This term appears to have had an honourable origin, being of the
same import as _Theists_, designating those who believe in the existence
of a supreme intelligent cause, in opposition to the Epicureans, and
other Atheistical philosophers. The name, in modern times, is said to
have been first assumed about the middle of the sixteenth century, by
some persons on the continent, in order to avoid the imputation of
Atheism. Peter Viret, a divine of that century, mentions it as a new
name assumed by those who rejected Christianity. Lord Edw. Herbert,
baron of Cherbury, in the seventeenth century, has been regarded as the
first Deistical writer in this country, or at least, the first who
reduced Deism to a system; affirming the sufficiency of reason and
natural religion, and rejecting divine revelation as unnecessary and
superfluous. His system, however, embraced these five articles:--1. The
being of God. 2. That he is to be worshipped. 3. That piety and moral
virtue are the chief parts of worship. 4. That God will pardon our
faults on repentance. And, 5. That there is a future state of rewards
and punishment. Some have divided all Deists into two classes--those who
admit a future state, and those who deny it. But Dr. S. Clarke, taking
the term in the most extensive sense, arranges them under four
classes:--1. Those who admit a Supreme Being, but deny that he concerns
himself with the conduct or affairs of men; maintaining, with Lucretius,
that God
“Ne’er smiles at good, nor frowns at wicked, deeds.”
2. Those who admit not only the being but the providence of God, with
respect to the natural world; but who allow no difference between moral
good and evil, nor that God takes any notice of our moral conduct. 3.
Such as believe in the natural attributes of God, and his all-governing
providence; yet deny the immortality of the soul, or any future state.
4. Such as admit the existence of God, his providence, and the
obligations of natural religion; but so far only as these things are
discoverable by the light of nature, without any divine revelation. Some
of the Deists have attempted to overthrow the Christian dispensation, by
opposing to it what they call the absolute perfection of natural
religion. Others, as Blount, Collins, and Morgan, have endeavoured to
gain the same purpose, by attacking particular parts of the Christian
scheme, by explaining away the literal sense and meaning of certain
passages, or by placing one portion of the sacred canon in opposition to
the other. A third class, wherein we meet with the names of Shaftesbury
and Bolingbroke, advancing farther in their progress, expunge from their
creed the doctrine of future existence, deny or controvert all the moral
perfections of the Deity, and wholly reject the Scriptures.
The Deists of the present day are distinguished by their zealous efforts
to diffuse the principles of infidelity among the common people. Hume,
Bolingbroke, and Gibbon, addressed themselves solely to the more
polished classes of the community; but of late the writings of Paine,
Carlile, and others, have diffused infidelity among the lower orders of
society, and clothed it in the dress of vulgar ridicule, the more
effectually to destroy in the common people all reverence for sacred
things. Among the disciples of this school, Deism has led to the most
disgusting Atheism. Thus “evil men and seducers wax worse and worse.”
DELUGE signifies, in general, any great inundation; but more
particularly that universal flood by which the whole inhabitants of this
globe were destroyed, except Noah and his family. According to the most
approved systems of chronology, this remarkable event happened in the
year 1656 after the creation, or about 2348 before the Christian æra. Of
so general a calamity, from which only a single family of all who lived
then on the face of the earth was preserved, we might naturally expect
to find some memorials in the traditionary records of Pagan history, as
well as in the sacred volume, where its peculiar cause, and the
circumstances which attended it, are so distinctly and so fully related.
Its magnitude and singularity could scarcely fail to make an indelible
impression on the minds of the survivors, which would be communicated
from them to their children, and would not be easily effaced from the
traditions even of their latest posterity. A deficiency in such traces
of this awful event, though perhaps it might not serve entirely to
invalidate our belief of its reality, would certainly tend considerably
to weaken its claim to credibility; it being scarcely probable that the
knowledge of it should be utterly lost to the rest of the world, and
confined to the documents of the Jewish nation alone. What we might
reasonably expect has, accordingly, been actually and completely
realized. The evidence which has been brought from almost every quarter
of the world to bear upon the reality of this event, is of the most
conclusive and irresistible kind; and every investigation, whether
etymological or historical, which has been made concerning Heathen rites
and traditions, has constantly added to its force, no less than to its
extent.
And here, it were injustice to the memory of ingenuity and erudition
almost unexampled in modern times, were we not to mention the labours of
Bryant, the learned analysist of ancient mythology, whose patience and
profoundness of research have thrown such new and convincing light on
this subject. Nor must we forget his ardent and successful disciple, Mr.
