impious to hold any intercourse with the murderer: but at length this distance was diminished; visits were paid from one party to the other. And the young men who belonged to the line of Seth, seeing the daughters of Cain that they were very beautiful, soon formed marriages with them. This connexion seems to have been the source of a grievous corruption of manners. God, however, continued to warn and reprove the people by his Holy Spirit, either immediately by striving with their consciences, or by raising up prophets, who were inspired of God to instruct and preach. He was, however, now almost prepared to abandon them, and to say, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man," yet he determined, in his mercy, that he would wait with them for a further period of one hundred and twenty years.

That the marriages above mentioned had an intimate connexion with the corruption of manners which ensued, is expressly asserted. Of their children it is said, "The same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown." Their renown, doubtless, was not for good actions, but for high-handed violence, injustice, and oppression. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

SECTION VI.

THE DELUGE-THE ARK.

THE Almighty now resolved that he would destroy man whom he had created, from the face of the earth; "for," speaking after the manner of men, "it repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth." In surveying the millions who now peopled the globe, there was only one man who found favour in the eyes of the Lord. This was Noah, the son of Lamech. As has been mentioned, he was born about sixty-five years after the death of Adam, was a preacher of righteousness, and was directed to prepare an ark for the salvation of himself and family, which consisted of no more than eight souls. Accordingly, Noah set to work to cut down and prepare gopher wood, or wood of a light and resinous quality, of different kinds. This is the first specimen of a vessel for the water, of which we have any account. The dimensions of the building and its interior arrangements were divinely directed. It had a door on the side, and a window or sky-light, which was

probably on the top. How much derision and mocking the pious patriarch underwent, while engaged in erecting this edifice, may be left to conjecture. The probable size was about five hundred feet in length, eighty feet in breadth, and about fifty feet in height, which was abundantly large enough for all the purposes for which it was intended.

The ark being completed, and the season of grace and forbearance, already mentioned, having come to an end; and Noah and his three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, and their wives, having received a command to enter into the ark, took "of clean beasts by sevens, the male and the female," that is, probably, seven of each sex, "and of beasts that were not clean, two, the male and the female." If we have rightly interpreted the former passage, four of each species of unclean animals were taken in. Within seven days after Noah had entered the ark, the flood commenced. This was in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the seventeenth day of the second month of the year. If the original year commenced about the autumnal equinox, as is commonly supposed, then the deluge began, according to the dates here given, about the first week in our November. It is not the business of the historian to account for events, but to state them accurately. This event was probably produced by a miraculous interposition; but if otherwise, no reason of man can ever do more than form conjectures, which, however plausible, can give no satisfaction to the mind in pursuit of truth. "The fountains of the great deep" are said to have "been broken up; and the windows, or cataracts of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." After this continual rain of forty days, the water was so increased that the ark began to float; and soon the increase of the water was so exceedingly great, "that all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered;" consequently, all the animals that breathed upon the earth and air, except such as could live in the water, died. And there was a general and total destruction, not only of life, but of all the buildings which man had erected. Their cities, however populous, were swept away. The wealth of the world was buried beneath the deep. The cattle of a thousand hills were seen no more. "Noah alone remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." "And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days." If we reckon these days from the commencement of the rain, their end would be about the 20th of February: but if, which is the most probable, they begin with the time when the waters completely covered the earth, and began to raise up the ark, they will bring us to the close of April. The latter reckoning is most probable, because they mark the period in which the waters

"prevailed upon the earth," by which I understand, the entire covering or overwhelming of the earth.

"The fountains of the deep, and the windows of heaven were now stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained, and the waters returned from off the earth, continually; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days, the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen." From this account it appears, that for ten weeks after the ark rested on Mount Ararat, nothing but water was visible; but at the end of this time, the lonely inhabitants of the ark began to spy land. If the first sight of land excites an indescribable emotion of pleasure in the common sailor, after a long and perilous voyage, what shall we say of the feelings of Noah and his family, when, after being tossed upon the bosom of the mighty deep for many months, they at length saw the summits of some lofty mountain left bare by the retiring waters? Some have conjectured that the ark remained near the place where it was built all the time, and was merely raised up by the rising flood; and when this retired, rested on the mountain where it was built; but this is very improbable. During such a convulsion of nature, the air as well as the water must have been agitated by one perpetual storm, and the ark, consequently, must have been exceedingly tossed upon the water; and there is no intimation in the sacred history, that Mount Ararat was situated any where near the place of the erection of this vessel. The mountains of Ararat are in Armenia, and tradition still points out one of the highest peaks as the spot where the ark rested.

