CONVERSATION VII.

AFTER reading in order the history of the deluge, Olympas thus began:

Olympas. We are now come to the end of one world and the commencement of another. What, Thomas, were the causes that ushered in this awful catastrophe ?

Thomas. Murder, violence, and rapine seem to have completed the measure of human enormities. Moses says, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."-"The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." "For all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth; and God said, The end of all flesh is come before me for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy them with the earth."

Olympas. God our Father, then, intended more than the destruction of the human race and the living creatures on the earth. He said he would destroy them with the earth. Tell me, Susan, with what element did God destroy the earth with its inhabitants?

Susan. With water.

Olympas. Whence did the waters come, William ?

William. From the windows of heaven, and from the fountains of the great deep.

Olympas. How long did it rain, James?
James. "Forty days and forty nights."

Olympas. How do you, Reuben, understand "the windows of heaven" and "the fountains of the great deep?"

Reuben. The clouds may be called the windows of heaven, because the waters that float in the air, are poured through the clouds on the earth; and the subterraneous oceans may be called the fountains of the great deep, because they supply the lakes and seas with water.

Olympas. If the quantity of water in the earth be at all proportioned to the quantity on its surface, it only required an impulse from the almighty hand to overflow the earth, to submerge every mountain and hill to the depth of the tallest pines on their loftiest summits. But in doing this there must have been a tremendous disruption of the earth, the heaving up of new mountains, and the sinking down of immense areas of the ancient surface; so that while the waters of the great deep made for themselves new channels, their ancient beds were filled up with dilapidated masses of the primitive soil, and thus the earth itself, with its wicked inhabitants, was literally wasted and destroyed. Are there yet existing any monuments of this ancient deluge?

Reuben. I have read in the history of the Greeks and Western Nations accounts of the flood; and ‘of the tradition of the Chinese, the Africans, and Americans, concerning a deluge which left at great distance from the present seas, and on the summits of lofty mountains, trees deeply imbedded in the soil; with the teeth and bones of numerous

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land animals; as well as entire fish, sea shells, petrified fruits, ears of corn, and various vegetable remains of a former world. Sir William Jones, as I read the other day in his Indian Researches, has also added other monuments from the mythological traditions of those ancient nations, evidently deduced from Moses', or other ancient records of the same catastrophe long since lost.

Olympas. Philosophers, geologists, historians, religionists of every name, are constrained to admit one deluge at least. Some, indeed, arbitrarily deny universality; but all admit its generality. How do you prove, Thomas Dilworth, its universality?

Thomas. Moses says, "The waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits and upwards did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered."

Olympas. That is enough for those who take the word of the Lord for proof. Was the destruction of life also universal? I mean, of course,

terrestrial life.

Thomas. The same author says, "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle, and of beasts, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.'

Olympas. Definite enough. But, Susan, did the whole human race perish?

Susan. All but Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, with their wives. In all eight persons.

Olympas. How, James, were these eight persons saved?

James. In an ark which Noah built.

Olympas. What were its dimensions, William ? William. Three hundred cubits by fifty; or, as you once computed it for us, five hundred feet long, seventy-five wide, and forty-five high.

Olympas. How many tons would it carry?

William. Forty-two thousand and five hundred tons-equal to eighty-five ships of five hundred tons burthen.

Olympas. Yes, and our most accomplished mathematical calculators say, that no vessel could have been more rationally and scientifically arranged and constructed, than was this immense ship, for the purpose of carrying a large freight without sailing far from the place of its construction. How long was it in being reared?

William. One hundred and twenty years. Olympas. Of what sort of timber constructed, James?

James. Of gopher wood, covered over with pitch. Olympas. But did I not teach you that gopher probably meant square timber, and that there was much reason to believe that the ark was built of cedar or of cypress, because these growths abound in Asia, and might have been called gopher, because they put out quadrangular branches in the same horizontal line. Thomas, how many quadrupeds do you suppose were taken into the ark? Thomas. There were pairs of all sorts; but of the clean there were seven pairs.

Olympas. The difference between clean and unclean is, then, older than the flood. But are we, Thomas, to understand clean and unclean as referring to food or to sacrifice?

Thomas. To sacrifice, as it is evident that sacrifice was practised before the flood; but the eating of flesh began afterwards.

Olympas. How many sorts of clean animals, William ?

William. Five-the calf, the sheep, the goat, the turtle dove, and the pigeon. You said that Abraham offered all these on one altar, and that God ever after selected them for sacrifices.

Olympas. In the ark, then, there were how many quadrupeds?

Thomas. According to Buffon there are only some two hundred and fifty species, which would make only some five hundred and fifty in all, clean and unclean.

Olympas. But did I not show on a former occasion that this number was by far too small-that from more recent and accurate details we might set down more than one thousand species of mammallia, (animals that nourish their young by breasts;) of birds, five thousand species; and of reptiles, insects, &c. one hundred thousand. Now, putting down the quadrupeds at one hundred Ibs. each, large and small, this gives only one hundred tons weight; the birds, five lbs. each, would give seventy-five tons; and all other terrestrial creatures would not yield over fifty tons more. In all animated nature, as known to man, taking of each one pair, the weight would not exceed two hundred and twenty-five tons. But to

be safe; double the amount, and say we have four hundred and fifty tons; can any one then doubt the capacity of a vessel of forty-two thousand five hundred tons, to stow away the live stock of the