I happened to know the influences under which that dictionary was framed.

The idea of the publisher and of the editor was to give as much scholarship and such results of modern criticism as should be compatible with a very judicious conservatism.

There was to be no objection to geology, but the universality of the Deluge was to be strictly maintained.

The editor committed the article Deluge to a man of very considerable ability, but when the article came to him he found that it was so excessively heretical that he could not venture to put it in.
There was not time for a second article under that head, and if you look in that dictionary you will find under the word Deluge a reference to Flood.

Before Flood came, a second article had been commissioned from a source that was believed safely conservative; but when the article came in it was found to be worse than the first.