It is scarcely needful to speak of the physical means which God employed to produce this flood. The agencies which appear in the volcano and in the earthquake and which God holds imprisoned at no great depth below the earth’s surface, are all-sufficient for these results. We may suppose that they lifted the bed of the adjacent seas, upheaving their waters into the atmosphere to descend in torrents of rain, and sinking for the time the inhabited lands――and the work is done. Such alternate upheavals and depressions are, we may say, chronic to the crust of the earth. The ancient records of geology bear this testimony. It was not strange therefore but was merciful that God should allay human fears by his promise to drown the earth no more. His bow in the cloud, seen when the sun shone forth after the shower, became by God’s special appointment the sign and pledge of this covenant.――――I see no good reason to suppose that the rainbow never existed before. It must have existed by the laws of nature, unless those laws were greatly changed at the flood――a change which should not be assumed without sufficient reason. No such reasons are apparent. It is better therefore to construe the promise――The well known bow in the cloud I give and ordain to be my sign and pledge that the earth shall be deluged with water no more.――――Beautiful symbol, kindly and lovingly ordained; and as we look upon it, delighted with both its beauty and its significance, let it heighten our joy that God says of himself, “I will look upon it and remember my covenant.” * * * * * _Was this flood universal?_ 1. Was it universal _geographically_, overspreading the entire globe? 2. Was it universal as to all _living men_, leaving absolutely none alive on the face of all the earth, except those in the ark? 1. That the deluge was of limited extent geographically, and not universal, may be fairly assumed on the following grounds: (1.) The moral reasons for a deluge do not seem to require it to be universal, since obviously that corrupt generation whose sins demanded such a judgment did not overspread all the continents and lands of the globe, but appear to have been confined within a quite limited area in Western Asia.