was proverbial of flagrant wickedness, Jude 11. Those who live in the present age of invention and refinement should not forget that Jubal, the inventor of musical instruments, and Tubal-cain, the inventor of brass and iron-works, were sons of that Lamech who introduced polygamy, and who, like Cain his progenitor, was also a murderer. From the express mention likewise of the sister of Tubal-cain, and from her name, Naamah, which signifies beautiful, we may well conjecture, that with her commenced that seduction,* by which, in process of time, the posterity of Seth became mingled with that of Cain, and adopted its impiety. From this pernicious connexion sprang a powerful and tyrannical race, which aimed at the subjugation and oppression of the rest of mankind; and as in those times there was no Bible, nor the civil order we at present enjoy, every one taking an unbridled liberty to do according to his will, the licentiousness of the world became more and more outrageous. In those its youthful days, the human powers being fresh and vigorous, and men commonly living to nearly a thousand years, the violent had sufficient time to accomplish their giant plans of mischief, and to consolidate their union for the purpose. Their only remaining check, the inward rebuke of the Spirit of God in

*It should seem that heathen mythology has borrowed from the names of Tubal-cain (pronounced, in Hebrew, Tuval-cain) and Naamah, those of its Vulcan and Venus; retaining the meaning of the latter (Venus as venusta) and the chief sound of the former (Valcain ;) and converting the brother and sister into a husband and wife.-TRANS.

the conscience, becoming daily less and less felt and recognized after that the sons of God had allied themselves with the daughters of men, and had entered into full communion with reprobates, was now to be withdrawn entirely. The single family that still heeded the voice of God, and lamented the growth of general corruption, had lost all influence over their godless fellowmen, and was exposed to their hatred and contempt. "All flesh had corrupted His way upon

the earth."

III.-THE DELUGE.

HAD the enormities of the world been permitted to take their course, the moral condition of our race might have sunk past recovery. But God had purposed for it a redeeming plan, which nothing should be allowed to frustrate. Hence there remained but one expedient; namely, to destroy that corrupt generation from the earth, and to commence a new race from the abovementioned single and less infected family_of Adam's descendants, the family of Noah. For the once goodly field of human nature had now become as a wild desert, overrun with pestiferous weeds. It required to be wholly broken up, in order to be sown with a new and godly seed. Divine forbearance, however, still granted it the respite of one hundred and twenty years, and meanwhile vouchsafed that repentance and righteousness should be preached abroad by

Noah. But the world regarded it not. "They did eat, they drank, they married and were given in marriage; they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded." They presumed upon the usual longevity, and thought that as the course of nature had all along continued the same, it was never likely to experience any change, much less such a change as Noah in his preaching predicted. That holy man, however, by Divine direction, had in the meantime constructed an ark, as an asylum for the representatives of the animal world, and especially for his own family, who, as the seed-corn of our present human nature, were to be preserved from the coming deluge. At a set time, and likewise by Divine appointment, all the animals which God had directed to be preserved, and then Noah with his wife, his three sons and their wives, entered into the ark, and "the Lord shut them in." And now "the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the cataracts of heaven were opened,” until the earth, with even the tops of the highest mountains, was covered with a universal deluge, and all its inhabitants were drowned in the mighty waters. Even to this day are traces every where to be found, attesting what a change was wrought by that great event, which indeed gave another form to the earth's surface. Extensive beds of elephant's remains have recently been discovered in the wilds of Siberia, where, from the rigour of the climate, none of the larger quadrupeds, much less the elephant, or any animal of tropical countries, can live in a wild condition, and where only the

blue fox and the white bear can roam at large. In high northern latitudes are imbedded trunks of palm trees, metamorphosed to coal, whereas it is well known that the palm tree can live only in warm climates. On the High Alps, and in the slate pits of Germany, are found in a petrified state large beds of muscles, shoals of sea fish, and layers of marine plants; while many of our roads are made and repaired with innumerable fragments of cornu-ammonis and other petrified animals, which once played in antediluvian seas, but which are now dug up as stone images from the depths of our mountain quarries. Such well known facts clearly testify that whole regions, which at present form part of the continent, and are overrun with chains of steep and rugged hills, composed in former ages the bed of the ocean. To this we may add, that of all the nations wherever travellers have penetrated, whether in the old world or in the new, there is scarcely one, however barbarous, that does not retain some tradition of the deluge, and some story of the man who was saved from it in a vessel constructed for the purpose, although none of these nations had ever seen or heard of the Scriptures. God has even converted the stubborn rock into a depository of his truth, and into a record of his righteous judgments. Thus in the very substance of a school-boy's slate, on which the child writes out passages from the sacred narrative of the deluge, may sometimes be seen the skeleton form of some small animal that perished in the general overthrow.

SECOND PERIOD.

FROM THE DELUGE TO THE TIME OF

NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

[A.M. 1656 to 3338. B.C. 2287 to 605.]

I. THE SONS OF NOAH.

WHEN the fiat of the Almighty had gathered back the waters of the deluge from off the face of the ground, and the ark now rested upon the mountains of Ararat, Noah, with his family, came forth, and settled probably in the country of Armenia. From hence were his offspring, as a new race of mankind, to overspread all the regions of the earth. It was at that time that God appointed the rainbow, to be a token and pledge that he would never again destroy the world with a flood. This natural and beautiful phenomenon in the clouds is supposed by some to have then first existed, by virtue of a supervening change in the atmosphere. Some new arrangements were now appointed, to prevent the return of such gigantic corruption as had "filled" the antediluvian earth. The ordinary life of man was henceforth rapidly shortened to about one tenth of its former duration. To this effect the Divine permission of animal sustenance, of which we read nothing pre