by a special instinct of his providence, warn- | admonition of Heaven, undertaking his great ing them of their approaching danger and work. The foundation is laid: the fabric conducting them to shelter. advances; and every stroke of the axe or hammer summons a thoughtless and a guilty world to repentance: but "they will not hear, they will not lay it to heart." I see the good man, maligned, derided, insulted. In their gayety of heart, they scornfully style the ark, Noah's folly. The work is finished, but they continue to sing, dance, and play; and many, it is probable, have an active hand in the construction of that machine, to which they scorn to resort for shelter from the impending danger. Noah is not to be diverted from his purpose. Neither the immensity of the undertaking, nor the length of time which it required, nor the opposition which he meets with from an unbelieving generation, discourage him in the prosecution of a design, planned by infinite wisdom, and recommended by divine mercy.

Behold, dreadful to think! the patience of God at last exhausted: and the decree goes forth. "The earth also was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with the earth."* God has warned, threatened, borne with men in vain, and Noah has preached to them in vain. The day of the Lord is come, and who shall be able to stand? And who hath seen, heard of, or is able to conceive a calamity so dreadful? "The end of all flesh is come. I will destroy them with the earth." Immediately upon the fall, universal nature underwent a change. How the whole tribe of commentators The mild influences of the heavens were have gone into the opinion, that the space of changed or withheld; the earth refused to one hundred and twenty years were emyield her increase to the hand of the culti-ployed in building the ark, is strange and unvator, but the full extent and awful import of the curse was never felt till now. By the deluge, the whole face of nature was to be altered; the solid globe dissolved and disjointed; its parts torn asunder from each other its fertility diminished; that it might present to all future generations, a magnificent palace, but in ruins: the mere skeleton of ancient splendour.

accountable. It appears not on the face of the history: it is irreconcilable to reason and experience: as without a miracle, the parts first constructed must have failed and decayed before the latter parts were finished: and it expressly contradicts the chronological detail of the facts, as delivered to us in scripture. For Noah was five hundred years old at the birth of his eldest son. When the order for building the ark was given, all his three sons were married, as we learn from the following passage: "But with thee will I establish my covenant: and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee."* The youngest, therefore, may reasonably be supposed to have seen his fiftieth year; and the flood came upon the earth in the six hundredth year of Noah's life; there is left, then, a period considerably less than fifty years, for the execution of the work; and it most probably occupied a much shorter space than even that.

Some ingenious men have supposed, that at this period, the position and motion of our earth, with respect to the sun, were changed: that till then it was so situated in relation to the heavenly bodies, as to possess an equal and universal temperature of air! that hitherto a perpetual spring went hand in hand with an abundant autumn: but that then it was placed in the slanting and oblique situation, which occasions diversity of climates and seasons; which exposes one part to the burning and direct rays of the sun: binds another up in perpetual chains of darkness and ice; gives birth to volcanos, earthquakes, tempests, hurricanes, and all that tribe of na- Some minute inquirers have taken the tural evils which afflict the wretched children trouble to calculate the solid contents, and of men. The effects, undoubtedly, must thence to estimate the burthen of this wonhave been wonderful, as the event itself is derful vessel. A cubit is the distance in a altogether preternatural. I have no inten- full grown man, from the elbow to the tip of tion of going at present into a discussion of the middle finger; for the conveniency of calthe question, whether the extent of the flood culation, it has been fixed at a foot and a half. was universally over all the earth; nor into of common measure. Upon this supposition, a philosophical investigation of the means the ark contained one million, seven hunemployed in producing a phenomenon so sin-dred and eighty-one thousand, three hundred gular. Taking the Bible account of the matter in its literal import, we will rather make such reflections upon it as may, by the blessing of God, promote the interests of faith and of holiness in our hearts and live

Behold then, the venerable sage, at the

* Gen. vi. 11-13.

and forty-six cubical feet; which, according to the usual allowance of forty-two feet to a ton, or two thousand pounds weight, makes the whole burthen to be forty-two thousand four hundred and thirteen tons; which is considerably more than the burthen of forty

Gen. vi. 18.

ships of one thousand tons each. Such was the vast, unwieldy fabric, entrusted, without mast, sail, rudder, or compass, to the mercy of the waves; and which contained the saved remnant of the human race, and of the animal creation, with all necessary accommodation and provision for the space of more than a year.