Faber, who, in his “Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri,” has in
travelling over similar ground with his illustrious master at once
corrected some of his statements, and greatly strengthened his general
conclusions. As the basis of their system, however, rests on a most
extensive etymological examination of the names of the deities and other
mythological personages worshipped and celebrated by the Heathen,
compared with the varied traditions respecting their histories, and the
nature of the rites and names of the places that were sacred to them, we
cannot do more, in the present article, than shortly state the result of
their investigations, referring for the particular details, to the
highly original treatises already mentioned. According to them, the
memory of the deluge was incorporated with almost every part of the
Gentile mythology and worship; Noah, under a vast multitude of
characters, being one of their first deities, to whom all the nations of
the Heathen world looked up as their founder; and to some circumstance
or other in whose history, and that of his sons and the first
patriarchs, most, if not all, of their religious ceremonies may be
considered as not indistinctly referring. Traces of these, neither vague
nor obscure, they conceive to be found in the history and character, not
only of Deucalion, but of Atlas, Cronus, or Saturn, Dionusos, Inachus,
Janus, Minos, Zeus, and others among the Greeks; of Isis, Osiris,
Sesostris, Oannes, Typhon, &c, among the Egyptians; of Dagon, Agruerus,
Sydyk, &c, among the Phenicians; of Astarte, Derceto, &c, among the
Assyrians; of Buddha, Menu, Vishnu, &c, among the Hindus; of Fohi, and a
deity represented as sitting upon the lotos in the midst of waters,
among the Chinese; of Budo and Iakusi among the Japanese, &c. They
discover allusions to the ark, in many of the ancient mysteries, and
traditions with respect to the dove and the rainbow, by which several of
these allegorical personages were attended, which are not easily
explicable, unless they be supposed to relate to the history of the
deluge. By the celebrated Ogdoas of the Egyptians, consisting of eight
persons sailing together in the sacred _baris_ or ark, they imagine the
family of Noah, which was precisely eight in number, to have been
designated; and in the rites of Adonis or Thammuz, in particular, they
point out many circumstances which seem to possess a distinct reference
to the events recorded in the sixth and seventh chapters of Genesis.
With regard to this system, we shall only farther observe, that, after
every reasonable deduction is made from it, which the exuberant
indulgence of fancy occasionally exhibited by its authors appears to
render necessary, it contains so much that is relevant and conclusive,
that it induces the conviction that it has a solid foundation in truth
and fact; it being scarcely possible to conceive, that a mere hypothesis
could be supported by evidence so varied, so extensive, and in many
particulars so demonstrative, as that which its framers have produced.
Beside, however, the allusions to the deluge in the mythology and
religious ceremonies of the Heathen, to which we have thus concisely
adverted, there is a variety of traditions concerning it still more
direct and circumstantial, the coincidence of which, with the narrative
of Moses, it will require no common degree of skeptical hardihood to
deny. We are informed by one of the circumnavigators of the world, who
visited the remote island of Otaheite, that some of the inhabitants
being asked concerning their origin, answered, that their supreme God
having, a long time ago, been angry, dragged the earth through the sea,
when their island was broken off and preserved. In the island of Cuba,
the people are said to believe that the world was once destroyed by
water by three persons, evidently alluding to the three sons of Noah. It
is even related, that they have a tradition among them, that an old man,
knowing that the deluge was approaching, built a large ship, and went
into it with a great number of animals; and that he sent out from the
ship a crow, which did not immediately come back, staying to feed on the
carcasses of dead animals, but afterward returned with a green branch in
its mouth. The author who gives the above account likewise affirms that
it was reported by the inhabitants of Castella del Oro, in Terra Firma,
that during a universal deluge, one man, and his children, were the only
persons who escaped, by means of a canoe, and that from them the world
was afterward peopled. According to the Peruvians, in consequence of a
general inundation, occasioned by violent and continued rains, a
universal destruction of the human species took place, a few persons
only excepted, who escaped into caves on the tops of the mountains, into
which they had previously conveyed a stock of provisions, and a number
of live animals, lest when the waters abated, the whole race should have
become extinct. Others of them affirm, that only six persons were saved,
by means of a float or raft, and that from them all the inhabitants of
the country are descended. They farther believe, that this event took
place before there were any _incas_ or kings among them, and when the
country was extremely populous. The Brazilians not only preserve the
tradition of a deluge, but believe that the whole race of mankind
perished in it, except one man and his sister; or, according to others,
two brothers with their wives, who were preserved by climbing the
highest trees on their loftiest mountains; and who afterward became the
heads of two different nations. The memory of this event they are even
said to celebrate in some of their religious anthems or songs. Acosta,
in his history of the Indies, says, that the Mexicans speak of a deluge
in their country, by which all men were drowned; and that it was
afterward peopled by _viracocha_, who came out of the lake Titicaca;
and, according to Herrera, the Machoachans, a people comparatively in
the neighbourhood of Mexico, had a tradition, that a single family was
formerly preserved in an ark amid a deluge of waters; and that along
with them, a sufficient number of animals were saved to stock the new
world. During the time that they were shut up in the ark, several ravens
were sent out, one of which brought back the branch of a tree. Among the
Iroquois it is reported that a certain spirit, called by them Otkon, was
the creator of the world; and that another being, called Messou,
repaired it after a deluge, which happened in consequence of Otkon’s
dogs having one day while he was hunting with them lost themselves in a
great lake, which, in consequence of this, overflowed its banks, and in
a short time covered the whole earth.
