animals, no knowledge of death, no fear of cruelty or violence. The earth brought forth abundantly, and men and animals were sweetly nourished by its fruits and vegetables. Now, there was a dreadful change. There had been sin, and death as its consequence. The ground had been cursed for man's sake, and was to yield stintedly, and with much labor, what at first it yielded freely, submissively, and abundantly, of itself. There had been murder and violence on the part of man against his brother man, man, and savageness and ferocity in the animal creation. All these differences were to be remembered and provided for, in the terms of the new grant made to Noah and his sons, and the new covenant with him and his posterity.

Accordingly he was graciously assured against the dread which he might have felt lest such a handful of helpless beings should be destroyed from the earth by the increase and ferocity of the animals, that the deepest fear of man should be impressed upon the whole animal creation.

Against the dread of another deluge, which otherwise must have filled men's souls with every storm that swept across the horizon, Noah was assured that God would not again destroy the ground for man's sake, would not again bring the waters of a flood over it; but that, while the earth remained, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, should not cease. The benediction and command to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth was laid upon him, and the grant of animal food was made to him, in addition to the provision recorded for the sustenance of Adam. This was doubtless intended in part as a compensation for the difficulty and scantiness with which, in comparison with the luxuriance and abundance of an age of innocence, the earth yielded her fruit since the curse because of man's sins. But with this grant there came a prohibition against eating the flesh with the blood thereof, the life thereof; and the final cause of this prohibition is exceedingly solemn and interesting, as

pointing, without any doubt, to that divine atonement to be made by blood for the sins of the world; a prohibition reiterated with great solemnity in the Mosaic institutions,* and intended to impress upon the soul a prophetic sense of the sacredness of the blood of atonement. "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."†

This prohibition introduces another provision in the covenant with Noah, intended to secure him and his family against the dread, which from past experience they must have entertained, lest the passions of men, which had already proved so ferocious, should break out again, in universal violence and murder. God therefore declares to Noah and his sons, as personating the whole family and race of mankind, that 'he would require their blood in return for the life-blood which

* Lev. 17: 10—14, Deut. 12: 16, 23. † Lev. 17: 11.

they should shed; he would require it of every animal, and he would require it of every man; at the hand of every man's brother would he require the life of man. If any man should shed the life-blood of his brother, the blood of that man should, in return, be required of him.

Here, if God had proceeded no further, the assurance to Noah would simply have conveyed the knowledge of what the Divine Being himself would do in protecting the peace of human society, and in avenging, by his own providence, the murder of every man by his brother man. There seems evidently to be a tacit reference to the different manner of his providence in the case of Cain, and an assurance to Noah that never again should the crime of murder be punished so slightly. In the case of Cain, when the murderer feared being killed for his crime, God made a provision against it; and from the history of Lamech afterwards, to which we shall more explicitly refer, we may suppose that this carefulness grew into a precedent, and

that it was not customary in the antediluvian world to visit the crime of murder with the death of the murderer. Men indulged their passions in every sort of violence, and even the providence of God did not then insure the return of such violence upon their own heads. Now, on the other hand, God assures Noah that he would himself exact, by his own providence, the blood of every man from the man who should shed it, and would thus preserve the human family against being destroyed in its infancy.

Such is the introduction to the great declaration that follows; which declaration may fairly be considered as pointing ultimately to the existence of human government and law, and as announcing and establishing its sanctions under all the awfulness and permanence of the divine authority: WHOSO SHEDDETH MAN'S BLOOD, BY MAN SHALL HIS BLOOD BE SHED. Some of the most learned and judicious commentators are united in regarding this ordinance as a declaration that death by the hand of the