If there were no other errors or absurdities in the Bible, our faith in it would diminish at every step in the investigation of the ark and flood story as related in the sixth chapter of Genesis. The avowed purpose of the flood, the means employed, and their failure to accomplish the end desired, are all at war with our reason and our moral sense.

1. The first question that naturally arises in considering this story is, Why should so many millions of innocent beings—men, women, children, animals; birds, &c.—perish as a penalty for the sins of a few thousand people?

2. The reason given for this wholesale destruction was the wickedness and moral depravity of the human race. But is it true that the whole human race was in that state at that period? According to Manetho and Herodotus, Egypt was in a state of high civilization and moral culture at the time; and, according to Dr. Hulde, China was also far advanced in the arts of civilization and in morality. Col. Dow and other writers represent India as being in a similar condition. There could, therefore, be no justice in drowning all these nations in order to punish a few thousand rambling Jews: it was too much like "burning the barn to destroy the rats."

3. An enlightened moralist of the present day would decide that it was a species of injustice to destroy all the land animals, and let the fishes and aquatic animals live. It looks like partiality.

4. But God, having discovered that he made a signal failure in the work of creation, acknowledged that it "grieved him at his heart," and that he "repented" having undertaken it. However, he issued a proclamation, stating that "the end of all flesh is come: every thing that is in the earth shall die."

5. "I, even I, do bring a flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh" (Gen. xi. 6). The language seems to imply that somebody else had undertaken, or was about to undertake, the business.

6. But "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," and was placed at the head of this grand scheme; being, as was assumed, although a drunkard, the most righteous man that could be found.

7. The Lord instructed him to build an ark five hundred and fifty feet long, twenty feet wide, and fifty-five feet high,—about the size of an eastern warehouse. Think of putting into this two of every species of animal, and seven of every species of clean beast, and fowls of the air!—there being one hundred and fifty thousand or, as some make it, five hundred thousand species of animal, one hundred and twelve thousand kinds of bird, and fifty thousand species of insect.

8. And God ordered to be taken into this ark food sufficient to supply these millions of mouths. This alone would have required forty such vessels.

9. As it was declared that God destroyed every living thing from the face of the earth, it would have been necessary to have food enough stored away to last several years, until the earth could have time to be replenished with a new crop of grass and vegetables to serve as food for the granivorous and herbivorous species, and animals for the carnivorous tribes. The weight of such a cargo would have been sufficient to sink the whole British navy!

10. Consider for a moment what amount of food would be required for each species of animal. The four elephants (two of each species) would consume a ton of hay in two days, making more than one hundred and fifty tons in twelve months. The fourteen rhinoceroses would consume one thousand and fifty tons. And then the horses, cattle, sheep, goats, asses, zebras, antelopes, and other mammalia, would require at least two thousand tons more; making in the aggregate three thousand two hundred tons. This alone would have filled every inch of the vessel.

11. The seven hundred and eighty-four thousand birds (one hundred and twelve thousand species) would require grain, which would make it necessary to store several thousand bushels.

12. The three thousand flesh-eating animals, including lions (one lion could eat fifteen pounds a day), cats, dogs, jackals, hyenas, skunks, weasels, crocodiles, snakes, eagles, hawks, buzzards, &c., would require about forty wagon-loads to be slaughtered and fed to them each day; for all would require fresh meat but the buzzards.

13. And otters, minks, gulls, kingfishers, spoonbills, storks, &c., would require fish for food, which must either be preserved in tanks for the purpose, or one hundred and fifty persons would have to be employed all the time in catching them; and there were only four men to do this and perform all the other labor,—sufficient for five thousand hands.

14. There were nine hundred species of fly-catchers,—those that feed on flies, beetles, and other insects. We are not informed whether flies were included in the registered list or not; but they would, of course, be impudent enough to take up their quarters in the vessel without invitation.

15. About two hundred and fifty birds known as bee-catch-ers would have to be supplied with this kind of insect: this would be, to say the least, rather stinging business.

16. Many cans of cockroaches must have been saved to feed the birds-of-paradise.

17. There are several kinds of ant-eaters also, which would have required much time to be spent in searching for ants in the cracks of the vessel, or in collecting then! off the water.

18. The four hundred and forty-two monkeys would require fresh fruit; and it is not probable anybody had the forethought to can it for them.

19. Sixty-five species of animal feed on insects; and it would have been necessary for several persons to spend most of their time in crawling after millipeds, fleas, wood-lice, &c.

20. There would have been work for fifty boy's in providing leaves and flowers (if there were any possibility that they could be obtained while merged in twenty-seven feet of water) for the animals that feed on these things.

21. Besides food, fresh water must have been stored up for most of these animals, as they could not have endured the salty water of the briny deep.

22. Noah and his family must have studied ornithology and natural history many years to know what kind of food to save for the various kinds of birds and animals.

23. Naturalists estimate that there are fourteen different climates, each with animals adapted only to the temperature and natural growth of that locality. How, then, could they all endure the change of being removed to the vicinity of Mount Ararat? Animals from the frigid zones must have felt like fish out of water in the warm climate of Armenia.

24. And think of the immense labor required to obtain this innumerable collection of animals! In the first place, either Noah or his God must make a trip to the polar regions to obtain the white bear, the reindeer, the polar dog, &c.

