would not send another flood because -or, at least, though--this evil imagination remained unsubdued. by which he sees fit to oppose it, he is alike earnest in punishing it. We may be thoroughly persuaded that though there was the same corruption in our nature after the flood as before, it was not because that corruption had grown less offensive to the Creator that he repeated not the awful baptism which despoiled and laid waste our earth. On the contrary, it is a truth forced on us, that the same end was contemplated by the sparing as by the smiting: in restraining the waters, GOD was following the very laws that guided him in the out pouring: and whether or not we can detect a reason for such a are bound to believe, that, when he cursed the ground on account of the evil of man's heart, and when he determined not again to curse it on account of that same evil, he had in view identically the like object—that of expressing his hatred of sin, and Now, there is something very remarkable in this adduction of the same reason for quite opposite results. Had GOD destroyed one race because of the evil of their imagination, and had he destroyed another on the same account, there would seem to be uniformity of dealing, and we could understand the principle by which the divine conduct was regulated. But when GOD is exhibited as saving for the same reason which is given for his smiting, a subject of meditation is presented which demands great attention: and this sub-marked difference of proceeding, we ject it is with which we shall engage you on the present occasion. We wish to take our text, which is an express covenant that there should not again be a flood, in connexion with other passages which assign the cause of the deluge. We contend that, when thus connected, that very his determination to root it out of the wickedness which provoked the out-universe. break of wrath, is represented either as the reason why there should be no repetition of the vengeance, or, at least, as not a cause that should again produce such a visitation. The evil of the imagination of man's heart moved GOD to the taking vengeance; and this same evil is exhibited, if not as influencing him to spare, certainly not as determining to smite. We have therefore to inquire why, since there was no difference in the moral aspect of mankind, there was to be such a difference in the dealings of the Almighty; or, why the evil which provoked one flood, seeing it continued unmitigated, was to provoke not another. Now, it is scarcely necessary for us to remark, that wickedness must at all times be equal in God's sight; and that however various the modes The great point, therefore, which demands examination is, that of the same end being pursued by directly opposite means. We have GOD determining at one time to take vengeance, and at another, though the producing cause seemed unchanged, determining not to take that vengeance; and in each case we are certified he had the like hatred of evil, and was actuated by the like resolve to punish and exterminate it. Why, then, did he not follow the same plan throughout? Or why did he administer once that punishment which he thought fit not to repeat? Such questions, you observe, are not merely speculative. If God himself had not given the same reason for sparing as for smiting, we might have thought that the flood had made a change in the moral circumstances of our race, and there was not again the same intense pro- | precisely the same circumstances, it vocation: but when we hear from is a matter which both deserves and the lips of Jehovah himself, that there was precisely as much after the deluge as before, yea, that he refrained from cursing in the face of that very wickedness, we are only endeavouring to be wise up to what is written in searching out the reason for the change in God's conduct.. Now we wish to put your minds in possession of the point that demands examination before we enter at length on that examination itself. We fear not so much the wearying you by repetition as by leaving you uninformed on the subject to be handled. We shall therefore again state succinctly the matter under review, and then enter at once on our examination. - If you search your Bibles, you will observe, that the reason why there was one deluge is given as a reason why there should not be a second: the evil of the imagination of man's heart determined GOD to smite once, and this very evil determined GOD not to smite twice. Why was this? If it were the best method of proceeding to send one deluge, would it not have been the best method of proceeding, seeing the circumstances were confessedly the same, to have sent another deluge? Or if the sparing mankind were as direct a method of accomplishing reformation as smiting mankind, how can we account for such a visitation as that of the flood? If you ask a man why the globe was overflown with water, he will answer, "Because of the wickedness of its inhabitants." Were, then, those inhabitants more corrupt and depraved than their successors? Undoubtedly hot: God gives the same description of mankind after the flood as before the flood. If, then, a world were destroyed and a world spared under demands examination: and such is the subject of our discourse. It resolves itself into these two questions, to each of which we would attempt a reply. The first question is, SINCE A FLOOD WAS AS MUCH CALLED FOR TWICE AS ONCE, WHY SHOULD IT HAVE BEEN SENT ONCE, THE PROVOCATION BEING JUST THE SAME, AND YET THE DEALING MOST DIFFERENT? WAS ANY END ANSWERED BY THE DELUGE? The second question is, DOES LONGSUFFERING PRODUCE THE SAME RESULTS AS PUNISHING, SEEING THAT THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD AND THE WORLD AFTER THE FLOOD WERE THE OBJECTS OF SUCH OPPOSITE