shows that it must have done? Again I admit that by miracle upon miracle God could have brought all this to pass, but I prefer to believe that the order of events was of a different character, and that the flood was not universal as regards the globe, and that therefore there was not an absolute destruction of all terrestrial life outside the ark.

"When miracles are invoked in support of a purely arbitrary interpretation of Scripture, one which, moreover, involves no question of faith or morals, it is preferable to see first whether such an interpretation is not the result of a misapprehension of the text of Scripture." Supposing that we were to admit that if we take the literal sense of the expressions used in describing the flood, these signify universality; is it not a well-known fact that nothing is more common in the Hebrew writings than the use of hyperbolical language, the universal being used when it is not intended to particularize? To give one familiar instance taken from the very Book of Genesis, in the account of the great dearth in the days of Jacob, we read, "There was famine in all lands, and the famine was over all the face of the earth, and all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn." Such hyperbolical expressions are common throughout the Bible. But it has been. pointed out that a strict interpretation of the Hebrew words may actually point to the geographical limitation of the flood. In the narrative we find two words made use of in speaking of the earth-these are "eretz" and "Adamah "the former being indefinite, or capable of both the widest and most limited sense, being used to describe the globe as a whole, as well as having the same variety of significations as the word earth has in English. The second term, Adamah, has, on the contrary, a restricted meaning, and signifies, says Lenormant and other Hebraists, "the cultivated, inhabited earth, a district, a country." Lenormant translates it literally by "surface of the ground," the territory occupied by Adam, the Adamed ground. A somewhat striking example of the different use of the two words is found in Gen xlvii., where the word "eretz" means the country of Egypt or Goshen as a whole, whilst "Adamah" is used to describe the farms or lands of the people, the cultivated tracts kept by Adam or man. Earlier in Bible history we are told how Cain was banished from the "Adamah" to become a wanderer in the "eretz," passing out of the home where Adam dwelt into the wide world without.

Now, in the account of the flood, we read in the first verse, which speaks of its range, how God said, "Every living substance will I destroy from the face of the Adamah,'" the ground occupied by Adam or men, not from the "eretz" or entire globe. May we not, then, justly look upon this opening expression as defining and limiting the sense in which all the apparently universal terms are to be understood? But there is another passage at the close of the account which corroborates this view. When the flood had subsided, and God pronounced His blessing upon the restored races, that blessing was extended not only to the animals which came out of the ark, but to others which had never been within its shelter. God said,

"I establish my covenant with you, and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you, from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth." Why the authors of our Revision of the Old Testament have altered this text to "of all that go out of the ark, even every beast of the earth," so destroying the peculiar force of the original, is somewhat strange. The Vulgate reads, "in pecudibus terræ cunctis, quæ egressæ sunt de arca, et universis bestiis terræ." The animals which left the ark only represented a part of those in existence at the time.

Such, then, are some of the chief considerations which lead us to the abandonment of the theory that Noah's flood was universal, in the sense that by it the whole of the globe was overwhelmed by water, and all terrestrial existence destroyed, save the few individuals which were sheltered in the ark. It seems far more reasonable to interpret the account as descriptive of a catastrophe in which only a portion of the earth was involved. Many perhaps, as yet, most of those to whom this interpretation commends itself-regard the flood as partial in respect to its geographical area, whilst it was universal as regards man, the human family having, it is assumed, not as yet travelled to any great distance from its original cradle, the dispersion of races not beginning until after the flood.

It is clear that the great objections brought against an absolutely universal flood disappear when we adopt this theory of a flood which was universal only as regards man, a theory, however, which requires us to assume that mankind had spread but a comparatively short distance from their primeval home. But now the progress of scientific research has raised some further difficulties of no light character, difficulties apparently so great as to have led to the advancement of a third theory of the flood, viz., that it was not only limited geographically, but also in respect to the human family We must, then, look at these fresh difficulties, and the first which has to be faced is that at the date usually assigned to Noah's flood, and this we are told cannot be pushed back indefinitely, mankind were already dispersed over the greater part of the earth. That the great ethnological groups were in existence long before the time of Abraham is evident, as witnessed to by the monuments of ancient Egypt; and it is, therefore, argued that there would not have been time since the flood for the differentation of races from the three sons of Noah to have been brought about. The fact is that the origin of the types of man is lost in the darkness of prehistoric times, and since then those types have been unchanged; surroundings, climate, food, are powerless to explain the distinctive characters of the human races, which it is most reasonable to suppose were impressed when man was yet young upon the earth, and, as it were, taking shape, was, as Professor Sayce puts it, "plastic," a new creature brought for the first time under the influence of that natural world into which he was introduced, and the differences of races would thus be congenital, and originated before, not after the flood. Ethnologists have classified mankind under four great divisions-1, the

