The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science | Page 8

even so small a public as the members of that
body. Our veteran leader lighted up once more; and, referring to the
difficulties which beset his early efforts to create a rational science of
geology, spoke, with his wonted clearness and vigour, of the social
ostracism which pursued him after the publication of the "Principles of
Geology," in 1830, on account of the obvious tendency of that noble
work to discredit the Pentateuchal accounts of the Creation and the
Deluge. If my younger contemporaries find this hard to believe, I may
refer them to a grave book, "On the Doctrine of the Deluge," published
eight years later, and dedicated by its author to his father, the then
Archbishop of York. The first chapter refers to the treatment of the
"Mosaic Deluge," by Dr. Buckland and Mr. Lyell, in the following
terms:
Their respect for revealed religion has prevented them from
arraying themselves openly against the Scriptural account of it --much
less do they deny its truth--but they are in a great hurry to escape from
the consideration of it, and evidently concur in the opinion of Linnaeus,
that no proofs whatever of the Deluge are to be discovered in the
structure of the earth (p. 1).
And after an attempt to reply to some of Lyell's arguments, which it
would be cruel to reproduce, the writer continues:--
When, therefore, upon such slender grounds, it is determined,
in answer to those who insist upon its universality, that the Mosaic
Deluge must be considered a preternatural event, far beyond the reach
of philosophical inquiry; not only as to the causes employed to produce
it, but as to the effects most likely to result from it; that determination
wears an aspect of scepticism, which, however much soever it may be
unintentional in the mind of the writer, yet cannot but produce an evil
impression on those who are already predisposed to carp and cavil at
the evidences of Revelation (pp. 8-9).
The kindly and courteous writer of these curious passages is evidently
unwilling to make the geologists the victims of general opprobrium by
pressing the obvious consequences of their teaching home. One is
therefore pained to think of the feelings with which, if he lived so long
as to become acquainted with the "Dictionary of the Bible," he must
have perused the article "Noah," written by a dignitary of the Church
for that standard compendium and published in 1863. For the doctrine

of the universality of the Deluge is therein altogether given up; and I
permit myself to hope that a long criticism of the story from the point
of view of natural science, with which, at the request of the learned
theologian who wrote it, I supplied him, may, in some degree, have
contributed towards this happy result.
Notwithstanding diligent search, I have been unable to discover that the
universality of the Deluge has any defender left, at least among those
who have so far mastered the rudiments of natural knowledge as to be
able to appreciate the weight of evidence against it. For example, when
I turned to the "Speaker's Bible," published under the sanction of high
Anglican authority, I found the following judicial and judicious
deliverance, the skilful wording of which may adorn, but does not hide,
the completeness of the surrender of the old teaching:--
Without pronouncing too hastily on any fair inferences from
the words of Scripture, we may reasonably say that their most natural
interpretation is, that the whole race of man had become grievously
corrupted since the faithful had intermingled with the ungodly; that the
inhabited world was consequently filled with violence, and that God
had decreed to destroy all mankind except one single family; that,
therefore, all that portion of the earth, perhaps as yet a very small
portion, into which mankind had spread was overwhelmed with water.
The ark was ordained to save one faithful family; and lest that family,
on the subsidence of the waters, should find the whole country round
them a desert, a pair of all the beasts of the land and of the fowls of the
air were preserved along with them, and along with them went forth to
replenish the now desolated continent. The words of Scripture
(confirmed as they are by universal tradition) appear at least to mean as
much as this. They do not necessarily mean more.<7>
In the third edition of Kitto's "Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature"
(1876), the article "Deluge," written by my friend, the present
distinguished head of the Geological Survey of Great Britain,
extinguishes the universality doctrine as thoroughly as might be
expected from its authorship; and, since the writer of the article "Noah"
refers his readers to that entitled "Deluge," it is to be supposed,
notwithstanding