of holy vengeance and hatred of sin should be given, to instruct and warn the human race to the end of time. Such was the cause of that great overthrow we are now to speak of. Human science busies itself with the elements of nature which were employed by the Creator to execute his punishments: but the Bible sets before us the moral and religious view of the matter; which God considers, and which we also should consider, as far more important than "the wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds." It is said of God that his tender mercies are over all his works. Great, then, must have been the provocations with which those ancient sinners tempted his patience, when he determined, for the vindication of his glory and the interests of righteousness, to destroy the work of his hands. Let us tremble while we meditate upon his judgments, for sin is now as hateful in his sight as ever it was.

But there was to be one exception to the general destruction, in favour of a righteous man and his family. "Noah," we are informed, " was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." He lived soberly, righteously, and godly, in the midst of surrounding wickedness. "And Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." God told him his purpose, and directed him how to save himself, his three sons, his wife, and his sons' wives with them.

The manner in which God designed to destroy mankind was by a flood of waters. No power but that of God could bring about the vast inundation; but He has only to speak, and it is done; all nature obeys his word. The means by which Noah was to be saved corresponded: he was directed to build an immense vessel, which might float upon the waters until they should subside again. The ark was to be built of gopher wood, perhaps what is now called cypress, a kind of wood which is least liable to rot and decay. It was to be of very large dimensions, 300 cubits long, 50 broad, and 30 high. Some learned men reckon the cubit to be equal to 18 inches of our measure, others to nearly 22. At the former measurement the ark would be 450 feet long, 75 broad, and 45 in height; at the latter 547 feet long, 91 feet 2 inches broad, and 54 feet 8 inches high. It was to be divided into three stories, which were to be separated into rooms; and, that it might resist the action of the water, it was to be covered without and within with pitch. Into this great vessel Noab

was directed to bring himself and his family, and all the tribes of animals and birds which could not exist in water, -seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean, with the food necessary for their subsistence during the whole period of their stay in it.

But the question may be asked, Was the ark, great as it was, capable of containing so large a number of animals, from all regions of the earth, with the quantity of food necessary for their sustenance for so long a space of time as a year, which was the period of their residence in it? To this a very satisfactory reply can be given. It has been shown by learned men, from an accurate consideration of the number of different kinds of animals which required a place in the ark, that the space afforded in this immense vessel was completely sufficient for accommodating them and all their provender. "The most expert mathematicians at this day," says Bishop Wilkins, "could not assign the proportions of a vessel better accommodated to the purpose." This is a proof that the skill which planned the ark was none other than that of God. It would be idle to ask how so many creatures could be got together from so many countries at the appointed time, and made to lodge themselves in this vessel. To these and other such questions it is sufficient to answer, that, to whatever extent there was any need for miracles, God would perform them. If he wrought the mightier miracle of loosening the foundations of the earth, and overwhelming it with the great waters, it is trifling indeed to suppose that lesser miracles, if necessary, would be wanting to fulfil his wise designs.

We are not told how long the ark was in building, but we are informed of the more important circumstance, that the patience and forbearance of the Most High gave a period for repentance and reformation to the antediluvian world. For a hundred and twenty years after he had made known his purpose, God waited to see if men would take warning, and forsake their sinful ways. He gave his servant Noah a commission to preach to them, and to warn them, during that long period, of the coming vengeance. And, had they believed, the same God who spared Nineveh when it repented would have saved a repenting world. But, as all proved in vain, the Most High would defer no fonger, and at last said to Noah, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark.”

Mark, then, the progress of this awful dispensation. Be

hold Noah, the righteous man, lifting up his voice, alone, for God; condemning the ungodly ways of men, remon strating, pleading with them, solemnly assuring them of the impending judgment, and confirming his words by building, in their sight, with immense labour, a prodigious vessel to float on the expected flood. Around him was a world of sensual scoffers, to whom he spoke in vain. Some neglected his message; others treated it with ridicule, and pronounced him a visionary; others procrastinated; others said, "Where is the promise of his coming? for all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." Not one solitary penitent came to the ark for safety. For a hundred and twenty years the world went on in its wonted course. How many suns rose and set during that period! How many moons waxed and waned, without any token of approaching change! How many seasons of festivity returned, and still returned, as if there was never to be an end of them! But the century and the twenty years rolled away. The ark, which was in progress, slowly but surely, approached its completion. The last year came― the last month-the last week-the last morning dawned.. In the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, Noah entered into the ark with his household, very probably in the view of an assembled concourse that had come together to see the end of his strange proceedings. The Lord shut him in, and with that the door of hope closed on every soul of that devoted generation.

