s, that there has never been more of miracle
employed in any one of the dispensations than was needed,[31] I must
hold that the theologians who believe that the deluge was but
coextensive with the moral purpose which it served are more in the
right, and may be more safely followed, than the theologians who hold
that it extended greatly further than was necessary. It is not with
Moses or the truth of revelation that our controversy lies, but with the
opponents of Stillingfleet and of Poole.

To only one of the other arguments employed in this controversy need I
at all refer. The cones of volcanic craters are formed of loose
incoherent scoriae and ashes, and, when exposed, as in the case of
submarine volcanoes, such as Graham's Island and the islands of Nyoe and
Sabrina, to the denuding force of waves and currents, they have in a few
weeks, or at most a few months, been washed completely away. And yet in
various parts of the world, such as Auvergne in central France, and
along the flanks of Aetna, there are cones of long extinct or long
slumbering volcanoes, which, though of at least triple the antiquity of
the Noachian deluge, and though composed of the ordinary incoherent
materials, exhibit no marks of denudation. According to the calculations
of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastating flood could have passed over the
forest zone of Aetna during the last twelve thousand years,--for such is
the antiquity which he assigns to its older lateral cones, that retain
in integrity their original shape; and the volcanic cones of Auvergne,
which inclose in their ashes the remains of extinct animals, and present
an outline as perfect as those of Aetna, are deemed older still. Graham
Island arose out of the sea early in July, 1831; in the beginning of the
following August it had attained to a circumference of three miles, and
to a height of two hundred feet; and yet in less than three months from
that time the waves had washed its immense mass down to the sea level;
and in a few weeks more it existed but as a dangerous shoal. And such
inevitably would have been the fate of the equally incoherent cone-like
craters of Aetna and Auvergne during the seven and a half months that
intervened between the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep
and the reappearance of the mountain-tops, had they been included within
the area of the deluge. It is estimated that even the newer Auvergne
lavas are as old as the times of the Miocene. It is at lea