cle, if an event of apparently the same kind would
not be regarded as miraculous now? May we not in this matter take our
stand beside the poet, who, when recognizing a Providence in the great
Calabrian earthquake, and in the overwhelming wave by which it was
accompanied, pertinently inquired of the skeptics,--

"Has not God
Still wrought by means since first he made the world?
_And did he not of old employ his means
To drown it?_ What is his creation less
Than a capacious reservoir of means,
Formed for his use, and ready at his will?"

The revelation to Noah, which warned him of a coming Flood, and taught
him how to prepare for it, was evidently miraculous: the Flood itself
may have been purely providential. But on this part of the subject I
need not dwell. I have accomplished my purpose if I have shown, as was
attempted of old by divines such as Stillingfleet and Poole, that there
"seems to be no reason why the Deluge should be extended beyond the
occasion of it, which was the corruption of man," but, on the contrary,
much reason against it; and that, on the other hand, a Flood restricted
and partial, and yet sufficient to destroy the race in an early age,
while still congregating in their original centre, cannot be regarded as
by any means an incredible event. The incredibility lies in the mere
human glosses and misinterpretations in which its history has been
enveloped. Divested of these, and viewed in its connection with those
wonderful traditions which still float all over the world regarding it,
it forms, not one of the stumbling-blocks, but one of the evidences, of
our faith; and renders the exercise a not unprofitable one, when,
according to the poet,--

"Back through the dusk
Of ages Contemplation turns her view,
To mark, as from its infancy, the world
Peopled again from that mysterious shrine
That rested on the top of Ararat."

LECTURE NINTH.

THE DISCOVERABLE AND THE REVEALED.

It seems natural, nay, inevitable, that false revelations, which have
descended from remote, unscientific ages, should be committed to a false
science. Natural phenomena, when of an extraordinary character,
powerfully impress the untutored mind. In operating, through the
curiosity or the fears of men, upon that instinct of humanity--never
wholly inactive in even the rudest state--which cannot witness any
remarkable effect without seeking to connect it with its producing
cause,