It is blasphemy to deny that god, “whose tender mercy is over all his works” (Prayer-book), said that he would destroy “both man and beast, and the creeping things and the fowls of the air” (Gen. vi., 7). We are not told what sins had been committed by the beasts and fowls and creeping things, so that god exclaimed: “it repenteth me that I have made them.” If the Bible were a mere human book, and “the Lord” were a mere ordinary man, I should say that he was behaving like a naughty, passionate child, who has lost his temper because the paper animals he has cut out very badly will not stand properly, and who tears them up in a rage. But as it is blasphemy to say this, and blasphemy to deny that god did act exactly in the fashion that would be naughty if he were a child, I can only suppose that the conduct for which a child would be put in the corner is admirable when displayed by a god.
Out of all the wicked men there was one man, Noah, who found “grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. vi., 8). Noah was not what Atheists would regard as a very good man, so far as his conduct is recorded in Holy Scripture. In fact, we are not told of any one good action that he committed. He was a very selfish man, for he saved himself and his family in the ark, and left all his poor fellow-creatures to drown; he drank so much wine that he misbehaved himself shamefully before his children (Gen. ix., 21), and in any respectable society would have had a sack thrown over him, and would have been carried on a stretcher to the nearest police station; he cursed and swore at his poor grandson because his son, the young man’s father, had told his brethren of the condition to which Noah had reduced himself (Gen. ix., 25). Yet, in spite of all this disgusting misbehavior, it is blasphemy to deny that “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
It is blasphemy to deny that in a vessel 300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad, and 30 cubits high, divided into three floors, with only one window in it, 1 cubit square, for purposes of light and ventilation, and this window kept shut till nearly the end of the time (compare Gen. viii., 6), eight persons with pairs or sevens “of every living thing of all flesh,” lived for one year and seventeen days. It is blasphemy to deny that into this floating Black Hole went “of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort” (Gen. vi., 19), and although only two of every sort went in, yet of some sorts “sevens” went in, “the male and his female” (Gen. vii., 2), so that two and fourteen signify the same number when the multiplication table is of faith. What the number of this numerous live cargo of fowls, of cattle, and of every creeping thing (Gen. vi., 20) must have been, may be faintly imagined by the fact that there are known 6,200 species of the “fowls of the air” alone. As the fowls were to be taken “by sevens,” there must have been an aviary in the ark containing 86,800 birds, and some of these, such as the eagles, the ostriches, and the condors would require considerable room. Of Mammalia some 1,600 species are known, and elephants, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, giraffes—to take but a few instances—are fairly large, and one might imagine—were it not blasphemy to think so— that lions, tigers, pumas, leopards, wolves, etc., would not only be difficult to manage among the sevens of sheep, goats, and oxen, but would also suffer from the want of exercise necessitated by their caged condition. As the ark must have been packed quite closely in every division, from floor to ceiling, it is difficult to understand how the creatures survived their voyage, while it is blasphemy to deny that every one of them in due time “went forth out of the ark” (Gen. viii., 19).