(3.) The Noachian Flood.
What we said of the cosmogony we repeat under this head also: it is not our intention to enter upon this subject at any length. It has been proved to demonstration that no single trace of such a cataclysm can be detected in the rocks or features of the earth; but all these rocks and all these features bear their testimony against such an event.
No doubt the stratified rocks speak of the agency of water, but that agency was not the deluge. No doubt the gravel and the boulders found so extensively accumulated over the northern hemisphere were carried from their native places by the force of water; but that water was not the flood. No doubt traces of marine animals may be discovered on every high mountain, no matter how far that mountain may be distant from the main ocean; but these fossils were not deposited there by the breaking up of the great deep and the 40 days of incessant rain which fell upon the ark. These fossils extend downwards for some six or eight miles in depth, and how could a flood of some few months in duration make such a deposit? The fossils of the rocks are all deposited in the nicest order; those of one period are never mixed with the fossils of another. No antiquarian could sort his specimens with more order. No museum could observe more method in its arrangements. A deluge would sweep down everything in confusion and bury plants, animals, and minerals in one common ruin; such is not the character of the rocks—every fossil reveals the rocks from which it was dug, and every rock will tell the searcher what fossils he may expect to find there.
We are told that the animals taken into the ark were the same as those which existed on the earth when the flood came, and that the animals preserved by Noah were the parents of existing species; but the fossils of the rocks are wholly different to any existing specimens of plant or animal. Shell fish are found upon inland mountains, but not the shell fish of our present system. Bones of animals are found far from the native haunts of the living creatures, but they are altogether strange bones, and never belonged to the animals of the ark. They are all relics of extinct species, and amongst all the fossils no trace of man can be detected. No trace of the houses built by Cain and his offspring. No trace of the iron and brass instruments forged by Tubal-Cain and his descendants. We find traces of the most delicate leaves of plants, traces of birds, and beasts, and creeping things; but none of man, or of the works of man. If the same flood swept away both man and beast, bird and fish, reptile and insect, tree and boulder, how is it we never find them buried in the same bed—overwhelmed in the same grave? Demonstration could not go further. The whole earth from its lowest depth to its surface denies the universality of the flood, and not one particle of proof can be pointed out in confirmation of the legend.
Moses says that the fountains of the great deep were broken up (Gen. vii., 11). He believed that there was a subterranean abyss of water under the earth, [14a] and the Rev. William Kirby, in one of the “Bridgewater Treatises,” [14b] actually attempts to justify this notion. It would be an insult to the understanding of our reader to waste arguments on such a hypothesis. It is enough to state it, and it must fall with the weight of its own worthlessness.
Again. Moses says, “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered” (Gen. vii., 19, 20). Moses says the depth of the water was 15 cubits, and that all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Of course the writer was ignorant of that simple principle, known now to every schoolboy, that water finds its level. He supposed that it would follow the irregularities of the earth’s surface, here investing a mountain and there dipping into the valleys, so that a uniform depth was preserved throughout, the highest hills being covered with a depth of 15 cubits like the valleys. We must, per force, believe this, or we are driven to the more unlikely hypothesis, that Moses supposed a level of some 30 feet deep of water would suffice to cover the loftiest mountains. [15] Whichever solution is taken, the inference is the same—that the statement is wholly irreconcilable with science.
Once more. After the waters had prevailed for about a year, Noah sent forth a dove, and the dove came back to the ark with an “olive leaf plucked off” (Gen. viii., 11). This olive tree withstood the pelting rain, withstood the rush of the subsiding water, withstood the wind that drove the waters back to their abyss; but what is stranger still, it blossomed under water, and when its head was left towering above the flood which enveloped its trunk, its branches had put forth leaves. Probably the grass was not injured by the flood, as the beasts were dismissed from the ark to find their own food. Strange that trees and herbs, covered with a depth of 30 feet of water, should grow just as well as in the sunshine; but small inconsistencies of this sort are as nothing to the glaring impossibility of the whole legend.
Many other examples of a similar contrariety might be added, but the mere multiplication of evidence can serve no useful purpose when enough has been brought forth to establish the point in question. We might refer to the miracle of Joshua (x., 12.) in proof of the vulgar notion that it is the sun which moves over the earth, not the earth round the sun; we might direct attention to Gen. ix., 13, in proof that Moses supposed the rainbow to be a miraculous exhibition of God’s power in confirmation of his covenant with Noah; or we might dwell on the 2nd Epistle of Peter (iii., 10–12) to show that the prince of the Apostles believed that the heavens could be burnt with fire, like the roof of a house, and the elements be melted by fervent heat. We might cite a whole host of verses to prove that the Scripture writers believed the earth to be a vast plane with an abyss, and the whole rigidly fixed on a solid foundation wholly immovable.
Or we might turn to the physiological notions of the Bible writers to show that they were no more in advance of the period than their notions of astronomy, geology, and general history. They referred intellectual operations to the kidneys or reins:—“My reins instruct me in the night season” (Ps. xvi., 7). The affections they ascribe to the heart, and bodily pain to the bones. They believed epilepsy to result from demoniacal possession; that mandrakes provoked fecundity in women (Gen. xxx., 14–16; Cant. vii., 13.); that peeled withes, placed before pregnant ewes, would affect the colour of their lambs (Gen. xxx., 37.); that ants eat corn and lay up for themselves a store for winter (Prov. v., 6.); that bees can be generated from a dead carcase (Judges xiv., 8.); that falling meteors or stars prognosticate evil (Ezek. xxxii., 7.; Matt, xxiv., 29.); that spittle contains a charm to cure blindness and other maladies (John ix., 6, 7.; Mark vii., 33–35.; viii., 23, 24.); and that the stars exercise an influence on the lot of our life (Judges v., 20). But to enumerate all the instances of contrariety between Scripture and science would occupy more than all the pages of the present pamphlet; suffice it to say, that every false notion of the age is endorsed as an inspired fact, and no single error is corrected, or new truth brought to light. We must now leave this part of our subject and proceed to the next division.