It had become notorious to the public, that Geologists rejected the idea of a universal deluge as physically impossible. Whence could the water come, to cover the highest mountains? Two replies were attempted: 1. The flood of Noah is not described as universal: 2. The flood was indeed universal, but the water was added and removed by miracle.--Neither reply however seemed to me valid. First, the language respecting the universality of the flood is as strong as any that could be written: moreover it is stated that the tops of the high hills _were all covered_, and after the water subsides, the ark settles on the mountains of Armenia. Now in Armenia, of necessity numerous peaks would be seen, unless the water covered them, and especially Ararat. But a flood that covered Ararat would overspread all the continents, and leave only a few summits above. If then the account in Genesis is to be received, the flood was universal. Secondly: the narrator represents the surplus water to have come from the clouds and perhaps from the sea, and again to drain back into the sea. Of a miraculous _creation and destruction_ of water, he evidently does not dream. Other impossibilities came forward: the insufficient dimensions of the ark to take in all the creatures; the unsuitability of the same climate to arctic and tropical animals for a full year; the impossibility of feeding them and avoiding pestilence; and especially, the total disagreement of the modern facts of the dispersion of animals, with the idea that they spread anew from Armenia as their centre. We have no right to call in a series of miracles to solve difficulties, of which the writer was unconscious. The ark itself was expressly devised to economize miracle, by making a fresh creation of animals needless. Different in kind was the objection which I felt to the story, which is told twice concerning Abraham and once concerning Isaac, of passing off a wife as a sister. Allowing that such a thing was barely not impossible, the improbability was so intense, as to demand the strictest and most cogent proof: yet when we asked, Who testifies it? no proof appeared that it was Moses; or, supposing it to be he, what his sources of knowledge were. And this led to the far wider remark, that nowhere in the book of Genesis is there a line to indicate who is the writer, or a sentence to imply that the writer believes himself to write by special information from God. Indeed, it is well known that were are numerous small phrases which denote a later hand than that of Moses. The kings of Israel are once alluded to historically, Gen. xxxvi. 31. Why then was anything improbable to be believed on the writer's word? as, for instance, the story of Babel and the confusion of tongues? One reply only seemed possible; namely, that we believe the Old Testament in obedience to the authority of the New: and this threw me again to consider the references to the Old Testament in the Christian Scriptures.