floating on the desolate waters that have buried earth and all that belonged to it,19 by attempting to describe

the scenes that must have ensued. Only the impression is left on our minds that the words "Jehovah shut

him in," may be intended to show that Noah, even if he would, could not have given help to his perishing

At the end of the one hundred and fifty days it is said, in the peculiarly touching language of Scripture,

"God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark." A drying

wind was made to pass over the earth, the flood "was restrained," "and the waters returned from the earth

continually." On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, that is, exactly five months after Noah had

entered it, the ark was found to be resting "upon the mountains of Ararat," - not necessarily upon either the

highest peak, which measures seventeen thousand two hundred and fifty feet, nor yet, perhaps, upon the

second highest, which rises to about twelve thousand feet, but upon that mountain range. Still the waters

decreased; and seventy-three days later, or on the first day of the tenth month, the mountain -tops all around

became visible.

Forty days more, and Noah "sent forth a raven," which, finding shelter on the mountain -tops, and food from

the floating carcasses, did not return into the ark. At the end of seven days more "he sent forth a dove from

him to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground," that is, from the low ground in the

valleys. "But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark." Yet

another week, and he sent her forth a second time, when she returned again in the evening, bearing in her

mouth an olive-leaf. It is a remarkable fact, as bearing indirect testimony to this narrative, that the olive has

been ascertained to bear leaves under water. A t hird time Noah put forth the messenger of peace, at the end

of another week, and she "returned not again unto him any more."

"No picture in natural history," says the writer already quoted, "was ever drawn with more exquisite beauty

and fidelity than this. It is admirable alike for its poetry and its truth." On the first day of the first month, in

the sixth hundredth and first year, "the waters were dried up from off the earth; and Noah removed the

covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on

the twenty-seventh day of the month, was the earth dried," - just one year and ten days after Noah had

entered the ark.

Thus far the scriptural narrative. It has so often been explained that the object of the Bible is to give us the

history of the kingdom of God, not to treat of curious or even scientific questions, that we can dismiss a

matter too often discussed of late in an entirely unbecoming spirit, in these words of a recent writer:20 "It is a

question among theologians and men of science whether the flood was absolutely universal, or whether it

was universal only in the sense of extending over all the part of the world then inhabited. We do not here

enter into this controversy; but we may notice the remarkable fact that the district lying to the east of Ararat,

where the ark rested, bears traces of having at one time been under water. It is a peculiarly depressed region,

lying lower than the districts around, and thus affording peculiar facilities for such a submersion."

But there is another matter connected with the flood so marked and striking as to claim our special attention.

It is that the remembrance of the flood has been preserved in the traditions of so many nations, so widely

separated and so independent of each other, that it is impossible to doubt that they have all been derived

from one and the same original source. As might be expected, they contain many legendary details, and they

generally fix the locality of the flood in their own lands; b ut these very particulars mark them as corruptions

of the real history recorded in the Bible, and carried by the different nations into the various countries where

they settled. Mr. Perowne has grouped these traditions into those of Western Asia, including the Chaldean,

the Phenician, that of the so-called "Sibylline Oracles," the Phrygian, the Syrian, and the Armenian stories;

then those of Eastern Asia, including the Persian, Indian, and Chinese; and, thirdly, those of the American

nations - the Cherokee, and the various tribes of Mexican Indians, with which - strange though it may seem -

he groups those of the Fiji Islands. To these he adds, as a fourth cycle, the similar traditions of the Greek