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not materially changed its level for the last 2000 years We must therefore attribute the elevation of these islands to some force acting beneath them; and as we are unacquainted with any power, equal to such an effect, except that of volcanoes, so there can be little doubt but the force of submarine fire, was the active cause of their elevation. One of these islands, indeed, contains a volcano always on fire.

THE DELUGE.

No part of the Mosaic history has produced more ridicule, among infidels, or has been attacked with greater hopes of success, than that of the universal deluge.

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That the whole earth, (say these men,) was ever surrounded with water so deep as to cover all its mountains, is a supposition not only unphilosophical, but absolutely impossible. It is unphilosophical, because even admitting that there is a sufficient quantity of water in the sea to produce such a deluge, still no adequate cause can be assigned for the production of such mighty effects. But allowing a cause which might have moved the whole ocean out of its bed, and cast it upon the land, still such an effect could not have been produced as a universal flood, since it would have required many times more water than exists on the whole earth, to have covered all its mountains at the same time.'

We shall not stop to answer these objections, but proceed to show, that notwithstanding these and many more have been urged against the probability of the Noachian. flood, still no fact can be better established, since it has the concurrent testimony of sacred, natural, and civil history in its favor.

The period of the deluge is fixed by chronological writers at the year 1656, after the creation, corresponding to the year 2348 before the Christian era. These two sums make the period of the creation, 4004 years B. C. According to Mr. Blair, on the 10th day of the second month, which was on Sunday, Nov. 30th, B. C. 2347, God commanded Noah and his family to enter into the ark; and on the next Sunday, December 7, it began to rain, and continued to rain forty days, after which the delug

prevailed 110 days, making its continuance 150 days from the beginning. On Wednesday, May 6th, 2348 B. C. the ark rested on Mount Ararat. The tops of the mountains became visible on Sunday, July 19th, and on Friday, November 18th, Noah and all they that were with him came forth out of the ark.

Without reference to sacred history, we never could have known the time when this great flood happenedthe fact itself, although we ought to require nothing more than the word of that history to establish its truth, is still capable of the strongest proof from the appearance of the earth's surface. Baron Cuvier, after having spent a large portion of a long life in investigating the natural history of the earth, comes to the following conclusions on the subject of the universal deluge,

"I can concur," says he, "with the opinions of M. M. De Luc and Dolomieu, that if there be any thing determined in geology, it is that the surface of our globe has been subject to a vast and sudden revolution, not longer ago than five or six thousand years; that this revolution has buried and caused to disappear, the countries formerly inhabited by man, and the species of animals now most known, that, on the contrary, it has left the bottom of the former sea dry, and has formed on it the countries now inhabited; that since this revolution those few individuals whom it spared, have propagated and spread over the lands newly left dry, and consequently it is only since this epoch, that our societies have assumed a progressive march; have formed establishments; raised monuments, and combined scientific systems."-Cuvier Revolu. Globe, 180.

The effects of that grand and awful cataclysm are still to be traced in every country, and in nearly every section of country on the globe. Vast accumulations of rounded, or water worn pebbles, huge blocks of granite, and immense beds of sand and gravel, are found in places where no causes now in operation ever could have placed them; and still that they have been moved is evident from the circumstances, or the places where they occur. "In the whole course of my geological travels," says Prof. Buckland, "from Cornwall to Caithness, from Calais to the Carpathians; in Ireland, in Italy, I have scarcely ever gone a mile without finding a perpetual succession of deposites of gravel, sand or loam, in situations that cannot be referred to the action of modern torrents, rivers or

lakes, or any other existing causes. And, with respect to the still more striking diluvial phenomena of drifted masses of rock, the greater part of the northern hemisphere, from Moscow to the Mississippi, is described by various geological travellers, as strewed on its hills as well as its valleys, with blocks of granite, and other rocks of enor mous magnitude, which have been drifted (mostly in a direction from north to south,) a distance, sometimes many hundred miles from their native beds, across mountains, valleys, lakes and seas, by a force of water, which must have possessed a velocity to which nothing that occurs in the actual state of the globe, affords the slightest parallel." -See Reliquiæ Diluviana.