Behold the four-footed and the feathered tribes, each according to his kind, by a peculiar instinct of Heaven, flocking to Noah, for protection from the threatening tempest, as formerly to Adam, to receive their names. The beasts take warning and hide themselves, but men, more stupid than the brutes, sin on, till they are destroyed. Every thing announced a storm gathering. Noah preaches to the last hour; admonishes, entreats, threatens, and invites. What means that preternatural gathering together of the brute creation to one place? How come they in a moment to change their nature; to seek what before they shunned; to forget all animosity towards each other? Whence is it that "the wolf dwells with the lamb, the leopard lies down with the kid, and the young lion and the fatling together?" What so brutish and incorrigible as men given up to their own lusts!

overtaken and overwhelmed. To have lengthened their miserable existence so long by vain efforts, is only to have lengthened out anguish. To fill up the measure of their misery, they perish in sight of a place of security which they cannot reach; they perish with the bitter remorse of having despised and rejected the means of escape, when they had them in their power; like the rich man in hell, whose torment was grievously augmented, by the sight of Lazarus afar off in the bosom of Abraham.

Compare with these, the feelings of Noah and his little family within the ark. They enjoy a refuge of God's providing. They have full assurance of the divine protection. Ample provision for the evil day is made. O what gratitude to their Almighty Friend! O what fervent love among themselves! O what holy composure and rest in God! O what awful reflections on the justice and severity of the great Jehovah! O what sweet and satisfying meditations on his mercy!

The sequel of Noah's history, and the comparison between him and Adam, and between him and Christ, will, if God permit, be the subject of the next Lecture. We cannot conclude the present without reflecting

On the danger and mischief which arises from forming graceless connexions. It administers a solemn and suitable admonition to the male part of my audience, who have not already contracted alliances for life, to consi

votion, as among the leading qualities to be sought after in the female character, and the only sure foundation of honourable and lasting friendship; as the basis of, and the prompter to every domestic duty.

It administers a just, and, I am sorry to add, a seasonable reproof, to that spirit of avarice and selfishness, together with that criminal love of pleasure, which too much characterise the young men of the present day, and to which the higher considerations of piety, modesty, and accomplishments really useful and ornamental, are daily sacrificed.

At length all is safely housed, from the dove to the raven, and God shuts in Noah with his charge. When lo! the face of heaven is covered with blackness. Nature shudders at the frown of an angry God-the win-der a principle of religion, and a taste for dedows of heaven are opened; the rain descends amain: the barriers that confined the ocean to its appointed bed are removed, and the waters from beneath start up to meet the waters coming down from above, and join their streams to avenge a holy and righteous God of his adversaries. The gradual increase of the calamity is a dreadful aggravation of its horror. Thick clouds first gave the alarm. Rain uncommonly heavy, and of longer than ordinary continuance, increases the growing surprise and consternation. The voice of mirth is heard no more, and "all the daughters of music are brought low." By degrees the rivers swelling over their banks, and seas forgetting their shores, render the plains and the valleys no places of safety. But the lofty mountains will afford a refuge from the growing plague. Thither, in trembling hope, the wretches fly. The gathered tempest will surely spend itself, and serenity return. Ah, vain hope! the swelling surge gains continually upon them; all is become sea; the foundations of the hills are shaken by the tide; it advances upon them. As their last resource they climb the trees which cover the mountain tops, and cling to them in despair. Their neighbours and friends sink in the gulf before their eyes! their ears are filled with the shrieks of them that perish. All is amazement and wo. At length they are all

It instructs my female hearers, too, in the knowledge of what constitutes their real worth and excellence. "Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord she shall be praised." General declaimers against the female sex have got excellent topics for their spleen, in the seduction of the first man by Eve, and the corruption of the old world by the daughters of Cain. I would make a kinder use of these sad events, by considering them as instances of the great power which women have over men; and hence earnestly call upon Christian women, to cultivate with care and diligence the graces of that character, and to employ their influence, according to their different relations and opportunities, to dif

Proverbs xxxi. 30.

fuse a taste for what is decent, pious, and ever shall confess me before men, him will I praiseworthy; and they may rest assured that confess also before my Father which is in their friends of the other sex will at least heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before study to appear, what they would have them men, him will I also deny before my Father to be. which is in heaven."

