than merely passing notice.

Though it needs not such indirect confirmations to convince us of the truth of the narratives in the Bible, it

is very remarkable how all historical investigations, when really completed and rightly applied, confirm the

exactness of what is recorded in the Holy Scriptures. But their chief value to us must always be this, that

they tell us of that Ark which alone rides on the waters of the deluge, and preserves for ever safe them who

are "shut in" there by the hand of Jehovah.

In general we may say that we have two Chaldean accounts of the flood. The one comes to us through

Greek sources, from Berosus, a Chaldean priest in the third century before Christ, who translated into Greek

the records of Babylon. This, as the less clear, we need not here notice more particularly. But a great interest

attaches to the far earlier cuneiform inscriptions, first discovered and deciphered in 1872 by Mr. G. Smith, of

the British Museum, and since further investigated by the same scholar.21

These inscriptions cover twelve tablets, of which as yet only part has been made available. They may

broadly be described as embodying the Babylonian account of the flood, which, as the event took place in

that locality, has a special value. The narrative is supposed to date from two thousand to two thousand five

hundred years before Christ. The history of the flood is related by a hero, preserved through it, to a monarch

whom Mr. Smith calls Izdubar, but whom he supposes to have been the Nimrod of Scripture. There are, as

one might have expected, frequent differences between the Babylonian and the Biblical account of the flood.

On the other hand, there are striking points of agreement between them, which all the more confirm the

scriptural account, as showing that the event had become a distinct part of the history of the district in

which it had taken place. There are frequent references to Erech, the city mentioned in Genesis 10:10;

allusions to a race of giants, who are described in fabulous terms; a mention of Lamech, the father of Noah,

though under a different name, and of the patriarch himself as a sage, reverent and devout, who, when the

Deity resolved to destroy by a flood t he world for its sin, built the ark. Sometimes the language comes so

close to that of the Bible that one almost seems to read disjointed or distorted quotations from Scripture. We

mention, as instances, the scorn which the building of the ark is said to have called forth on the part of

contemporaries; the pitching of the ark without and within with pitch; the shutting of the door behind the

saved ones, the opening of the window, when the waters had abated; the going and returning of the dove

since "a restin g-place it did not find," the sending of the raven, which, feeding on corpses in the water, "did

not return;" and, finally, the building of an altar by Noah. We sum up the results of this discovery in the

words of Mr. Smith:

"Not to pursue this parallel further, it will be perceived that when the Chaldean account is compared with the

Biblical narrative, in their main features the two stories fairly agree; as to the wickedness of the antediluvian

world, the Divine anger and command to build the ark, its stocking with birds and beasts, the coming of the

deluge, the rain and storm, the ark resting on a mountain, trial being made by birds sent out to see if the

waters had subsided, and the building of an altar after the flood. All these main facts occur in the same order

in both narratives, but when we come to examine the details of these stages in the two accounts, there

appear numerous points of difference; as to the number of people who were saved, the duration of the

deluge, the place where the ark rested, t he order of sending out the birds, and other similar matters."  22

We conclude with another quotation from the same work, which will show how much of the primitive

knowledge of Divine things, though mixed with terrible corruptions, was preserved among men at this early

period: "It appears that at that remote age the Babylonians had a tradition of a flood which was a Divine

punishment for the wickedness of the world; and of a holy man, who built an ark, and escaped the

destruction; who was afterwards translated and dwelt with the gods. They believed in hell, a place of

torment under the earth, and heaven, a place of glory in the sky; and their description of the two has, in