Passing from the more remote western to the eastern continent, nearer to
the region where Noah is generally supposed to have lived, we find the
traditions respecting the deluge still more particular and minute.
According to Josephus, there were a multitude of ancient authors who
concurred in asserting that the world had once been destroyed by a
flood: “This deluge,” says he, “and the ark are mentioned by all who
have written barbaric histories, one of whom is Berosus the Chaldean.”
Eusebius informs us, that Melo, a bitter enemy of the Jews, and whose
testimony is on this account peculiarly valuable, takes notice of the
person who was saved along with his sons from the flood, having been,
after his preservation, driven away from Armenia, whence he retired to
the mountainous parts of Syria. Abydenus, after giving an account of the
deluge from which Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah, was saved, concludes
with asserting, in exact concurrence with Berosus, that the ark first
rested on the mountains of Armenia, and that its remains were used by
the natives as a talisman; and Plutarch mentions the Noachic dove being
sent out of the ark, and returning to it again, as an intimation to
Deucalion that the storm had not yet ceased.
This, however, is by no means all: Sir W. Jones, speaking of one of the
Chinese fables, says, “Although I cannot insist with confidence, that
the rainbow mentioned in it alludes to the Mosaic narrative of the
flood, nor build any solid argument on the divine person _Niuva_, of
whose character, and even of whose sex the historians of China speak
very doubtfully; I may nevertheless assure you, after full inquiry and
consideration, that the Chinese believe the earth to have been wholly
covered with water, which, in works of undisputed authenticity, they
describe as flowing abundantly, then subsiding, and separating the
higher from the lower age of mankind.” Still more coincident even than
this with the Mosaic account, is the Grecian history of the deluge, as
preserved by Lucian, a native of Samosata on the Euphrates; and its
authority is the more incontrovertible, on account of his being an
avowed derider of all religions. The antediluvians, according to him,
had gradually become so hardened and profligate, as to be guilty of
every species of injustice. They paid no regard to the obligation of
oaths; were insolent, inhospitable, and unmerciful. For this reason they
were visited with an awful calamity. Suddenly the earth poured forth a
vast quantity of water, the rain descended in torrents, the rivers
overflowed their banks, and the sea rose to a prodigious height, so that
“all things became water,” and all men were destroyed except Deucalion.
He alone, for the sake of his prudence and piety, was reserved to a
second generation. In obedience to a divine nomination, he entered, with
his sons and their wives, into a large ark, which they had built for
their preservation; and immediately swine, and horses, and lions, and
serpents, and all other animals which live on earth, came to him by
pairs, and were admitted by him into the ark. There they became
perfectly mild and innoxious, their natures being changed by the gods,
who created such a friendship between them, that they all sailed
peaceably together, so long as the waters prevailed over the surface of
the globe.
Scarcely less remarkable is the Hindoo tradition. It is contained in the
ancient poem of the _Bhavagat_; and forms the subject of the first
Purana, entitled _Matsya_, or “The Fish.” The following is Sir William
Jones’s abridgment of it; and the identity of the event which it
describes, with that of the Hebrew historian, is too obvious to require
any particular illustration: “The demon Hayagriva, having purloined the
Vedas from the custody of Brahma, while he was reposing at the close of
the sixth Manwantara, the whole race of men became corrupt, except the
seven Rishis, and Satyavrata, who then reigned in Dravira, a maritime
region to the south of Carnata. This prince was performing his ablutions
in the river Critimala, when Vishnu appeared to him in the shape of a
small fish, and after several augmentations of bulk in different waters,
was placed by Satyavrata in the ocean, where he thus addressed his
amazed votary: ‘In seven days all creatures who have offended me shall
be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be secured in a capacious
vessel miraculously formed; take therefore all kinds of medicinal herbs,
and esculent grain for food, and, together with the seven holy men, your
respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear:
then shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be
answered.’ Saying this, he disappeared; and after seven days the ocean
began to overflow the coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant
showers, when Satyavrata, meditating on the deity, saw a large vessel
moving on the waters. He entered it, having in all respects conformed to
the instructions of Vishnu; who in the form of a vast fish, suffered the
vessel to be tied with a great sea serpent, as with a cable, to his
measureless horn. When the deluge had ceased, Vishnu slew the demon, and
recovered the Vedas, instructed Satyavrata in divine knowledge, and
appointed him the seventh Menu, by the name of Vaivaswata.”