The example of Noah is a loud call to aim You have heard of the destruction of the at singular goodness. The multitude of old world by water; your eyes shall behold offenders lessens neither the criminality, nor that which now is, destroyed by fire. The the danger of any one. Let none then think preservation of Noah, by means which God of "following a multitude to do evil." Com-appointed, is a striking type of the method munity in vice may seem to diminish the of salvation from sin, death, and hell, by Jeguilt of sin, but community in suffering, is a sus Christ. The present day of merciful bitter aggravation of it. Dare to stand, though visitation, is the precious season of resorting alone, in the cause of God and truth; know- to that stronghold and place of defence; and ing that wicked men themselves revere that to you the call is once more given, “look to goodness which they do not love, and secretly me and be saved;" "come to me, all ye that approve the virtue which they will not culti- labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give vate. Remember who hath said, "Whoso- | you rest."

HISTORY OF NOAH.

LECTURE VIII

And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged.-GENESIS viii. 1.

man, and judgments of which men are the authors, like the uncontrolled rage of devouring flames, spare nothing; they consume root and branch together. But divine justice, like the refiner's fire, lays hold only of the dross, and bestows on the remaining ore greater purity and value.

THE word and the providence of God are | and effects, are, upon the whole, and in the the only infallible interpreters of his nature. end, unspeakable blessings. The wrath of The existence, and the order of the visible creation, evince the being of one Eternal Cause of all things, infinite in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, mercy, and truth. But the harmony, the extent and limits of the divine attributes and perfections, are to be discovered only by observing what comes to pass; and by reading and understanding what The history of the deluge, among many God has been pleased to commit to writing, other instances which might be adduced, is a for our instruction. The light of nature is plain and a striking illustration of these obsufficient, for example, to instruct us, that servations. The last Lecture exhibited the God is righteous; and experience assures us, fearful triumph of divine justice. We beheld that he is merciful; but without the help of heaven from above, the earth and ocean from revelation, and the history of providence, we beneath, uniting their forces in their Maker's could not, we durst not say, where justice cause; "the windows of heaven opened," the would stop, and when the tide of mercy would "fountains of the great deep broken up," begin to flow. And is it not pleasant and en- blending their waters, to overwhelm a world couraging to reflect, upon the authority of of ungodly men. What a prospect did this both scripture and experience, that justice, globe then present to the surrounding spheres; the awful and formidable perfection of the Involved in gross darkness for forty days tomost high God, has its bounds; whereas good-gether: and when the light returns, no dry ness and tender mercy swell over all limits, land appears, for even "all the high hills possessing a height and depth, a length and which were under the whole heaven were breadth, which surpass knowledge? Justice, covered:" And O, tremendous object of diis the river confined within its banks, and vine vengeance! "All flesh died, that moved terminating its course in the sea; mercy, the upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, unconfined, immeasurable ocean, in survey- and of beasts, and of every creeping thing ing the vast extent of which, the eye fails, that creepeth upon the earth, and every man. and thought itself is lost. It is, moreover, de- | All, in whose nostrils was the breath of life, lightful to consider, that the very judgments of all that was in the dry land, died. And of Heaven, however dreadful in their nature every living substance was destroyed which

was upon the face of the ground, both man, I course, the creation of the world and the and cattle, and the creeping things, and the flood seemed almost to meet; I say, a few fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed days after Methuselah's death, God comfrom the earth: and Noah only remained manded Noah, on the tenth day of the second alive, and they that were with him in the month, answering to the thirtieth of Novemark."*"It is a fearful thing to fall into the ber, in the year of the world one thousand hands of the living God." six hundred and fifty-six, and before Christ

to prepare that week for going into the ark, and to receive all the living creatures which came thither by direction of Providence, in the course of seven days.