Forty days after the tops of the mountains first began to be visible, Noah ventured to open the window of the ark, and sent forth a raven to ascertain whether the waters had withdrawn from the earth. This bird found means to subsist by resting on the summits of the mountains, or on articles floating on the water, so that it did not return again to Noah, but "went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth."

Noah also sent out a dove for the same purpose; but the dove, finding no rest for her foot, returned unto him, into the ark; and he put forth his hand, and received her into the ark. After seven days he again sent forth the dove, which returned in the evening, bearing in her mouth an olive leaf, which she had plucked from this evergreen. By this, Noah ascertained that the waters were abated from off the earth. And after the interval of another week, he sent out the dove

for the third time, which, finding the earth free from water, returned no more to the ark.

Noah now received express directions to disembark, and bring out with him all the animals which had been preserved in the immense fabric.

This remarkable event occurred in the six hundred and first year of Noah's life, and on the first day of the first month. And as he entered the ark in the six hundredth year of his life, it follows that he remained shut up in the ark exactly one year.

SECTION VII.

NOAH AND HIS FAMILY LEAVE THE ARK.

THE first act of Noah, after leaving the ark, was worthy of the patriarch. "He builded an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." Hence we may learn, that altars and burnt-offerings were before in common use, by Divine appointment; for we have no account of their institution on this occasion; but the history speaks of them as things well known and understood.

We have also in the narrative of this transaction information that worship of the right kind is exceedingly pleasing to God, and powerfully efficacious to obtain rich blessings for man. The Divine acceptance of Noah's offering is figuratively but beautifully expressed in the following words: "And the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I any more smite every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.'

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and gave them two precepts, which are incorporated in the history, though the tradition of the Jews is, that he now repeated the six which he had originally given to Adam, to which he added a seventh. The two on record are-1. To be fruitful and multiply. 2. To eat no flesh "with the life thereof;" that is, the blood. Some suppose that this is simply a prohibition of eating blood, but others think that it respects the eating of the flesh of living animals;-a cruel custom greatly practised in Abyssinia.

A solemn admonition is also given respecting taking away the life of man; and a terrible threatening of the murderer: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

t

God also made a covenant with Noah and all living things; that is, he entered into a solemn engagement, which was confirmed by establishing the beautiful bow in the clouds, after rain. The thing promised was suspended on no condition whatever. It was that the human race should not again be cut off, with all living creatures, by the waters of a flood. It seems probable, that it had never rained upon the antediluvian world before the windows of heaven were miraculously opened at the commencement of the deluge; or, that partial showers, which left one part of the heavens clear, did not occur then; for I cannot persuade myself that when it is said, "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant," &c., it had before existed, and was already set in the clouds. If it be inquired how the earth was watered when there was no rain, the answer is, "There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." I am aware, however, that many judicious commentators are of opinion, that the bow in the clouds was no new thing, but was now applied to a new purpose; that is, God selected the rain-bow as an appropriate sign of that covenant in which he promised that the world should never again be deluged with water.

After Noah came from the ark, he followed agriculture, the original and most necessary occupation of man. For this work he had brought with him a vast stock of knowledge and experience; and we may be sure, that in his solicitude to preserve animal life, he would not neglect to bring with him into the ark a large supply of vegetables; especially of the species most useful to man. Among other things, he had preserved the roots or shoots of the vine, the fruit of which is among the richest of the productions of the earth, and from which wine is expressed.

When we consider that Noah was a prophet, a righteous man, and perfect in his generation; and that he had been, for more than a century, a preacher to the old world, and a reprover of the vices of the people, we are perplexed and astonished to find him drinking wine to such excess as to become an object of derision to the irreligious part of his family, and a source of grief and shame to the pious. The crime is so unexpected and unaccountable, that it may even lead us to suspect either that wine was not in use before the flood, or that the juice of the grape did not then possess an intoxicating quality. But there is no need of these suppositions. The fall of Noah is sufficiently accounted for, when it is recollected that he was but a man. If Adam, who was made in the image of God, could fall, there is no difficulty in believing that Noah, in whom that image was but imperfectly renewed, might also be overcome by temptation, when left to himself.