masses of ice may formerly have encircled high latitudes, whose glaciers, melting away, may have driven towards the equator the great quantities of drift and bowlders which have been carried in that direction. In short, it is now found that this is one of the most difficult problems in geology; and while most geologists agree that both ice and water have been concerned in producing the phenomena, the time and manner of their action are not yet very satisfactorily determined. They may have acted at different periods and in divers manners; but all the phenomena could not have been the result of one transient deluge.
From the facts that have now been detailed, it appears that on no subject of science connected with religion have men been more positive and dogmatical than in respect to Noah’s deluge, and that on no subject has there been greater change of opinion. From a belief in the complete destruction and dissolution of the globe by that event, those best qualified to judge now doubt whether it be possible to identify one mark of that event in nature.