25. And then the Rocky Mountains must be scaled to find and catch the grizzly bear. Some time and labor must have been required to obtain the rattlesnakes, copperheads, vipers, cobras, snapping-turtles, &c., of the torrid zone.

26. And a great deal of strategy must have been employed to catch the fox, the deer, the antelope, the gazelle, the chimpanzee, of the temperate zone; also the eagle, hawk, buzzard, &c.

27. To do all this hunting and catching, and conveying to the ark, of the million and a half birds and animals, would have required a larger number of persons than Napoleon or Xerxes ever commanded; for, as the whole thing is related as a natural occurrence, we can not assume that they made the journey of their own accord.

28. The Bible commentator Scott supposes that angels were employed to aid in this business of storing away the animals in the ark; but it is certainly derogatory to that elevated order of beings to suppose they would stoop to such groveling work as bug-hunting, skunk-catching, snake-snaring, &c.

29. And how could this immense multitude of respiring and perspiring animals live and breathe in a vessel with but one little twenty-two-inch window, and that in the third story, and shut up most of the time to keep the rain out, especially if some giraffe had been disposed to monopolize it when it was open by thrusting his head out? How could they be kept thus for a whole year without breeding pestilence and death?

30. All animals require light; and total darkness must have reigned in the two lower stories, and only a partial light supplied the third story,—just what could come through a twenty-two-inch window.

31. The chorus of voices in the ark—consisting of bellowing, baying, howling, screaming, hissing, neighing, snorting, roaring, chattering, buzzing, &c.—suggests that deafness would have been a blessing to the human beings present.

32. We are told that "fifteen cubits upward did the water prevail, and the mountains were covered." Fifteen cubits (twenty-seven feet) would not cover nine-tenths of the buildings now on the earth. Ararat is seventeen thousand feet, and Everest twenty-nine thousand feet high.

33. Several scientists have shown by actual experiment that the atmosphere could not contain the fourteen-hundredth part of the water that is represented to have fallen in the time of the flood.

34. Who or what conducted the ark to Ararat when the waters subsided? In the Brahminical flood story a fish is said to have performed this feat, and dragged it to Mt. Hinavat; but Noah and Moses are silent on this point.

35. The peak of Ararat is perpetually covered with snow and ice; hence it must have been rather difficult and dangerous for the biped and quadruped cargo to descend from it.

36. And what was there to prevent the nine hundred carnivorous animals from devouring the sheep, hogs, poultry, rabbits, minks, hedgehogs, &o., as they tumbled pell-mell down the mountain together.

37. The same catastrophe must have ensued from the act of turning them loose upon the earth together, with nothing to subsist upon but the flesh and blood of each other.

38. Many Oriental nations have traditions of a flood, and some of them of several floods. Xisuthrus of Chaldea built a ship, in which he saved himself and family during a mighty flood which overflowed the world; also Fohi of China, Menu of the Brahmins, Satravarata of India, and Deucalion of Greece. Hence it appears there were several families saved besides that of Noah's. Egypt and India have stories of two floods occurring. All these stories are evidently older than that recorded in the Christian Bible.

39. Geologists and archaeologists have collected a whole volume of evidence, which shows that such a deluge could never have taken place as is embodied in the traditions of several nations. The fresh water of the lakes, and the salt water of the seas and oceans, would have been so mixed as never again to be separated as they are now. Egyptian monuments and sculpture can be traced to a much earlier period than that assigned for Noah's flood.

40. Lepsius has traced the existence of several races or tribes of negroes up to a period within forty-eight years of Noah's flood; this would seem to indicate that some of Noah's family were negroes, and must have "multiplied and replenished" very rapidly to start several races in forty-eight years.

41. The dynasties of Egyptian kings can be traced back several thousand years beyond Noah's time.

42. It is true Jesus Christ and the apostles indorsed the truth of the flood story (Matt. xxiv. 37); but that is evidence against their intelligence, instead of being a proof of the truth of the story.

43. And the assumed divine author of the flood admitted it was an utter failure,—that it entirely failed to accomplish the end intended; for it was declared but a few centuries after, that "the imagination of man's heart is evil, and only evil, continually," which is an evidence that the wicked folks were not all drowned by the world's inundation.

44. With respect to the many difficulties and impossibilities I have enumerated as lying in the way of carrying out this experiment of the flood, it is sometimes argued in defense, that, as the whole thing was in the hands of God, such obstacles would not be a straw in his way. But such persons at different periods,—one ninety-five hundred years ago have failed to notice that it is nowhere stated or implied that it was to be accomplished by miracles. A miracle could have destroyed all the wicked inhabitants of the earth in a moment, without any flood or other means.

45. With regard to its being only a partial deluge, as argued by some Bible defenders, we will say that it is only necessary to examine the language of the Bible to settle this matter. It is declared over and over again, that the whole earth was covered with water, and every living thing destroyed. If it had been only a partial deluge, all that would have been necessary for Noah to do to save himself and family would have been to migrate to some dry country; and the doomed sinners might have saved themselves in this way.

46. I will note here that the rainbow was for more than a thousand years looked upon both as evidence that there had been a universal deluge, and also that there never would be another. It is only at a recent period that the study of philosophy has disclosed the fact that the rainbow is caused by the reflection and refraction of the rays of light upon the falling rain, and the error thus exploded.

47. One thing in connection with this flood story is not clearly explained in the Bible: Methuselah's time was not out till ten months after the flood began, according to Bible chronology. Where was he during this ten months?