At the same time it became a matter of duty to me, if possible, to discriminate the authoritative from the unauthoritative in the Scripture, or at any rate avoid to accept and propagate as true that which is false, even if it be false only as science and not as religion.  I unawares,—­more perhaps from old habit than from distinct conviction,—­started from the assumption that my fixed point of knowledge was to be found in the sensible or scientific, not in the moral.  I still retained from my old Calvinistic doctrine a way of proceeding, as if purely moral judgment were my weak side, at least in criticizing the Scripture:  so that I preferred never to appeal to direct moral and spiritual considerations, except in the most glaringly necessary cases.  Thus, while I could not accept the panegyric on Jael, and on Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his son, I did not venture unceremoniously to censure the extirpation of the Canaanites by Joshua:  of which I barely said to myself, that it “certainly needed very strong proof” of the divine command to justify it.  I still went so far in timidity as to hesitate to reject on internal evidence the account of heroes or giants begotten by angels, who, enticed by the love of women, left heaven for earth.  The narrative in Gen. vi. had long appeared to me undoubtedly to bear this sense; and to have been so understood by Jude and Peter (2 Pet. ii.), as, I believe, it also was by the Jews and early Fathers.  I did at length set it aside as incredible; not however from moral repugnance to it, (for I feared to trust the soundness of my instinct,) but because I had slid into a new rule of interpretation,—­that I must not obtrude miracles on the Scripture narrative.  The writers tell their story without showing any consciousness that it involves physiological difficulties.  To invent a miracle in order to defend this, began to seem to me unwarrantable.

It had become notorious to the public, that Geologists rejected the idea of a universal deluge as physically impossible.  Whence could the water come, to cover the highest mountains?  Two replies were attempted:  1.  The flood of Noah is not described as universal:  2.  The flood was indeed universal, but the water was added and removed by miracle.—­Neither reply however seemed to me valid.  First, the language respecting the universality of the flood is as strong as any that could be written:  moreover it is stated that the tops of the high hills were all covered, and after the water subsides, the ark settles on the mountains of Armenia.  Now in Armenia, of necessity numerous peaks would be seen, unless the water covered them, and especially Ararat.  But a flood that covered Ararat would overspread all the continents, and leave only a few summits above.  If then the account in Genesis is to be received, the flood was universal.  Secondly:  the narrator represents the surplus water to have come from the clouds and perhaps from the sea, and again to drain back into the sea.  Of a miraculous creation and destruction of water, he evidently does not dream.