ect, remorselessly
rejects the universality doctrine. Even that staunch opponent of
scientific rationalism--may I say rationality?--Zockler [9] flinches
from a distinct defence of the thesis, any opposition to which,
well within my recollection, was howled down by the orthodox as mere
"infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zockler is able to do,
is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a particularly absurd attempt
at reconciliation, which would make out the Noachian Deluge to be
a catastrophe which occurred at the end of the Glacial Epoch. This
hypothesis involves only the trifle of a physical revolution of which
geology knows nothing; and which, if it secured the accuracy of the
Pentateuchal writer about the fact of the Deluge, would leave the
details of his account as irreconcilable with the truths of elementary
physical science as ever. Thus I may be permitted to spare myself and my
readers the weariness of a recapitulation of the overwhelming arguments
against the universality of the Deluge, which they will now find for
themselves stated, as fully and forcibly as could be wished, by Anglican
and other theologians, whose orthodoxy and conservative tendencies
have, hitherto, been above suspicion. Yet many fully admit (and, indeed,
nothing can be plainer) that, as a matter of fact, the whole earth known
to him was inundated; nor is it less obvious that unless all mankind,
with the exception of Noah and his family, were actually destroyed, the
references to the Flood in the New Testament are unintelligible.

But I am quite aware that the strength of the demonstration that no
universal Deluge ever took place has produced a change of front in the
army of apologetic writers. They have imagined that the substitution
of the adjective "partial" for "universal," will save the credit of the
Pentateuch, and permit them, after all, without too many blushes,
to declare that the progress of modern science only strengthens the
authority of Moses. Nowhere have I found the case of the advocates of
this method of escaping from the difficulties of the actual position
better put than in the lecture of Professor Diestel to which I have
referred. After frankly admitting that the old doctrine of universality
involves physical impossibilities, he continues:--

All these difficulties fall away as soon as we give up the
universality of the Deluge, and imagine a _partial_
flooding of the earth, say in western Asia. But hav