THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE DELUGE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 2 August 1913, Page 3

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE DELUGE.

HIGHER GUJITIOS ARRAIGNED. PASTOR RUSSELL DEFENDS BIBLE. (Inserted by Arrangement.) Brooklyn, February. 2nd,—After an absence of/several months 1 . Pastor Russell again addressed his Brooklyn congregation, now generally known as v "The Bible Students." The Pastor's text was, "As it to in the days of Noah, .so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man" (Luke xvii., 26). - The address opened with a scathing arraignment of the Higher Critics. Our richly endowed colleges, the Pastor declared, are undermine ing faith in the Bible, which means faith in "a personal God, and substituting a scant recognition of natural Jaws, devoid of sympathy or mercy. Practically every minister graduated within the last twelve years has been an agnostic, and a believer in human evolution. Disbelief in the Bible account of man's creation in God's image means also disbelief in the need of redemption and reconciliation, and disbelief in the necessity fcrr the Restitution to be accomplished by Messiah's kingdom (Acts iii. 19-21). "I do not question the sincerity of the Higher Critics. Experiences of my own'along the same line, forty years ago, giVe me great sympathy for them," said Pastor Russell. Tie insisted, however, that. it is,not honourable for those who have abandoned the creeds to pose before the' public as supporters <>f these creeds* and ( to draw salaries . and receive; honorary, titles/for undermining the: faith of "the people, while posing as the representatives of Christ and the He declared such a course dishonest and dishonourable,

"Would that 1 might lure back again to the Words,of God some of the noble minds now arrayed against; it! I know their difficulty. In their minds , they associate the unreasonable theories of. our creeds with , the Bible, believing it to be the foundation for "the gross darkness and superstition which once blinded us all.: Would that I could show them, as 1 now see it, the fallacy of this posi- ; tion-4-show them that the Bible is ( in most violent conflict with the errors of the, past!" "From Genesis to Revelation it reveals a Divine' plan so wonderful that only a God of Wisdom and 'Love could have devised it, and only those moved by 'His -Holy Spirit r could haye. written ;it.' The speaker held that, the' Highe r: Cfi iicg< !'approach,' eroery Bible : topic_, from ' the, standpoint of unbeUef • plorin g 1 .the minfi of Babyl'on: found some clay, tablets crudely pic-.; turing the arkj' with a few words About a general deluge. Instead of saying, "This confirms the Bible re-. cord," they say, "The Israelites in' captivity., doubtless drew their story of the'flood from the Babylonian legends""! -' . • ' 'How si|lly to suppose that the beau- ' tiful, interesting, and connected nar-' rative bf Genesis could ever be drawn from a few fragmentary words which ! the Babylonians recorded on the sub--; jeet! Before the tablets vtere found, the Higher Critics held that the entire story of the Deluge was a myth, and that Jesus and the Apostles' were deceived when they quoted Moses in respect of it. GEOLOGY CONFIRMS MOSIAO ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE. Pastor Russell; promised that next Sunday he would take up the moral reasons justifying the destruction of humanity with the as the matter is .set forth in the Scriptures. Through his sermons, printed weekly in hundreds of newspapers, .those desirous might continue with him the study of the subject. To-day he wished to deal with the facts of natures and briefly show that they fuHy confirm the ywords of Jesus,the Apostles, and Moses, respecting the Deluge, The great stumbling-block heretofore has been the supposition thai this story of the Deluge; implies a flat earth; and since .we kijow the earth is a. sphere, that sucli a flood of waters rising 'higher , than the mountains was an impossibility. As the study of astronomy has progressed, the Vailian theory of the creation has come forward. ; It shows that the earth when in 'a. molten condition must have thrown-.off various minerals in,a gaseous form. These cooling would become; inore or less separated from each, other, according to density, and -must; have; qonstjituted greati . rings aflid bands about the earth, " similar to those which we pefceive encircling" Saturn and Jupiter. As the eaTth cooled, Ijhese rings would obtain separate moof their own, because of their distance, yet always they would tend to gravitate, towards the earth., , ; yhe circumambient air, or firmament, would keep these from immediate precipitin, Gradually they would , spread , dut as a great canopy, gravitating-.tox, wards the poles ? because of the great- ) er centrifugal force at the equator; Gradually the accumulation at the poles would overoome the resistance of the atmosphere and cause ( precipitations, Tfrhich would flow towards the equator. ; ,„ The theory is ' that that many such deluges had -|been precipitated upon the earth before man was created, and that from.these, came many of the mineral deposits' of the earth.

Only one such ring remained when man was created. Indeed, it was not a ring, but had come down to the sttfte in which it served as a canopy. Being the last of these rings, it consisted of pure water, \ and as a canopy it refracted the sun's rayß much as woiuld the roof of a hothouse, so that, the temperature.;of earth was uniform. :.Divine Wisdom foreknew the. condition r .of things which would prevail at the time -of the Deluge, and hence, delayed thte breaking ofthisgreat envelope of waters until that, time, . , THE WAYS OF GOD. Not long ago ( in, Siberia a mammoth was found with grass between

its teettf, frozen .solid in. a great basinqf ice. Similarly a doer was found in" the polar regions, w :th undigested jjrass in his stomach, proving clearly that the catastrophe which overtook it and froze it solidly in the ice was a sudilen one—just as did occur, according to the Vailian theory. The breaking of the watery envelope made the change at the poles sudden and sent a great deluge of water over the earth toward the equator. Thus came the great Glacial period, and some of the great glaciers, or icebergs, carried over North America, vut great gulliea, valleys, canons. As the oold at the poles was extreme—to form the great ice-caps covering the earth and only gradually melting' away—so the intense heat at the equator must have been proportionately extreme. The intense heat at the equator, warming the ocean, set up ocean currents. These for the past four thousand years have been gradually .modifying the Arc-tie i-egrons—.advancing the temperate zone further and further towards -the poles, and more and more -reducing the ice-caps, bringing them towards the equator as great icebergs. We naturally inquire, Where was the ark while such a torrent of waters poured over the earth from the polos Y The answer of faith would be that God, who directed Noah and his family to'build the ark, would undoubtedly exercise His power to protect it.

.Recently. Professor George Frederick Wright has declared that the' legion round about Mount Ararat, where the ark rested, was apparently at one time the scene of a great eddy. While the waters raged elsewhere, God specially held that part quiet, just as :we have seen a quiet fedcly, or bay, alongside of a swift-ly-ruehing stream*. Professor Wright's deductions are drawn largely from the fact that he finds there a wonderfully deep soil, which seems to indicate that it was a kind of settling basin for intensely muddy ' waters in the long ago.