to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a particularly
absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out the
Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the end of
the Glacial Epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle of a
physical revolution of which geology knows nothing; and which,
if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about the
fact of the Deluge, would leave the details of his account as
irreconcilable with the truths of elementary physical science as
ever. Thus I may be permitted to spare myself and my readers the
weariness of a recapitulation of the overwhelming arguments
against the universality of the Deluge, which they will now find
for themselves stated, as fully and forcibly as could be wished,
by Anglican and other theologians, whose orthodoxy and
conservative tendencies have, hitherto, been above suspicion.
Yet many fully admit (and, indeed, nothing can be plainer) that,
as a matter of fact, the whole earth known to him was inundated;
nor is it less obvious that unless all mankind, with the
exception of Noah and his family, were actually destroyed, the
references to the Flood in the New Testament are unintelligible.

But I am quite aware that the strength of the demonstration that
no universal Deluge ever took place has produced a change of
front in the army of apologetic writers. They have imagined that
the substitution of the adjective "partial" for "universal,"
will save the credit of the Pentateuch, and permit them, after
all, without too many blushes, to declare that the progress of
modern science only strengthens the authority of Moses.
Nowhere have I found the case of the advocates of this method of
escaping from the difficulties of the actual position better put
than in the lecture of Professor Diestel to which I have