“The immortal gods, that tread the courts of heaven, First made a golden race of mortal men. Like gods they lived, with happy, careless souls, From toil and pain exempt; nor on them crept Wretched old age, but all their life was passed In feasting, and their limbs no changes knew. Nought evil came them nigh; and, when they died, ’Twas but as if they were o’ercome by sleep. All good things were their portion; the fat soil Bare them its fruit spontaneous, fruit ungrudged And plentiful; they, at their own sweet will, Pursued in peace the tasks that seemed them good, Laden with blessings, rich in flocks, and dear To the great gods.”—_Hesiod._ Such is the light that shines from the region where myth and history meet and wed. Can we go beyond this? There is no people, east or west, characterized by an uninterrupted _progress_ from barbarism to civilization. So the theory of time based upon such an idea is altogether without foundation. THE FLOOD VIEWED FROM A SCIENTIFIC AND BIBLICAL STANDPOINT. Unbelievers usually pass over the events of the flood with mockery. There is something about them that is only reconcilable with the mental condition of the man who says in his heart, “There is no God.” The old methods of their interpretation of the Scriptures have been abandoned in many particulars. This is the result of two things: first, progression in scientific knowledge; and, second, the Bible was always ahead of science in its scientific allusions. Now, it is known to scientists that there is, at the lowest calculation, forty-eight times more water in our seas and oceans than Keill was willing to allow when he made the objection that it would require the waters of twenty-eight oceans to give us Noah’s flood. The objection was, “there is not water enough.” Men seemed to think that the earth contained the water; that the water was standing in the earth. This was very natural, for people generally live upon the land. The Bible, however, presented a different idea, saying, the earth was “standing out of the water and in the water.” When the Scriptures speak upon this subject they refer to the waters just as a man would who never had any misgivings upon the subject of their sufficiency. Their teachings are in harmony with recent scientific discovery, and against old-fashioned unbelief. Before Galileo’s time men would have been regarded insane if they had asserted the gravity of the air, but the Bible contained the fact. It was laid away in Job 28: 25: “For he looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole heaven to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.” The force that is required annually in nature to give us the upper waters, to form the clouds, is estimated by Arago to be more than the labor of four hundred million of able bodied men, continued two hundred thousand years.—_Aunuaire du bur. des. longit._, 1835, p. 196.