s occasion of judgment, as a florist does with
some decaying plant, which he cuts down to the ground in order to secure
a fresh shoot from the root. At all events, the _proof_ of an
antediluvian population at once enormously great and very largely spread
must rest with those who hold, with Dr. Kitto, that its numbers and
extent were such as to militate against the probability of a deluge
merely partial; and any such proof we may, with the good old Bishop of
Worcester, well "despair of ever seeing" produced. Even admitting,
however, for the argument's sake, that the inhabitants of the Old World
may have been as numerous as those of China are now,--a number estimated
by the recent authorities at more than three hundred and fifty
millions,--and the admission is certainly greatly larger than there is
argument enough on the other side to extort,--a comparatively partial
deluge would have been sufficient to secure their destruction. In short,
it may be fairly concluded, that if there be a show of reason against
the theory of a flood merely local, it has not yet been exhibited. Even
Dr. Kitto, with all his ingenuity and learning, has failed to array
against it arguments of any real weight or cogency; and in my next
address I may be perhaps able to show you that the objections which, on
the other hand, bear against the antagonist hypothesis, are at once
solid and numerous. I may be mistaken in my estimate; but for some years
past I have regarded them as altogether insurmountable.

LECTURE EIGHTH.

THE NOACHIAN DELUGE.

PART II.

A century has not yet gone by since all the organic remains on which the
science of Palaeontology is now founded were regarded as the wrecks of a
universal deluge, and held good in evidence that the waters had
prevailed in every known country, and risen over the highest hills.
Intelligent observers were not wanting at even an earlier time who
maintained that a temporary flood could not have occasioned phenomena so
extraordinary. Such was the view taken by several Italian naturalists of
the seventeenth century, and in Britain by the distinguished
mathematician Hooke, the contemporary, and in some matters rival, of
Newton. But the conclusions of these observers, now so generally
adopted, were regarded both in Popish and Protestant countries as but
little friendly to Revelation; and so strong was the opposite opinion,
and so generally were petrifactions regarded as so many proofs of a
universa