When we thus meet with some traditions of a deluge in almost every
country, though the persons saved from it are said, in those various
accounts to have resided in different districts widely separated from
each other, we are constrained to allow that such a general concurrence
of belief could never have originated merely from accident. While the
mind is in this situation, Scripture comes forward, and, presenting a
narrative more simple, better connected, and bearing an infinitely
greater resemblance to authentic history, than any of those mythological
accounts which occur in the traditions of Paganism, immediately flashes
the conviction upon the understanding, that this must be the true
history of those remarkable facts which other nations have handed down
to us, only through the medium of allegory and fable. By the evidence
adduced in this article, indeed, the moral certainty of the Mosaic
history of the flood appears to be established on a basis sufficiently
firm to bid defiance to the cavils of skepticism. “Let the ingenuity of
unbelief first account satisfactorily for this universal agreement of
the Pagan world; and she may then, with a greater degree of
plausibility, impeach the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the
deluge.” The fact, however, is not only preserved in the traditions of
all nations, as we have already seen; but after all the philosophical
arguments which were formerly urged against it, philosophy has at length
acknowledged that the present surface of the earth must have been
submerged under water. “Not only,” says Kirwan, “in every region of
Europe, but also of both the old and new continents, immense quantities
of marine shells, either dispersed or collected, have been discovered.”
This and several other facts seem to prove, that at least a great part
of the present earth was, before the last general convulsion to which it
has been subjected, the bed of an ocean which, at that time, was
withdrawn from it. Other facts seem also to prove with sufficient
evidence, that this was not a gradual retirement of the waters which
once covered the parts now inhabited by men; but a violent one, such as
may be supposed from the brief but emphatic relation of Moses. The
violent action of water has left its traces in various undisputed
phenomena. Stratified mountains of various heights exist in different
parts of Europe, and of both continents; in and between whose strata,
various substances of marine, and some vegetables of terrestrial,
origin, repose either in their natural state, or petrified. To
overspread the plains of the arctic circle with the shells of Indian
seas, and with the bodies of elephants and rhinoceri, surrounded by
masses of submarine vegetation; to accumulate on a single spot, as at La
Bolca, in promiscuous confusion, the marine productions of the four
quarters of the globe; what conceivable instrument would be efficacious
but the rush of mighty waters? These facts, about which there is no
dispute, and which are acknowledged by the advocates of each of the
prevailing geological theories, give a sufficient attestation to the
deluge of Noah, in which “the fountains of the great deep were broken
up,” and from which precisely such phenomena might be expected to
follow. To this may be added, though less decisive in proof, yet
certainly strong as presumptive evidence, that the very aspect of the
earth’s surface exhibits interesting marks both of the violent action,
and the rapid subsidence, of waters; as well as affords a most
interesting instance of the divine goodness in converting what was ruin
itself into utility and beauty. The great frame-work of the varied
surface of the habitable earth was probably laid by a more powerful
agency than that of water; either when on the third day the waters under
the heavens were gathered into one place, and the crust of the primitive
earth was broken down to receive them, so that “the dry land might
appear;” by those mighty convulsions which appear to have accompanied
the general deluge; but the rounding, so to speak, of what was rugged,
where the substance was yielding, and the graceful undulations of hill
and dale which so frequently present themselves, were probably effected
by the retiring waters. The flood has passed away; but the soils which
it deposited remain; and the valleys through which its last streams were
drawn off to the ocean, with many an eddy and sinuous course, still
exist, exhibiting visible proofs of its agency, and impressed with forms
so adapted to the benefit of man, and often so gratifying to the finest
taste, that, when the flood “turned,” it may be said to have “left a
blessing behind it.”
The objections once made to the _fact_ of a general deluge have, indeed,
been greatly weakened by the progress of philosophical knowledge; and
may be regarded as nearly given up, like the former notion of the high
antiquity of the race of men, founded on the Chinese and Egyptian
chronologies and pretended histories. Philosophy has even at last found
out that there is sufficient water in the ocean, if called forth, to
overflow the highest mountains to the height given by Moses,--a
conclusion which it once stoutly denied. Keill formerly computed that
twenty-eight oceans would be necessary for that purpose; but we are now
informed “that a farther progress in mathematical and physical knowledge
has shown the different seas and oceans to contain, at least,
forty-eight times more water than they were then supposed to do; and
that the mere raising of the temperature of the whole body of the ocean
to a degree no greater than marine animals live in, in the shallow seas
between the tropics, would so expand it as more than to produce the
height above the mountains stated in the Mosaic account.” As to the
deluge of Noah, therefore, infidelity has almost entirely lost the aid
of philosophy in framing objections to the Scriptures.
