value of the
remark,--meant to be at least of the nature of argument,--when we find
him saying that "a plain man sitting down to read the Scripture account
of the deluge would have no doubt of its universality." Perhaps not. But
it is at least equally certain, that plain men who set themselves to
deduce from Scripture the figure of the planet we inhabit had as little
doubt, until corrected by the geographer, that the earth was a great
plane,--not a sphere; that plain men who set themselves to acquire from
Scripture some notion of the planetary motions had no doubt, in the same
way, until corrected by the astronomer, that it was the earth that
rested, and the sun that moved round it; and that plain men who have
sought to determine from Scripture the age of the earth have had no
doubt, until corrected by the geologist, that it was at most not much
more than six thousand years old. In fine, when plain men, who,
according to Cowper, "know, and know no more, their Bible true," have in
perhaps every instance learned from it what it was in reality intended
to teach,--the way of salvation,--it seems scarce less certain, that in
every instance in which they have sought to deduce from it what it was
_not_ intended to teach,--the truths of physical science,--they have
fallen into extravagant error. And as any question which, bearing, not
on the punitory extent and ethical consequences of the Flood, but merely
on its geographic limits and natural effects, is not a moral, but a
purely physical question, it would be but a fair presumption, founded on
the almost invariable experience of ages, that the deductions from
Scripture of the "plain men" regarding it would be, not true, but false
deductions. Of apparently not more real weight and importance is the
doctor's further remark, that there seems, after all, to be a marked
difference between the terms in which the universality of the deluge is
spoken of, and the terms employed in those admittedly metonymic passages
in which the whole is substituted for a part. "What limitation," he
asks, "can we assign to such a phrase as this:--'all the high hills that
were UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVENS were covered?' If here the phrase had been,
'upon the face of the whole earth,' we should have been told that 'the
whole earth' had sometimes the meaning of 'the whole land;' but, as if
designedly to obviate such a limitation of meaning, we have here the
largest phrase of universality which the language of m