yellow; 2, the black, other yellow and Allophyllian whites; 3, the Semites; 4, the Aryans, the two latter divisions being regarded as descended from Noah, and they are the essentially white races; in this classification the Hamitic section is included amongst the Semites, and the Aryans are supposed to have sprung from Japhet.

Now, it is somewhat remarkable that whilst amongst the three great groups of mankind which are generally regarded as unquestionably sprung from Noah, the Aryan, the Semitic, and Hamitic, which are the essentially white races, the tradition of the flood is found to form an integral part of their traditions, amongst the black negro races it is totally absent; and if found in any form amongst the yellow and red races, it is present only as an importation brought in, according to Lenormant, at certain periods beyond which there are to be found no traces of it.1

A few centuries after the flood, took place that event known as the confusion of tongues at Babel, and it is from this event that the dispersion of mankind, and the origin of the various linguistic differences of speech have been generally regarded as having sprung; but can this have been the case, is this interpretation of that event correct? Is it not far more probable that the occurrence in the plains of Shinar was but an episode in the history of the race of Shem? and what is commonly spoken of as a confusion of tongues or languages, far more probably a confusion of wills, in other words, discord? The Hebrew word translated as language, or lip, signifies far more often in Scripture the sentiments which the lip or instrument of speech expresses. Gesenius in his Hebrew lexicon cites four instances in which the word is used for language, whereas the word occurs more than a hundred times where it is never so used. This passage of Scripture does not force us to see in it anything more than a disagreement amongst the members of a particular race leading to their dispersion. This is far more probable than that 400 years after the flood all the descendants of Noah should have been found assembled within the small Babylonian area to build a city-they would have required, it is well said, a multitude of cities. M. Halevy, the Orientalist, in his "Recherches Bibliques" adheres to the view that the Semites alone were concerned in the building of Babel, and notes the striking fact that this is actually indicated by the name Peleg, and the play on words "Schêm Schâmaim," the cry of the Semites.

It is again pointed out that if the event of Babel referred to the dispersion of all the sons of Noah, it would be out of its proper place in the narrative; for, after having shown the peoples dispersing, the writer should show whither they went. But nothing is said before this in Gen. x., which gives us the geographical distribution of the descendants of Noah. The Babel episode, coming as it does immediately after these details, falls into

2

1 Origines de l'histoire d'après la Bible, pp. 382-489, &c.

Mgr. de Harlez observes that the Septuagint translates ver. 7 rendered in our version "that they may not understand one another's speech" by iva μǹ ȧkoúowσi tǹv pwvǹv—that they may not listen to, hear so as to heed.

its proper position if it is, as thus supposed, an account of the dispersion of the Semites; it is the natural transition from general history to the history offthe Chosen Race. So, then, adopting this view, we have to trace back the differentiations of races and languages to an earlier period; and that that was antediluvian the following considerations, if established, tend to prove. Orientalists have, during late years, been enabled to throw a vast amount of light upon the ethnography of the races which are generally admitted to have sprung from the three sons of Noah; and in so doing the result of their researches has been to confirm, in a very striking manner, the wonderful accuracy of the Biblical account. But it is also maintained by Lenormant and others that these researches have brought into view the remarkable fact of the simultaneous existence of other races, which could not have originated with Noah, and which were already in occupation of the soil when his descendants entered their lands in the course of their migrations; the Noachidæ came into contact in every direction with peoples who were non-Aryan, non-Semitic, and presumably non-Hamitic. Also, it is to be observed that all these three divisions of mankind are members of the great white stock; they are the essentially white races. According to these facts, if established, the family of Noah gave rise to post-diluvian races, which, as they spread abroad, encountered members of older yellow and black and other races which had escaped the flood, and, mingling with them from time to time, gave rise to the various peoples of mixed origin which form so large a part of the world's population.

