square miles. These lava outflows occurred not from volcanic cones, as in typical craters of the present day, but from immense fissures where the earth seemed to crack open for long distances to permit the escape of the molten flood. Such Quaternary lava masses form the walls of the Columbia River for scores of miles, and constitute an important portion of the Yellowstone Park, while the Black Hills were probably a contemporaneous centre of volcanic activity. Over considerable portions of northeastern Nebraska, interstratified with deposits of glacial origin, is an extensive stratum of volcanic ash which must have been belched out from craters hundreds of miles away, and transported by the wind.

With considerable plausibility Professor Alexander Winchel connects these vast Quaternary outflows of lava with the direct effect of the pressure upon the earth's crust exerted by the ice which was piled up over the glaciated area. This pressure upon one part of the crust caused the fluid portion of the interior to exude through cracks in the weaker portions just as pressure upon one part of an orange will cause the juice to exude through other portions of the rind. It is easy to see, also, that these great lava flows among the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains must, by melting the snow and ice upon their summits and the glaciers in their valleys, have produced local floods of great dimensions. Thus we have man and his companions in the animal world huddled together in the gradually contracting area of the southern part of the United States- beset with a wall of ice upon the north, with advancing waves of the Atlantic upon the east, and with their territory divided by the extension of the Gulf of Mexico far up the Mississippi Valley, and with the great plains of the West and the mountain slopes of the Pacific coast made uninhabitable both by fire and by flood. It would be strange indeed if amid it all man as well as the horse, the camel, the elephant and the mastodon should not become extinct upon this continent.

As already intimated, what little direct evidence we have points to such an extinction. The implements found in the gravels deposited by glacial floods at Trenton, N. J., Madisonville, O., Medora, Ind., and Little Falls, Minn., are all of what is called the paleolithic type, closely resembling those found in similar conditions in Northern France and Southern England. The imple

ments connected with the existing races of Indians are of a different type and are found only on the surface. Furthermore, everything points to a rather modern connection between the Indian tribes in America and certain Asiatic races. All investigation shows that the Indians of America belong to one race. Their physical features, their language, and their method of reckoning relationships, indicate a common descent from some center since the glacial period. Mr. Lewis Morgan, with great plausibility, connects them, by means of their method of reckoning family relationships, with certain tribes in India, and it seems altogether probable that these races reached America through the Aleutian Islands, and penetrated the continent through the avenues opened by the Columbia River and its tributaries. Evidently these tribes are connected with a rather recent dispersion of mankind. The only tribe which can with any plausibility be put forward as descendants of the Palæolithic, or as they might be called, the Antediluvian, inhabitants of America, are the Eskimo of the north, and the evidence of this is by no means convincing.

Thus it would seem to us that the great destruction of species naturally connected with the glacial period renders it easy to believe that at the time of Noah the only remains of the human race left were in Western Asia, where the scene of the Noachian deluge is laid, and where we may well enough believe a supernatural intervention was necessary for the preservation of the race.

We do not, however, put forth these theories with any great assurance, nor is it necessary that we should do so

in order to defend the biblical narrative. An attitude of agnosticism is eminently appropriate under the circumstances. But the slight degree of probability supporting these theories increases by no small amount the credibility of the Scripture narrative if we take it as of a deluge which overwhelmed all the surviving members of the human race in the time of Noah. Of this, however, we are certain from scientific data, that there was a great destruction of life during the Quaternary period, and vast floods characterized its closing stages, that man himself most probably run great risk of being exterminated by them, and, finally, that the Noachian Deluge, considered as limited to the portions of the earth inhabited by man at that time, is by no means so improbable an affair as some would represent it to be.

ARTICLE VI.

DR. SAMUEL D. COCHRAN ON "THE MORAL SYSTEM AND THE ATONEMENT."

BY THE REV. GEORGE F. MAGOUN, D. D., IOWA COLLEGE, GRINNELL, IOWA.

If there is no moral system of God in the moral universe, then there is no atonement. There can be none. The word evidently, in this case, would be without such significance as it has ever had. For an atonement is itself a general system, plainly not a mere arrangement for an individual or certain individuals; and it can only be such in relation to a wider general system within or under which, for some sufficient reason, it has become necessary or wise. But as this reason is purely moral, viz., sin, and as the atonement must be of necessity a moral transaction, and this of an unparalleled kind, the system in relation to which it is effected can clearly be no other than a moral system. A moral atonement within and in behalf of a physical or a merely psychical system would strike thinkers as an absurdity.

If a writer, then, like that of the able and weighty volume before us,' would have any appropriate basis for a 1Oberlin, Ohio: E. J. Goodrich, 1889. On pages 293 and 294, Dr. Cochran affirms what is affirmed above, in these words :

" 167. THE QUESTION OF THE ATONEMENT ONE OF MORALITY-THE MORALITY OF GOD.

"As we said near the beginning of this work, the question of the atonement is one of fundamental morality-the morality of God, as well as of all other moral beings-the morality of the one universal moral law and moral system. It is a foolish assumption of objectors generally, that God is outside and independent of this law and system, so that His will is free from obligation, control, or limitation by them; that they exist only in and for His rational creatures, if not for man exclusively; and that He can regard them or not in acting towards all or any part of these beings with an abso

new handling of the great topic of Christ's atonement, he must find it in a moral system of the universe, fairly, broadly, and thoroughly conceived and developed. Our first business, then, in reviewing so serious and elaborate a work, is with his treatment of the antecedent topic of God's moral system. Of Dr. Cochran's five hundred and twenty-seven compact pages, this topic occupies the first two hundred and fifteen. Those who now repudiate a moral government of God, and displace even eternal, immutable moral law with an easy-going personal relation between man and God, based on no principle but the ready and characterless production of creature happiness -if this can be called a principle-will find in this exposition a body of truth without significance and needless as to human salvation; and doubtless, also, far beyond their lines of thinking, and running too deep for their comprehension. Those, on the contrary, who think, with us, that the Scriptural truths of reconciliation, propitia, tion, sin-offering, redemption, ransom, mediation, and the like, indicate a system of salvation unique and peculiar to Christianity, will be glad of a discussion of the underlying divine moral system so full and many-sided as is here given.

Dr. Cochran divides his great twofold theme into four convenient and manageable divisions, thus: THE MORAL lutely lawless freedom of option. It is a horrible assumption; for, if true, He is not a moral being, and can do no moral action. He can administer the law or not, reward the obedient or not, punish the disobedient or not, treat both alike or not, keep truth or not, by mere lawless will. He can be neither just nor unjust, merciful nor unmerciful, deserving of love and honor or not, as He can be no moral actor, and can have no moral character. These objectors have no conception of a real moral system, which is necessarily founded in moral natures, having the law in and from them as a constant obliging mandate and standard. The objections to points connected with the atonement all imply the same assumption respecting God's freedom from the law and the moral system which is noted above, and yet uniformly involve their own contradiction. For, when objectors say, that He is bound or ought to do this, or not to do that; that He would do wrong, and be wicked and cruel, if He did that, and did not do this, they unawares assume that He is a moral being, that He is under obligation by the law in