It is as great a difficulty to discover where the water went when the flood was over. We are told that the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain was restrained. But this could do nothing towards diminishing the water. All that it could possibly accomplish would be to prevent the rise of the water. But we are also told that "God made a wind to pass over the earth." All that the wind could do, however, would be to convey to the atmosphere the moisture it took up in vapor; and this could not have lowered the water a yard. The highest mountain, Kunchinginga, is more than twenty-eight thousand feet high; the flood prevailed one hundred and fifty days, and abated two hundred and twenty-five; and if this abatement was done by the wind, it must have blown an ocean of water from the entire surface of the earth, one hundred and twenty-five deep, every day for eight months! All the hurricanes that ever blew, blowing at once, would be the gentlest zephyr of a summer's eve, compared with such a wind as that; and by what possibility could such a craft as the ark survive the storm?
A question, proper to be asked is, How were the animals supplied with light? and how did the attendants see to wait upon them in the first and second stories of the ark? There was but one window, and that only twenty-two inches in size, and it appears to have been in the third story. It was a day when kerosene was unknown, and tallow dips were uninvented. How did these animals live in the darkness? and, above all, how did Noah and his family supply their wants? It could have been no easy or pleasant thing to wait upon hungry lions, tigers, crocodiles, and rattlesnakes in the dark, to say nothing of the danger.
How did they breathe? There was but one twenty-two inch window; the ark was "pitched within and without with pitch;" "The Lord shut him in." Talk of the Black Hole of Calcutta: it must have been pure as the breath of morning compared with the condition of the ark in one day.
Where did they obtain water for drink? Supposing all the additional water needed to drown the world was fresh, when mingled with the water of the sea, as much as one-tenth of it would be salt water, and this would render it utterly unfit for drink. Provision must therefore have been made for water; and a space certainly half as large as the ark must have been taken up for the water necessary for this immense multitude.
The fish, mollusks, crustaceans (such as our crabs and lobsters), and all corals, must have died if such a flood had taken place,—the fresh-water fish from the salt water at once added to their proper element, and the salt-water fish and other marine forms from so large an addition of fresh water. For months, there could have been no shore: what is now the margin of the sea was buried miles deep; and all the fucoidal vegetation, upon which myriads of animals subsist, must have perished, and the animals with it, if the change in the constitution of the water had not killed them. Every time a man swallows an oyster, he has evidence that the Noachian deluge did not take place.
The plants must have perished also. How many of our trees, to say nothing of the grasses and feeble plants, could endure a soaking of nearly twelve months' duration? Some of the very hardiest seeds might survive, but the number could not be large. The present condition of vegetation upon the globe is another evidence, then, that this deluge did not take place.
When the ark landed on Mount Ararat, and the animals went forth, how did they subsist? As they went down the mountains, the carnivorous animals would have devoured a large portion of the herbivorous animals saved in the ark. Beside the lions, tigers, leopards, ounces, and other carnivorous mammals, amounting to eight hundred and ninety-two, there were in the ark six hundred and sixty-six eagles, for there are forty-eight species; one hundred and forty-four buzzards, fourteen hundred and forty-two falcons, one hundred and forty hawks, two hundred and thirty-eight vultures, and eight hundred and ninety six owls. What chance would a few sheep, rabbits and squirrels, rats and mice, doves and chickens, have, among this ravenous multitude? How could the ants escape, with ant-eaters, aard-varks and pangolins on the watch for them as soon as they made their appearance? There were as many dogs as hares, as many cats as mice. How long a lease of life could the sheep, hares, and mice, calculate upon? Before the herbivorous animals had multiplied, so as to furnish the carnivorous animals with food, they must all have been destroyed, after all the pains taken for their preservation. Noah should have given the herbivora, at least a year's start, especially since the vegetation of the globe was so deficient.
But we are told that the species of animals may have been much fewer in the days of Noah; and, therefore, much less room would be necessary. A single pair of cats, say some, may have produced all the animals of the cat kind; a pair of dogs, all the animals that belong to the dog family. Such an explanation might have been given when zoölogy was little known, and geology had no existence; but there is no place for it now. Animals change, it is true, and all species have probably been produced from a few originals; but the process by which this is accomplished is so slow in its operation, that we have no knowledge of the formation of a new species. We know that lions, tigers, and cats of various species, existed long before the time of the deluge, and dogs, wolves and foxes; and we find mummied cats, dogs, and other animals in Egypt, as old or older than the deluge, so little changed from those of the present time in the same locality, that we cannot recognize any difference between them.
"You seem to forget that all things are possible with God: he could have packed these animals into an ark of one-half the size, brought them altogether in the twinkling of an eye, and returned them as rapidly."
And you seem to forget that the account in Genesis gives us no hint of any such miracle. Noah was to take the animals to him, and to take unto him of all food that is eaten; and, as Hugh Miller remarks, "the expedient of having recourse to supposititious miracle in order to get over a difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not of the nature of an argument, but simply an evidence of the want of it. Argument is at an end when supposititious miracle is introduced." But, if a miracle was worked, it was not one, but ten thousand of the most stupendous miracles, and entirely unnecessary ones. This, the Rev. Dr. Pye Smith saw, when he said, "We cannot represent to ourselves the idea of all land animals being brought into one small spot, from the polar regions, the torrid zone, and all the other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, Australia, and the thousands of islands,—their preservation and provision, and the final disposal of them,—without bringing up the idea of miracles more stupendous than any that are recorded in Scripture. The great decisive miracle of Christianity,—the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,—sinks down before it."