same import as _Theists_, designating those who believe in the existence
of a supreme intelligent cause, in opposition to the Epicureans, and
other Atheistical philosophers. The name, in modern times, is said to
have been first assumed about the middle of the sixteenth century, by
some persons on the continent, in order to avoid the imputation of
Atheism. Peter Viret, a divine of that century, mentions it as a new
name assumed by those who rejected Christianity. Lord Edw. Herbert,
baron of Cherbury, in the seventeenth century, has been regarded as the
first Deistical writer in this country, or at least, the first who
reduced Deism to a system; affirming the sufficiency of reason and
natural religion, and rejecting divine revelation as unnecessary and
superfluous. His system, however, embraced these five articles:--1. The
being of God. 2. That he is to be worshipped. 3. That piety and moral
virtue are the chief parts of worship. 4. That God will pardon our
faults on repentance. And, 5. That there is a future state of rewards
and punishment. Some have divided all Deists into two classes--those who
admit a future state, and those who deny it. But Dr. S. Clarke, taking
the term in the most extensive sense, arranges them under four
classes:--1. Those who admit a Supreme Being, but deny that he concerns
himself with the conduct or affairs of men; maintaining, with Lucretius,
that God
“Ne’er smiles at good, nor frowns at wicked, deeds.”
2. Those who admit not only the being but the providence of God, with
respect to the natural world; but who allow no difference between moral
good and evil, nor that God takes any notice of our moral conduct. 3.
Such as believe in the natural attributes of God, and his all-governing
providence; yet deny the immortality of the soul, or any future state.
4. Such as admit the existence of God, his providence, and the
obligations of natural religion; but so far only as these things are
discoverable by the light of nature, without any divine revelation. Some
of the Deists have attempted to overthrow the Christian dispensation, by
opposing to it what they call the absolute perfection of natural
religion. Others, as Blount, Collins, and Morgan, have endeavoured to
gain the same purpose, by attacking particular parts of the Christian
scheme, by explaining away the literal sense and meaning of certain
passages, or by placing one portion of the sacred canon in opposition to
the other. A third class, wherein we meet with the names of Shaftesbury
and Bolingbroke, advancing farther in their progress, expunge from their
creed the doctrine of future existence, deny or controvert all the moral
perfections of the Deity, and wholly reject the Scriptures.
The Deists of the present day are distinguished by their zealous efforts
to diffuse the principles of infidelity among the common people. Hume,
Bolingbroke, and Gibbon, addressed themselves solely to the more
polished classes of the community; but of late the writings of Paine,
Carlile, and others, have diffused infidelity among the lower orders of
society, and clothed it in the dress of vulgar ridicule, the more
effectually to destroy in the common people all reverence for sacred
things. Among the disciples of this school, Deism has led to the most
disgusting Atheism. Thus “evil men and seducers wax worse and worse.”
DELUGE signifies, in general, any great inundation; but more
particularly that universal flood by which the whole inhabitants of this
globe were destroyed, except Noah and his family. According to the most
approved systems of chronology, this remarkable event happened in the
year 1656 after the creation, or about 2348 before the Christian æra. Of
so general a calamity, from which only a single family of all who lived
then on the face of the earth was preserved, we might naturally expect
to find some memorials in the traditionary records of Pagan history, as
well as in the sacred volume, where its peculiar cause, and the
circumstances which attended it, are so distinctly and so fully related.
Its magnitude and singularity could scarcely fail to make an indelible
impression on the minds of the survivors, which would be communicated
from them to their children, and would not be easily effaced from the
traditions even of their latest posterity. A deficiency in such traces
of this awful event, though perhaps it might not serve entirely to
invalidate our belief of its reality, would certainly tend considerably
to weaken its claim to credibility; it being scarcely probable that the
knowledge of it should be utterly lost to the rest of the world, and
confined to the documents of the Jewish nation alone. What we might
reasonably expect has, accordingly, been actually and completely
realized. The evidence which has been brought from almost every quarter
of the world to bear upon the reality of this event, is of the most
conclusive and irresistible kind; and every investigation, whether
etymological or historical, which has been made concerning Heathen rites
and traditions, has constantly added to its force, no less than to its
extent.
And here, it were injustice to the memory of ingenuity and erudition
almost unexampled in modern times, were we not to mention the labours of
Bryant, the learned analysist of ancient mythology, whose patience and
profoundness of research have thrown such new and convincing light on
this subject. Nor must we forget his ardent and successful disciple, Mr.