A week passed without any new occurrence, and perhaps Noah began almost to be forgotten by the multitudes he had left without the ark. But on the seventh day the sky began.. to gather an unusual blackness, and the heavens were shut in with a strange and foreboding gloom. The clouds ere long burst in torrents, and the windows of heaven poured down their tremendous stores. And, besides this, in an unseen region, where unsuspected agents of destruction lay hid, the floodgates of the vast deep were burst open, and the mighty ocean began to swell.

The dwellers on the earth soon saw, to their dismay, that Noah's prophecies were about to prove true. The appearances of an overwhelming inundation became too visible to be any longer doubted. The rivers began to roll back their tides, to rise over their banks, and to approach human habitations. Men's hearts failed them for fear, as they

beheld the terrific devastation spreading without a moment's intermission, overflowing every landmark, overwhelming the remoter habitations of human beings, tracking the steps of fugitives as they fled to higher and still higher grounds, and ingulfing successively plains, forests, villages, cities, and whole regions of country, in its resistless waters. The valleys being filled, the flood rose along the sides of the lower and then the higher hills, sweeping off the miserable occupants that had retired to them for safety, and who now found this last refuge unavailing. What innumerable scenes of anguish and despair must this earth have presented over its wide surface, as parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, old men and helpless infants, sank in death together, or perished in succession in each other's sight! But the time to stay the stroke of vengeance was past; the flood rolled still upwards in more impetuous tides, till at last it overtopped the summits of the loftiest mountains, and all was one vast waste of waters, with but one solitary vessel floating on the surface of the billows, and containing the sole progenitors of a future world.

And the waters prevaled upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. Then "the Lord," it is said, "remembered Noah;" he interposed to make preparations for restoring the earth to its former condition, so that it might become again an abode for Noah and his descendants. The flood retired very gradually. The fountains of the deep, and the windows of heaven, were stopped at God's command. In other words, the great abyss no longer sent forth its waters, but opened to receive them back again, and the atmosphere also ceased to discharge its vapours. "God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged." The waters thus sunk by slow degrees, so that in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, after their first breaking forth, the ark rested on the summit of a lofty range of mountains called Ararat, situated in Armenia. Land was, however, as yet invisible; it was not till two months and ten days more that the tops of the mountains were in sight. When other forty days had expired, Noah opened the window. of the ark, and sent forth a raven, from whose flight he might judge whether the surface of the earth was dried. But the messenger returned not to him again; for, being a bird of strong wing and undomesticated habits, it went to and fro until the ground was completely dried: or, as some

explain the passage, Gen. viii. 7, it went and returned between the dry parts of the earth and the ark, but was not taken in at the window again. A dove also was sent forth for the same purpose, but, finding no rest for her foot, she returned to Noah into the ark. Seven days afterwards she was sent forth a second time, and on the evening of the same day she returned with an olive leaf in her mouth plucked off from a bough, indicating to Noah that the fruit trees now re-appeared. This delightful token has ever since been the emblem of peace and friendship among men. After other seven days the dove was sent forth the third time, but returned not again any more. The face of the earth now dried rapidly; but it was not till many weeks more had elapsed that the process was sufficiently advanced to allow Noah to leave his place of refuge. At last, at the expiration of a year and seven days from the period when Noah entered the ark, the command of God came to him to go forth from it. According to our reckoning of time, the flood commenced in the latter part of October, and terminated at the same time in the following year; for the waters do not appear to have broken forth until seven days after the entering of Noah into the ark.

This must have been a lengthened and melancholy season of confinement to the imprisoned patriarch; and, like the voyager who has been long deprived of every spectacle but that of the sky and the ocean, he must have longed to see the earth appear again. His mind would be deeply solemnized by the remembrance of that race of sinners, gone to perdition, whom he should see no more on earth, and by meditation on that awful display of holy vengeance which he had been saved to witness. But his solitude would be sweetened by exercises of devout gratitude and communion with Heaven, and by converse with his family on the wonderful ways of God to men. Welcome as the summons to go forth would be, his feelings would be of a strange and mingled description. He had entered his place of refuge out of a world crowded with inhabitants, covered with the marks of human culture and the monuments of early art. Now he looked around on an unpeopled solitude; the world had become as when the first pair dwelt in it. Whilst the

* That is, reckoning the months mentioned in Genesis to be lunar

months.