increasing but its measure was become full; it could no longer be borne with. "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." It is a dreadful description: and the lamentable fact of this universal corruption is a practical comment upon the doctrine of the fall of man, which must needs carry conviction to every mind.

So the Lord said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth: both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them." I need scarcely observe, that when God is said to repent of any thing which he hath done, it is spoken only after the manner of men. When he acts as we do under the influence of our human emotions, he uses respecting himself the language which is descriptive of our feelings. But what an impression does this language convey of the terrible nature of sin, and of the certain punishment which it must receive! Believe it, sin is no light matter: and if the

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God saith to him, do this, he doeth it. The Apostle, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, adduces this ready obedience of Noah as an eminent proof of his lively faith. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." This act of his, continued during so long a time, was a testimony, during that whole period, to all who saw, or heard of, his undertaking. It afforded them a warning; which, being given by his admonitions, for he was a preacher of righteousness, and thus confirmed by his continual employment, left them wholly inexcusable, and condemned them of carelessness, impenitence, and unbelief.

But the hour approacheth. The times of the Lord's long-suffering are near their close. The hundred and twenty years are drawing to an end, and within seven days of their conclusion, the righteous man, and his family, and the prescribed number of every kind of animal, are commanded to enter into the ark.

It

Having laboured so long in framing the ark, Noah would not now lose the things which he had wrought. Probably no visible signs of the coming destruction were yet apparent. Perhaps he was ridiculed as a visionary by those around him. But his implicit faith in the word of God could not be shaken. was as vigorous as on the day when he first began to build the ark. It was steadfast, unmoveable, and persevering. He staggered not at entering into the prison of wood, as to the scoffers it might seem to be: but himself, "and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives, with all the living creatures after their kind, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him and the Lord shut him in." Thus the Almighty himself closed the door of the ark upon him so securely, that the waters could not burst in by it; and the same deed, which ensured his preservation, became an act of exclusion to the whole remaining world of the impenitent and unbelieving.

And now "were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of

heaven were opened." The subterraneous waters rushing upwards from below, and the rain descending incessantly in cataracts from above, for the space of forty days, and forty nights, deluged the whole earth. “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward," that is, more than eight yards above the top of the highest mountains, "did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man; all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark."

upon

What a tremendous, what a total ruin!

how surprising! how sudden! how awful! The divine Saviour has informed us, that to the very day on which the flood came they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, as if no harm whatever would befal them. Death seized upon them careless and sensual. In vain they seek admission into the ark. It is too late. The door is shut, and no man can open it. With all their guilt and sin upon their heads they perish, and are overwhelmed in one vast and common destruction.

And will any thing of this kind ever occur again? Shall the earth again behold so universal, so alarming a desolation? Yes, another day, clad in equal, or yet greater, terrors, will arise upon this sinful world. Jehovah indeed has pledged his word, that he will no more destroy the earth with a flood; but there is another great and terrible day of the Lord approaching, "in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." "The