Naturally all life was destroyed, with the exception of Noah and those who were with him in the Ark, consisting of his wife, his three sons and their wives, and pairs, male and female, of all beasts, fowls, and creeping things; or, as another account has it, seven pairs of clean beasts and of birds, and single pairs of unclean beasts and creeping things. The statement is absolutely specific: "All flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon earth, and every man." And again: "Every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both men and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven, and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the Ark." And finally, when the Ark was opened, "God spake unto Noah and said, Go forth of the Ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons and sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth." It is evident that such a narrative cannot be tortured into any reminiscence of a partial and local inundation. It might possibly be taken for a poetical exaggeration of some vague myth or tradition of a local flood, if it were found in the legends of some early races, or semi-civilized tribes. But such an interpretation is impossible when the narrative is taken, as orthodox believers take it, as a Divinely-inspired and literally true account contained in one of the most important chapters in the history of the relations of man to God. In this view it is a still more signal instance than the fall of Adam, of God's displeasure with sin and its disastrous consequences, of his justice and mercy in sparing the innocent and rewarding righteousness; it establishes a new departure for the human race, a new distinction between the chosen people of Israel and the accursed Canaanites, based not on Cain's murder of Abel, but on Ham's irreverence towards his father; and it introduces a covenant between God and Noah, which continued through Abraham and David, and became the basis of Jewish nationality and of the Christian dispensation. If in such a narrative there are manifest errors, the theory of Divine inspiration obviously breaks down, and the book which contains it must be amenable to the ordinary rules of historical criticism.