DISPENSATIONS, THAT IT WOULD BE HARD TO UNDERSTAND HOW WITH GOD THERE IS NO respect of PERSONS? Now, our first thought on finding that there was just the same reason for destroying the world twice as for destroying it once is, that no end was answered by the deluge which might not have been answered without a deluge. But then we only wonder that there should have been such a tremendous visitation, and that GOD should have come forth in his awfulness and dealt out such lamentable desolation. But though it is most certain that there was as much provocation after as before the deluge, it is a most unwarranted conclusion that no great ends were answered by the deluge. The deluge was God's sermon against sin, whose echoes will be heard until the consummation of all things. We admit that when another century had passed away, and the children of Noah again peopled the earth, that there was as much reason for a flood as when God poured down the waters, and swept away the rebellious. We quite ad mit that, in the present day, when wickedness under every possible shape, and in the highest degree of enormity, covers the globe, there is to the full as great provocation of vengeance as in the days of Noah: and if the ocean should swell and suck down in its depths and caverns the swarming multitudes who were doing despite to GOD, there would be nothing but the repetition of that in terference of justice which well nigh annihilated mankind, We give no harbourage for a moment we know there could be nothing more false than the opinion that the antediluvians must have been more wicked than ourselves because visited with signal and unequivocal | punishment: but if you infer from this that the flood was unnecessary, that the antediluvians might as well have been spared as their successors, we at once deny the conclusion. The deluge, we again say, was God's sermon against sin, and its delivery was of importance to every succeeding generation. In ejecting our first parents from Paradise, GOD had given a fearful demonstration that the consequences of transgression were not to be told by human arithmetic; but the event was one whose nature and whose memory would easily perish, and men, as they were further removed from their first acts of rebellion, and extended their boundaries, would be sure to lose altogether, or to deform into fable, the history and the results of human apostacy. And therefore we may perceive a great necessity why GoD should utter for once such a homily against sin as might be heard in every land and by every generation: and by sending a flood GOD wrote this homily on the mountains and valleys and forests of this globe, so that they are forced even on the most cursory ob server; since it irresistibly proves to him that the earth has been the scene of a tremendous devastation, and that it cannot now be the sparkling and richly hung creation which it was when the first pair walked abroad in its beauty. Had there never been a flood, we should have wanted our most striking attestation to the truth of the Bible. To the man who examines, carefully and scientifically, the surface of the earth, its phenomena were inexplica ble were he not acquainted with the fact of the flood, but well accounted for when he is acquainted with it. The man who is contented with a less diligent vision, who merely throws his glance across its various landscapes, will discern such marks of disorder and dislocation that, if he know nothing of a flood, he must be lost in amazement at the strangeness of the spectacle. The huge rocks which he sees piled far above him, as | though the work of giants-the vast deserts of sand, which look like the beds of the ocean drained out long centuries back-the mighty caverns which are rent through as though by a pent-up river-all these must tell the most careless observer that the earth on which we dwell has been swept by some awful machinery of wrath, and that there must have been a period when the Creator so disorganized the work of his own hands as almost to reduce it to its original chaos. And if he bear in mind the history of the flood, at every step he takes, he will find the proofs of this history on the features of the landscape; and his journey across its districts, and his stretching his gaze over its departments, will do nothing more than add to the evidence that the records of the Bible are true records and credible. Thus in sending the flood, Gop sent a perpetual attestation to the truth of his word; and he disbelieves the evidence of nature as much as the testimony of Scripture, who can doubt or deny the fact of the deluge. We are prepared to contend that, in bringing water upon the earth, GOD was wondrously providing for the faith of every coming generation, and was writing in characters which no time can efface, and no ingenuity prove to be forgeries, that he hates sin with perfect hatred, and will punish it with rigid punishment. He was telling out, in language understood by the most illiterate, and which shall not cease to ⚫ be heard till the baptism of fire shall have fallen on the earth, that the evil of the imagination of the heart brought down his vengeance. If we always kept in memory the foregoing expression, that the flood has been in every age God's sermon against sin, then we might readily understand why, though it were not repeated, a deluge was once brought upon the earth. But we might think that since there was the same evil after the deluge as before, there was the same reason for a second deluge as for one: and it strikes you as strange that, if GOD smote once, he did not smite twice. But it is important to bear in mind, that, when GoD visibly interferes for the punishment of wickedness, there are some ends of his moral government to be answered, over and above that