If it be inquired how it can be ascertained that blocks of granite have been transported from a distance, and that they do not belong to disrupted mountains in the vicinity, it is answered that there is a peculiarity in every formation or range of rocks or mountains, by which the mineralogist can readily distinguish them. Thus the calcareous rock of Gibraltar, and the iron ore of Elba, specimens of which every collection contains, are readily distinguished even by the most common observer from all other minerals. To the practised eye of a mineralogist, combined with the analysis of the chemist, no difficulty occurs in identifying any specimen with the rock to which it belongs.

On the secondary mountains of Jura, particularly on the slopes facing the Alps, a great many loose fragments of primitive rock, some of them containing a thousand cubic yards, occur. These are strewed over the surface, at the height of two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the lake of Geneva. They no where stand higher, or are more numerous than opposite to the largest, and deepest valleys of the Alps. They have undoubtedly travelled across the line of these valleys, their composition proving clearly, the mountain ridges from which they came. We may hence infer, that at the period of their transfer from the Savoy Alps, the lake of Geneva did not exist, otherwise they must have remained at its bottom, instead of being found on its opposite boundary mountain. -Ure's Geology, p. 362.

In estimating the transporting power of water, it must not be forgotten, as already noticed, that a solid, when immersed in a fluid becomes lighter by the weight of the

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bulk of the fluid which it displaces. Thus, if a rock be twice as heavy, bulk for bulk, as water, then when immersed in that fluid, it loses just one half its weight. man may lift a stone under water with great ease, but if not aware of the above fact, he will be astonished to find that he cannot, with all his might, raise it above the surface.

There is no difficulty in conceiving that immense blocks of rock may be moved by water, since the weight lost by immersion, is in exact proportion to the bulk; and therefore if a little brook will move a pebble, by the same law, a great flood will transport a mountain. The blocks of granite found on the opposite side of the lake of Geneva, were probably carried there by the action of the deluge, after which the retiring waters scooped out the lake, and left both in the situation in which they are now found. Many of the plains on the north of Europe, exhibit on their surfaces, large blocks of granite, called boulders, with their sharp angles worn off, showing that they have been rolled from a distance. Their surfaces never exhibit the smoothness of sea-worn pebbles, nor do their forms show the ef fects of long-continued friction, like rocks which are found on the shores of the ocean, a proof that the catastrophe which forced them from their original situations was not of long continuance. Sir James Hall has even discovered the traces of such movements on rocks now in their original situations in the vicinity of Edinburgh. That district consists of hills and valleys, the surfaces of which are strewed with the wrecks of former rocks, which have been moved from their ancient positions by some mighty power. Channels, or furrows may be observed on the surfaces of solid rocks, across which these have been forced. The clay, covering the surfaces of these rocks, being removed, they are found to resemble a road along which many heavy bodies have been recently dragged, as if every heavy fragment had made a scratch of greater or less depth as it passed. These furrows are parallel to the general direction in which the diluvial current passed, as shown by the forms of the hills and valleys.

That the diluvial waters reached the summits of lofty mountains, is, evident from the boulder blocks of Mount Blanc, being thrown over on the high acclivities of Mount Jura. Professor Buckland says, that the Alps and Carpathians, as well as every other mountainous region which

he has visited, bear the same evidence of having been modified by the force of water, as do the hills of the lower regions.

Besides the evidence which the situations of rocky masses exhibit of a great flood, there are proofs of the same, to be found almost everywhere among the hills and valleys. Thus many hills have been formed by the removal of the earth, which forms the valley between them, circumstances proving that such valleys did not always exist, but that the strata forming the two hills were once continuous.

Suppose that on digging wells, on two hills separated by a valley, there should be found a bed of gravel ten feet thick, then a layer of clay, then a bed of chalk, &c., and that these formations should correspond exactly with each other, both in respect to kind, direction and thickness; then the inference would be unavoidable, that these strata once continued through the valley, and that both the hills and valley were formed by the removal of the earth from the latter, and that this must have been effected by a stream of water now existing, or by a great flood. But in the cases to which we refer no such streams exist, nor from appearances ever did exist, there being no sources of water by which they could be supplied.

No adequate cause can therefore be assigned for such an effect, except it be the Noachian deluge. The adjoining cut shows the two hills; the correspondence of the strata through each, and the wells by which they are pierced. Such examples, it is believed, are of very common occurrence, and would often be observed were due notice taken of the strata when digging wells on opposite

hills.

Immense beds of sand and water-worn pebbles are found deposited in places and situations which cannot be accounted for on any supposition, except that of a temporary and sweeping flood of waters.

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