Faber, who, in his “Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri,” has in
travelling over similar ground with his illustrious master at once
corrected some of his statements, and greatly strengthened his general
conclusions. As the basis of their system, however, rests on a most
extensive etymological examination of the names of the deities and other
mythological personages worshipped and celebrated by the Heathen,
compared with the varied traditions respecting their histories, and the
nature of the rites and names of the places that were sacred to them, we
cannot do more, in the present article, than shortly state the result of
their investigations, referring for the particular details, to the
highly original treatises already mentioned. According to them, the
memory of the deluge was incorporated with almost every part of the
Gentile mythology and worship; Noah, under a vast multitude of
characters, being one of their first deities, to whom all the nations of
the Heathen world looked up as their founder; and to some circumstance
or other in whose history, and that of his sons and the first
patriarchs, most, if not all, of their religious ceremonies may be
considered as not indistinctly referring. Traces of these, neither vague
nor obscure, they conceive to be found in the history and character, not
only of Deucalion, but of Atlas, Cronus, or Saturn, Dionusos, Inachus,
Janus, Minos, Zeus, and others among the Greeks; of Isis, Osiris,
Sesostris, Oannes, Typhon, &c, among the Egyptians; of Dagon, Agruerus,
Sydyk, &c, among the Phenicians; of Astarte, Derceto, &c, among the
Assyrians; of Buddha, Menu, Vishnu, &c, among the Hindus; of Fohi, and a
deity represented as sitting upon the lotos in the midst of waters,
among the Chinese; of Budo and Iakusi among the Japanese, &c. They
discover allusions to the ark, in many of the ancient mysteries, and
traditions with respect to the dove and the rainbow, by which several of
these allegorical personages were attended, which are not easily
explicable, unless they be supposed to relate to the history of the
deluge. By the celebrated Ogdoas of the Egyptians, consisting of eight
persons sailing together in the sacred _baris_ or ark, they imagine the
family of Noah, which was precisely eight in number, to have been
designated; and in the rites of Adonis or Thammuz, in particular, they
point out many circumstances which seem to possess a distinct reference
to the events recorded in the sixth and seventh chapters of Genesis.
With regard to this system, we shall only farther observe, that, after
every reasonable deduction is made from it, which the exuberant
indulgence of fancy occasionally exhibited by its authors appears to
render necessary, it contains so much that is relevant and conclusive,
that it induces the conviction that it has a solid foundation in truth
and fact; it being scarcely possible to conceive, that a mere hypothesis
could be supported by evidence so varied, so extensive, and in many
particulars so demonstrative, as that which its framers have produced.
Beside, however, the allusions to the deluge in the mythology and
religious ceremonies of the Heathen, to which we have thus concisely
adverted, there is a variety of traditions concerning it still more
direct and circumstantial, the coincidence of which, with the narrative
of Moses, it will require no common degree of skeptical hardihood to
deny. We are informed by one of the circumnavigators of the world, who
visited the remote island of Otaheite, that some of the inhabitants
being asked concerning their origin, answered, that their supreme God
having, a long time ago, been angry, dragged the earth through the sea,
when their island was broken off and preserved. In the island of Cuba,
the people are said to believe that the world was once destroyed by
water by three persons, evidently alluding to the three sons of Noah. It
is even related, that they have a tradition among them, that an old man,
knowing that the deluge was approaching, built a large ship, and went
into it with a great number of animals; and that he sent out from the
ship a crow, which did not immediately come back, staying to feed on the
carcasses of dead animals, but afterward returned with a green branch in
its mouth. The author who gives the above account likewise affirms that
it was reported by the inhabitants of Castella del Oro, in Terra Firma,
that during a universal deluge, one man, and his children, were the only
persons who escaped, by means of a canoe, and that from them the world
was afterward peopled. According to the Peruvians, in consequence of a
general inundation, occasioned by violent and continued rains, a
universal destruction of the human species took place, a few persons
only excepted, who escaped into caves on the tops of the mountains, into
which they had previously conveyed a stock of provisions, and a number
of live animals, lest when the waters abated, the whole race should have
become extinct. Others of them affirm, that only six persons were saved,
by means of a float or raft, and that from them all the inhabitants of
the country are descended. They farther believe, that this event took
place before there were any _incas_ or kings among them, and when the
country was extremely populous. The Brazilians not only preserve the
tradition of a deluge, but believe that the whole race of mankind
perished in it, except one man and his sister; or, according to others,
two brothers with their wives, who were preserved by climbing the
highest trees on their loftiest mountains; and who afterward became the
heads of two different nations. The memory of this event they are even
said to celebrate in some of their religious anthems or songs. Acosta,
in his history of the Indies, says, that the Mexicans speak of a deluge
in their country, by which all men were drowned; and that it was
afterward peopled by _viracocha_, who came out of the lake Titicaca;
and, according to Herrera, the Machoachans, a people comparatively in
the neighbourhood of Mexico, had a tradition, that a single family was
formerly preserved in an ark amid a deluge of waters; and that along
with them, a sufficient number of animals were saved to stock the new
world. During the time that they were shut up in the ark, several ravens
were sent out, one of which brought back the branch of a tree. Among the
Iroquois it is reported that a certain spirit, called by them Otkon, was
the creator of the world; and that another being, called Messou,
repaired it after a deluge, which happened in consequence of Otkon’s
dogs having one day while he was hunting with them lost themselves in a
great lake, which, in consequence of this, overflowed its banks, and in
a short time covered the whole earth.