of the chastisement of the unrighteous. Ordinarily God delays taking vengeance If it be true that our globe is its till the last day of account; and we own witness to the fact, that ven-judge erroneously if we judge from geance has ridden over its provinces, and that the wicked land has been turned into barrenness because of the wickedness of them that dwell therein, then it is true that a twofold end has been answered by the deluge – the veracity of the Bible, and GOD's indignation against evil-these are alike stamped upon every fragment of wreck and confusion. I am firmly persuaded that in the great day of general assize, when the sea as well as the land shall give up its dead, and those who despised the preaching of Noah shall rise up out of the deep, awakened by the trumpet call, and walk up to judgment, there shall be again witnessed the same exhibition of wrath against an unbelieving generation; and the tens of thousands who perished in the flood, shall call loudly and pressingly for sentence on those who had denied GOD, and forgot GOD, whilst they trod an earth which told them of the deluge, and inhabited a world on which was engraven the wrecks of a generation which died for its iniquity. GOD's dealings with man on this side eternity. When there is a direct interposition, such as the deluge, we may be sure it answers other designs besides that of punishing unrighteousness and before, therefore, we can show that there was the same reason for a second deluge as for one, we must not only show there was the same amount of wickedness, and the same evil in the imagination of the heart-we must show there was the same end of moral government to be answered, over and above that of the punishment of the rebellious. And here it is you will feel established in the belief, that a great lesson was recorded as to God's hatred of sin, and his determination to destroy, sooner or later, the impenitent. And God furnished this lesson, so that ages have obliterated no letter of the record, by bringing a flood on the earth, and burying in the womb of waters the unnumbered tribes that crowded its continents. But the lesson required not to be repeated; it was sufficient that it should be given once-suffi cient, seeing that it is still so powerful and persuasive that it leaves inexcusable all who persist in rejecting it. Thus there was a reason for one deluge which there cannot be for another. When GOD had manifested his hatred of sin, and his resolve to punish it, there was a witness sent against the unrighteous; the ends of his moral government were answered, and it was not to be looked for that he would again display so striking a dispensation: so that while there was the same evil and the same provocation, there was not the same reason for interference. The object of the deluge was not only to punish wick edness, it was also to give instruction --which is especially the business of the present dispensation: and since the instruction was immutably given by one deluge, that object, which is confined to the present, could not de- | mand a second. Thus there could evidently be nothing more inconclusive than the reason that, because the imagination of man's heart was only evil, if the first deluge were just, there ought to be a second. GOD sent the first that the unborn might be instructed as well as the living punished. If the one had been insufficient, we might have concluded that a second was to be expected; but since it was full of meaning, there are none of the principles of God's government which would warrant our looking for a second interference. And thus we show there was a great end answered by the deluge, and that, that end being answered, there was no demand for another: so that, without any want of equity, GoD might determine at one time to send a flood, and at another time determine not to send a flood, though on both occasions the reason was, that man's imaginations were evil. In the one case he had a lesson to give-in the other that les son had been given. The circumstances were not, therefore, the same: there was, indeed, the same provocation, but there was not the same reason why that arrangement should be interfered with, which makes the present the probation time, and the future the punishing time. And if the circumstances were not the same, we may readily understand why He who smote once should not smite twice; and why He who said "I will curse the earth, for man's imaginations are evil," should afterwards, when that earth arose before him with the curse stamped on its surface, declare, “I will not again curse the earth, though man's imaginations are still evil.” Now thus far we have dealt only with the first of these questions, which the study of our text seemed to suggest. We have simply endeavoured to show, that there is no just cause of surprise in the fact that Gon, on account of man's provocation, should have smitten once, but that, with exactly the same amount of provocation, he should not have smitten twice. The common idea would be that the destroyed were more wicked than the spared; but this idea is overthrown by our text, when taken in connexion with the passage which refers to the producing cause of the flood. The evil which moved GOD to destroy is declared to have existed when he determined to spare; there was the same ground for a second deluge as for the first; and we naturally think, that, since the second was withheld, so might have been the one; and then we wonder at this outbreak of vengeance. But we have shown that the moral end which one deluge answered did not demand a second; and thus we have shown that, though the evil was not greater before than after the flood, it was consistent with the principles of God's government to smite once, but that those principles would |