With Noah the line of the antediluvian elders closes; and although the notices of their history are neither numerous nor lengthy, they are very conclusive regarding the nature of their religious knowledge and belief. We behold them, not only instructed as to the ground of justification before God, and giving lessons in the faith by which, even to this day, they, though dead, yet speak ;— but we see the hope of the resurrection and the hope of a change on the human body, so as to fit it to walk with God, so strong, that one of them is rewarded for his faith in this respect, by being taken in the body into those mansions whither Elijah was afterwards in like manner translated.

But, above all, we behold in their history the commencement of that separation between light and darkness -between truth and falsehood-between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, which was to be carefully maintained, openly in the world, until the Great Priest and Prophet arose, perfect in his generations, by whom all righteousness was to be fulfilled. When the time arrived that the book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, had to be made up, it then appeared that God had, from the very first, been preserving that genealogy pure and incontrovertible; so that even at his birth it should appear that He was, indeed, the son promised to Eve, who was to bruise the head of the serpent.

While this was, evidently, one of the grand objects which Divine Providence had in view in the

record which was kept from the beginning; it was no less apparent that, if possible, a still more important purpose was subserved by it.

Sacrifices had, from the first, been offered up by priests, in a line chosen by God; and they were continued in that line till He came who suffered without the gate. In whatever faith, with whatever view, sacrifices might have been brought to the altar, amongst other courses of priests in other nations, the elders first, and 'the twelve tribes instantly serving God day and night,' offered sacrifices plainly of a typical and prospective nature; sacrifices which, when attended to according to the Divine commandment, clearly indicated that all the efficacy they had, was derived from that which was prefigured, and not from any merit of their own.

Nothing could, therefore, more clearly show, that the Lord Jesus was the true victim-that his sacrifice was for the redemption of sins that were past, as well as future; nor any thing more strikingly justify the faith of the elders, than that the Lord, when he was offered, was led to the altar by the hands of priests, descended of, and in the right line of the patriarchs and elders. It most distinctly pointed him out as the antetype of all those atoning sacrifices, by which the sins of the world were typically purged, by those whom he chose to minister to him, from the time of righteous Abel, to the time of Zacharias, son of Barachias, who was slain between the temple and the altar.

CHAPTER X.

THE FLOOD.

ALTHOUGH the testimony from heaven regarding man has always been of a very humiliating nature, yet there appears to have been something preeminently bad in the policy and public conduct of mankind, for some time previous to the flood. The fertility of the earth had, probably, been much greater than it afterwards was, and the air more salubrious;—as seems to be attested by the extraordinary longevity of the antediluvians. That longevity, and the abundance of all things, would naturally tend to make the bulk of mankind reckless of any thing but present enjoyment, and unmindful of the certainty of death. There seems, also, to have been a great disposition to violence, unruliness, and contempt of government;-arising in part, it may be conjectured, from the want of the authority, afterwards given, to punish murder by the death of the culprit.

While these circumstances appear to have induced a state of corruption and violence, among the

mass of the people, the true worship was losing its followers, by the seductive arts of the daughters of men, and other causes. So awful was this defection, that there seemed to be none to stand in the breach;' and God said, 'I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth.'

The wiles of the enemy, which the promise had frustrated in the case of Adam, and which the appointment of Seth had nullified in the instance of Cain, threatened at last to be successful. But God had a plan of escape and of mercy in store,- Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord;' or, in the words applied to a preacher of righteousness, like himself, long afterwards, he obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.' But Noah's 'preaching of righteousness' seemed to the busy world like idle tales.

It would appear from the Lord threatening, when he commanded Noah to make the Ark, that His Spirit 'should not always strive with man, yet, that his days should be one hundred and twenty years,' that the Ark was one hundred and twenty years in building, or, as the Apostle Peter terms it,' a preparing.' We see good grounds, then, for Paul saying that Noah did so in faith, as the danger he apprehended was not seen. But how he should be styled a 'preacher of righteousness,' and why it should be said, ‘he became heir of the righteousness which is by faith,' when not one word about righteousness is to be found in the record of what he did or said, calls for some enquiry.

God threatened the flood, because all flesh had

corrupted HIS way? The way of God was seen where the way of the Tree of Life was kept.' This way all flesh had corrupted, and gone aside after their own ways. The way of the Tree of Life was a memorial of the Truth of God,—a public declaration of the Divine Righteousness. Divine Righteousness was written and emblazoned at the east of the Garden of Eden. When a preacher came from thence, to warn a sinful world, he must have studied the doctrine of the Lord, which was held up at Eden, to very little purpose, if he had any thing to testify of, in his preaching, but the Righteousness which saveth from death."

To the preacher of this Righteousness the Lord says, 'thee only have I seen righteous before me in this generation.' We cannot suppose, that on the whole earth, at that time, amongst all the millions, there was not one honest man, nor one respectable character, save Noah. But they all, with the solitary exception of Noah, had forsaken the way of the Lord. He cleaved to the Lord and to his Righteousness, with full purpose of heart, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; and, when he came abroad to warn a guilty world, the quarter he came from would be very well known, and the subject of his preaching pretty shrewdly guessed, even by those who might not personally hear him.

But his preaching was not confined to words; he was engaged in an act that would soon be noised abroad, and be heard of in the most remote countries. Noah, in making the Ark, both preached to