Passing from the more remote western to the eastern continent, nearer to
the region where Noah is generally supposed to have lived, we find the
traditions respecting the deluge still more particular and minute.
According to Josephus, there were a multitude of ancient authors who
concurred in asserting that the world had once been destroyed by a
flood: “This deluge,” says he, “and the ark are mentioned by all who
have written barbaric histories, one of whom is Berosus the Chaldean.”
Eusebius informs us, that Melo, a bitter enemy of the Jews, and whose
testimony is on this account peculiarly valuable, takes notice of the
person who was saved along with his sons from the flood, having been,
after his preservation, driven away from Armenia, whence he retired to
the mountainous parts of Syria. Abydenus, after giving an account of the
deluge from which Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah, was saved, concludes
with asserting, in exact concurrence with Berosus, that the ark first
rested on the mountains of Armenia, and that its remains were used by
the natives as a talisman; and Plutarch mentions the Noachic dove being
sent out of the ark, and returning to it again, as an intimation to
Deucalion that the storm had not yet ceased.
This, however, is by no means all: Sir W. Jones, speaking of one of the
Chinese fables, says, “Although I cannot insist with confidence, that
the rainbow mentioned in it alludes to the Mosaic narrative of the
flood, nor build any solid argument on the divine person _Niuva_, of
whose character, and even of whose sex the historians of China speak
very doubtfully; I may nevertheless assure you, after full inquiry and
consideration, that the Chinese believe the earth to have been wholly
covered with water, which, in works of undisputed authenticity, they
describe as flowing abundantly, then subsiding, and separating the
higher from the lower age of mankind.” Still more coincident even than
this with the Mosaic account, is the Grecian history of the deluge, as
preserved by Lucian, a native of Samosata on the Euphrates; and its
authority is the more incontrovertible, on account of his being an
avowed derider of all religions. The antediluvians, according to him,
had gradually become so hardened and profligate, as to be guilty of
every species of injustice. They paid no regard to the obligation of
oaths; were insolent, inhospitable, and unmerciful. For this reason they
were visited with an awful calamity. Suddenly the earth poured forth a
vast quantity of water, the rain descended in torrents, the rivers
overflowed their banks, and the sea rose to a prodigious height, so that
“all things became water,” and all men were destroyed except Deucalion.
He alone, for the sake of his prudence and piety, was reserved to a
second generation. In obedience to a divine nomination, he entered, with
his sons and their wives, into a large ark, which they had built for
their preservation; and immediately swine, and horses, and lions, and
serpents, and all other animals which live on earth, came to him by
pairs, and were admitted by him into the ark. There they became
perfectly mild and innoxious, their natures being changed by the gods,
who created such a friendship between them, that they all sailed
peaceably together, so long as the waters prevailed over the surface of
the globe.
Scarcely less remarkable is the Hindoo tradition. It is contained in the
ancient poem of the _Bhavagat_; and forms the subject of the first
Purana, entitled _Matsya_, or “The Fish.” The following is Sir William
Jones’s abridgment of it; and the identity of the event which it
describes, with that of the Hebrew historian, is too obvious to require
any particular illustration: “The demon Hayagriva, having purloined the
Vedas from the custody of Brahma, while he was reposing at the close of
the sixth Manwantara, the whole race of men became corrupt, except the
seven Rishis, and Satyavrata, who then reigned in Dravira, a maritime
region to the south of Carnata. This prince was performing his ablutions
in the river Critimala, when Vishnu appeared to him in the shape of a
small fish, and after several augmentations of bulk in different waters,
was placed by Satyavrata in the ocean, where he thus addressed his
amazed votary: ‘In seven days all creatures who have offended me shall
be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be secured in a capacious
vessel miraculously formed; take therefore all kinds of medicinal herbs,
and esculent grain for food, and, together with the seven holy men, your
respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear:
then shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be
answered.’ Saying this, he disappeared; and after seven days the ocean
began to overflow the coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant
showers, when Satyavrata, meditating on the deity, saw a large vessel
moving on the waters. He entered it, having in all respects conformed to
the instructions of Vishnu; who in the form of a vast fish, suffered the
vessel to be tied with a great sea serpent, as with a cable, to his
measureless horn. When the deluge had ceased, Vishnu slew the demon, and
recovered the Vedas, instructed Satyavrata in divine knowledge, and
appointed him the seventh Menu, by the name of Vaivaswata.”