Professor Sayce, in his recently published Races of the Old Testament, shows that "the whole of the country between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf was originally occupied by tribes speaking agglutinative dialects." Their blood was akin to the yellow or Mongolian race. To it, he says, belonged Chedorlaomer of Elam; but Miss Edwards speaks of the early Turanians of Chaldæa as being driven out thence by Elamites under Chedorlaomer's predecessor, Kudur-nan-Khundi; if so, then we may suppose that the Elamites adopted the language of those whom they conquered. Professor Sayce tells us that Semitic nomad tribes from Arabia crossed the Euphrates into North-west Chaldæa at a very early period, and gradually established a monarchy of their own there about 2000 B.C., leaving Accad, in the southeast, in the hands of the alien race for a time. If we turn to Egypt, we learn that the race of Mizraim, the second son of Ham, did not find the Valley of the Nile unoccupied; a black race was already in possession, whilst these Hamites were of the white stock.

Turning to Palestine, we find that the Semites, when they entered it, found an earlier race established there. When the Semitic races-Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Israelites-invaded the land, they encountered peoples named in Scripture Raphaims, Zuzims or Zam-Zummims, Anakims, or Emims, the Avims, and the Horites or Cave-dwellers1 of Seir, and the powerful Amorite tribes. Professor Sayce supposes the peoples just named to have 1 Job xxx. 1, 3-8.

been Amorite clans; but these Amorites were members of the blonde, white race; whilst everything points to the presence of a dark race, which must at a yet earlier date have occupied the land. What that race actually was which preceded the Amorites we are unable to discover; but the fact remains, and seems to add another proof that survivors of the flood other than the sons of Noah existed.1

Turning to another part of the world, we find that when the Aryans entered India, after crossing Thibet, they there encountered a powerful Dravidian population2; whilst to the north the Aryans came into contact with Turanian and Altaic peoples-these latter being, it has been supposed, derived from an ancient intermingling of the white with the dark races.

The question, then, is, how are we to explain the presence of all these populations in the earth at the time when, as far as we can gather, the sons of Noah began their migrations. It is urged that the only possible explanation is that the flood did not involve the entire human race, but only certain portions of it.

Language again, it is said, helps to support this view. "The natural transition of language is from the monosyllabic or isolating to the agglutinating tongues, and from those to the inflectional; and according to their greater or less aptitude for civilization, the races of men pass more or less rapidly through these stages of speech." Now, all the languages spoken by races undoubtedly sprung from Noah are inflectional, whilst those spoken by those races which have been supposed on other grounds to have been prediluvian, and therefore non-Noachian, belong to the less advanced types.

We have now to notice another remarkable fact. Moses in his table of nations, given in the tenth chapter of Genesis, observes a strange silence as to certain races and peoples; the early inhabitants of Canaan find no place in his list, the yellow and black races are ignored; he could not have been unacquainted with the negroes with whom he must have come into close contact in Egypt, as he must also have done with respect to the Hittites, who during long ages played so prominent a part in the history of Egypt, and were of Mongolian blood. The silence of Moses was surely intentional and studied; of some of the races of man he may probably have been utterly ignorant, but if he passes over others in silence, may not the reasons have been that his great object was not to give us a complete ethnographical table, but to allocate to their respective districts the descendants of Noah only? The races which he omits were precisely those which appear to have been the oldest; they were not members of the white stock, their languages were

1 The Comte de Gobineau, in his Essai sur l'inegalité des races humaines, 1853, speaks of the above tribes as that mysterious population which appears to have been none other than the remnants of some of those black tribes which were the sole masters of Asia before the advent of the white Hamites.

2 On the banks of the Ganges and the Indus were Mongolian tribes who had themselves dispossessed, at a still earlier period, a black race, which they had driven into the fastnesses of the Deccan.-Abbé Ch. Robert.