At length the tempest of wrath spends it-two thousand three hundred and forty-eight, self. At length, after a night so dark, so dreary, and so long, the morning light begins to dawn. Nothing but water is to be seen, except yonder little bark floating on the mighty surge, which threatens every moment to swallow it up, or to dash it impetuously on some rocky mountain's top. It contains the sad remainder of the human race; the hope of all future generations. It is preserved, not by the power of him who constructed, but of him who designed it, and who directed it to be built. It is guided, not by the skill of the mariner, but steered by the hand of Providence. That a vessel of such construction, should preserve its upright position for so long a time, in such a wild uproar of nature, must be ascribed to a perpetual super-height; that is, to the seventeenth day of natural interposition.

On the seventeenth day of the second month, or the seventh of December, in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, the deluge began, after the Lord had shut him in with all his family. The rain from heaven, and the flux from the ocean, continued without intermission, forty days and forty nights, till the waters prevailed fifteen cubits above the highest mountains; and then stayed, on the seventeenth of January. It continued flood one hundred and fifty days, including the forty days from its commencement to its full

the seventh month, or the sixth of May, when The ark has proved the protection and pre- the flood abated, and the ark rested upon one servation of Noah; but is it not his prison of the mountains of Arrarat or Armenia. also? How gladly do we submit to a tempo- On the first day of the tenth month, or July rary inconveniency for the sake of a great nineteenth, the waters still continuing to deand lasting good! But the inconveniencies, crease, the tops of the neighbouring mounto which we submit in fulfilling the designs tains became visible from the ark. At the of Providence, shall not be prolonged beyond end of forty days from thence, on the eleventh their needful period, nor increased beyond day of the eleventh month, or the twentyour strength. What an amiable view of the eighth of August, Noah opened the window mercy and condescension of God is presented of the ark, and sent forth the raven, which to us at this period of Noah's history! "O, never returned to him. After expecting her Lord, thou preservest man and beast!" And for seven days in vain, on the third of Sep"doth God take care for oxen?" "God re-tember, he sent forth the dove, which remembered Noah, and every living thing, and turned to him the same day, having found no all the cattle that was with him in the ark: rest for the sole of her foot, through the conand God made a wind to pass over the earth, tinuance of the waters. After seven days and the waters assuaged." He who makes more, on the tenth of September, he again sphere to balance on sphere, in the great sys- sends forth the dove, which returned in the tem of nature, can make one element check, evening, with an olive leaf in her mouth, a and control the rage of another, in the subor-proof that the waters had decreased below dinate economy of our little globe. Wind the height of that plant. After waiting yet stops the progress, and diminishes the fury of water at God's command. The dominion of any one element prevailing too long must soon prove fatal to the whole; but their powers blending with, opposing, balancing each other, produce that wonderful and delightful harmony, on which the being and the happiness of mankind depend. "The waters prevailed one hundred and fifty days, and after the end of them, they were abated."

According to the best chronological calculations, the different eras or stages of this great event, adapted to our reckoning of time, are thus fixed. A few days after the death of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, who was born two hundred and forty-three years before Adam died, and in whose person, of

Gen. vii. 21-24.

E

seven days more, Noah again sends forth the dove, on September seventeenth, which returned not again to him, a proof that "the ground was dry," and that this bird could now find food to sustain life, out of the ark.

On the first day of the first month, answering to October the twenty-third, in the year of the world one thousand six hundred and fifty-seven, when Noah entered into the six hundred and first year of his age, on this first day of the new world, he removed the covering of the ark, and beheld that the ground was dry. And finally, on the twentyseventh of the second month of this new year, or December the eighteenth, at God's cominand, who had shut him in, Noah came out of the ark, and all who were with him, in perfect safety; after they had been con

fined therein the space of one year and eleven | monish men to be tender of the lives of the days.