In the third edition of Kitto's Cyclopædia of Bibical 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 his generally orthodox tone, that he does not dissent from its conclusions. Again, the writers in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie (Bd. X, 1882) and in Riehm's Handwörterbuch (1884)—both works with a conservative leaning—are on the same side; and Diestel,[2] in his full discussion of the subject, remorselessly rejects the universality doctrine. Even that stanch opponent of scientific rationalism—may I say rationality?—Zöckler,[3] flinches from a distinct defense of the thesis, any opposition to which, well within my recollection, was howled down by the orthodox as mere "infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zöckler is able to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a particularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the end of the Glacial epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing; and which, if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about the fact of the deluge, would leave the details of his account as irreconciliable with the truths of elementary physical science as ever. Thus I may be permitted to spare myself and my readers the weariness of a recapitulation of the overwhelming arguments against the universality of the deluge, which they will now find for themselves stated, as fully and forcibly as could be wished, by Anglican and other theologians, whose orthodoxy and conservative tendencies have, hitherto, been above suspicion. Yet many fully admit (and, indeed, nothing can be plainer) that the Pentateuchal narrator means to convey that, as a matter of fact, the whole earth known to him was inundated; nor is it less obvious that unless all mankind, with the exception of Noah and his family, were actually destroyed, the references to the flood in the New Testament are unintelligible.
But I am quite aware that the strength of the demonstration that no universal deluge ever took place has produced a change of front in the army of apologetic writers. They have imagined that