When we thus meet with some traditions of a deluge in almost every
country, though the persons saved from it are said, in those various
accounts to have resided in different districts widely separated from
each other, we are constrained to allow that such a general concurrence
of belief could never have originated merely from accident. While the
mind is in this situation, Scripture comes forward, and, presenting a
narrative more simple, better connected, and bearing an infinitely
greater resemblance to authentic history, than any of those mythological
accounts which occur in the traditions of Paganism, immediately flashes
the conviction upon the understanding, that this must be the true
history of those remarkable facts which other nations have handed down
to us, only through the medium of allegory and fable. By the evidence
adduced in this article, indeed, the moral certainty of the Mosaic
history of the flood appears to be established on a basis sufficiently
firm to bid defiance to the cavils of skepticism. “Let the ingenuity of
unbelief first account satisfactorily for this universal agreement of
the Pagan world; and she may then, with a greater degree of
plausibility, impeach the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the
deluge.” The fact, however, is not only preserved in the traditions of
all nations, as we have already seen; but after all the philosophical
arguments which were formerly urged against it, philosophy has at length
acknowledged that the present surface of the earth must have been
submerged under water. “Not only,” says Kirwan, “in every region of
Europe, but also of both the old and new continents, immense quantities
of marine shells, either dispersed or collected, have been discovered.”
This and several other facts seem to prove, that at least a great part
of the present earth was, before the last general convulsion to which it
has been subjected, the bed of an ocean which, at that time, was
withdrawn from it. Other facts seem also to prove with sufficient
evidence, that this was not a gradual retirement of the waters which
once covered the parts now inhabited by men; but a violent one, such as
may be supposed from the brief but emphatic relation of Moses. The
violent action of water has left its traces in various undisputed
phenomena. Stratified mountains of various heights exist in different
parts of Europe, and of both continents; in and between whose strata,
various substances of marine, and some vegetables of terrestrial,
origin, repose either in their natural state, or petrified. To
overspread the plains of the arctic circle with the shells of Indian
seas, and with the bodies of elephants and rhinoceri, surrounded by
masses of submarine vegetation; to accumulate on a single spot, as at La
Bolca, in promiscuous confusion, the marine productions of the four
quarters of the globe; what conceivable instrument would be efficacious
but the rush of mighty waters? These facts, about which there is no
dispute, and which are acknowledged by the advocates of each of the
prevailing geological theories, give a sufficient attestation to the
deluge of Noah, in which “the fountains of the great deep were broken
up,” and from which precisely such phenomena might be expected to
follow. To this may be added, though less decisive in proof, yet
certainly strong as presumptive evidence, that the very aspect of the
earth’s surface exhibits interesting marks both of the violent action,
and the rapid subsidence, of waters; as well as affords a most
interesting instance of the divine goodness in converting what was ruin
itself into utility and beauty. The great frame-work of the varied
surface of the habitable earth was probably laid by a more powerful
agency than that of water; either when on the third day the waters under
the heavens were gathered into one place, and the crust of the primitive
earth was broken down to receive them, so that “the dry land might
appear;” by those mighty convulsions which appear to have accompanied
the general deluge; but the rounding, so to speak, of what was rugged,
where the substance was yielding, and the graceful undulations of hill
and dale which so frequently present themselves, were probably effected
by the retiring waters. The flood has passed away; but the soils which
it deposited remain; and the valleys through which its last streams were
drawn off to the ocean, with many an eddy and sinuous course, still
exist, exhibiting visible proofs of its agency, and impressed with forms
so adapted to the benefit of man, and often so gratifying to the finest
taste, that, when the flood “turned,” it may be said to have “left a
blessing behind it.”
The objections once made to the _fact_ of a general deluge have, indeed,
been greatly weakened by the progress of philosophical knowledge; and
may be regarded as nearly given up, like the former notion of the high
antiquity of the race of men, founded on the Chinese and Egyptian
chronologies and pretended histories. Philosophy has even at last found
out that there is sufficient water in the ocean, if called forth, to
overflow the highest mountains to the height given by Moses,--a
conclusion which it once stoutly denied. Keill formerly computed that
twenty-eight oceans would be necessary for that purpose; but we are now
informed “that a farther progress in mathematical and physical knowledge
has shown the different seas and oceans to contain, at least,
forty-eight times more water than they were then supposed to do; and
that the mere raising of the temperature of the whole body of the ocean
to a degree no greater than marine animals live in, in the shallow seas
between the tropics, would so expand it as more than to produce the
height above the mountains stated in the Mosaic account.” As to the
deluge of Noah, therefore, infidelity has almost entirely lost the aid
of philosophy in framing objections to the Scriptures.