in the prison of hell, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,) "which sometimes were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God, waited in the days of Noah." of For the preservation of this holy man and his family, God directed Noah to prepare an ark. It was a strange commission. It was making provision against a calamity which, to the eye sense and reason, seemed impossible. But Noah believed the word of the Lord. He did not expostulate against the judgment; nor did he decline a labour almost too great for man, and which would expose him to the most cutting ridicule and reproach. But" moved with fear," reverencing Jehovah, he com menced his work; and by his works, warned every beholder to repent of his sins and flee from impending destruction. The world beheld, ridiculed, and mocked; went on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. No heart relented. No. sinner, fearful of the truth, inquired, Where is God my maker? But the purpose of God was fixed; and he moved on to its accomplishment, glorious in holiness. At the appointed time, the ark was completed; and Noah and his wife, and his sons and their wives, the LITTLE CHURCH OF GOD, and two of every flying fowl and creeping thing, for their continuance upon the earth were gathered in. Solemn moment! The door was shut; and the rain descended, the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and God had no pity, and man could find no refuge; the tallest trees, the highest mountains were alike covered, and paleness, and horror, and death, seized the vast family of man. To this great and awful judgment of God upon the enemies of the Church, we have evidently some allusion in early writings and the religious rites of Heathen nations; and there are numerous appearances in the earth which clearly indicate that it was once overwhelmed by a deluge of water. Trees, bones of animals, sea shells, petrified fishes deeply imbedded in the earth, yea in the hardest strata and on the tops of the highest mountains, are memorials of this dread event. But we believe it chiefly, because God declares it in his holy word. We do not ask how it could be, we enter into no philosophical discussion, we seek for the intervention of no comet; sufficient for us is it to know that the winds and the waves and the seas obey the Almighty. We learn from it that God abhors the workers of iniquity and will not let the wicked go unpunished; and we lift up our hearts to God in the heavens and say, Lord, give us grace that we may take warning and flee from the wrath to come. The ark consisted of three stories, with one window in the top. It was sufficiently large for the purpose for which it was designed; being 480 feet in length, 81 in breadth, and 41 in height. After floating on the waters 150 days, it rested on one of the mountains of Ararat. Noah and his family continued in it one year and ten days. The flood took place in the 1656th year of the world; 2,348 years before Christ, and 4,177 years from the present time. This flood which cleansed the world was a remarkable type of the redemption by the blood of Christ, which is sealed to us by the baptism of water. These "eight souls were saved by water." “The like figure whereunto" says Peter, "even baptism doth also now save us, (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." And the ark, which was the refuge of the people of Jehovah, amid the storms of divine vengeance, was a type of Christ, the eternal refuge of perishing sinners. "Come thou," says God, in this day of mercy, to every sinner, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark." CHAPTER IV. Re-settlement of the Church. Prophecies of Noah. Location of Ararat. Building of Babel. God curtails the future power of the enemies of his church by the confusion of tongues and shortening men's lives. WHEN God had fully executed his vengeance on the wicked inhabitants of the old world, he brought forth his little Church from the ark and gave it the earth for a possession. To express the grateful emotions of his heart, Noah built an altar and offered sacrifices unto the Lord. His offerings were accepted, and God renewed with him and his seed the covenant of grace, making the rainbow, a thing permanent as light, a token of the covenant; and gave them every moving thing to be meat for them, prohibiting however the eating of blood, because he had appointed the blood to be an atonement for sin. As mankind had no right to eat flesh before the deluge, this grant was a great alleviation of the original curse upon human sustenance ;-an alleviation in prophetic view of which, at the birth of Noah, Lamech might well exclaim, "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." “Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation." But "there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not ;" and such is the fidelity of the scripture historians, that they fail not to record the vices of the holiest men. Noah planted a vineyard, and drank to excess of the fruit of the vine. As he lay inebriated and uncovered in his tent, he was discovered by Ham, his youngest son, who made sport of the humiliating spectacle. But, actuated by a better spirit, Shem and Japhet took a garment and went backward, and decently covered the nakedness of their father. When Noah awoke and was informed of the deeds they had done, he declared, under the influence of the Spirit, the feelings of his soul relating to the future condition of their families. "Cursed be Canaan! A servant of servants to his brothers let him be! And let Canaan be their servant! And may God extend Japhet, And may he dwell in the tents of Shem! It was a wonderful prophecy, which has been astonishingly ful- The Ark rested on one of the mountains of Arrarat. These mountains are commonly supposed to lie in the ancient country of Armenia. Some have conjectured that they were farther East, perhaps on the Hymlaya mountains, the highest in the world; as the journeying of the descendants of Noah towards Shinar is said to have been from the East, and not as it must have been on the common supposition, from the West; as no mention is ever made of Noah in any account of the Western nations, though he lived 300 years after the flood; as the Hindoo and Chinese are very ancient nations; and Fohi, the reputed founder of the Chinese empire, bears strong resemblance to Noah. But it is most probable that they were not far distant from Shinar, as no motive could have led so early to a distant emigration. At the close of the first century, after Noah came out of the ark, his descendants, who might already have increased to a million of souls, spread over that beautiful country through which ran the Euphrates. At this time the whole earth was of one language; that language, no doubt, with which God endued Adam. Had men been uncorrupt, uniformity of speech might have been of the highest utility. But guided by the depraved heart, it had become one of the most powerful instruments of corruption, and was probably one of the chief sources of the abominations and violence of the antediluvians. One mind powerful in oratory or song, could easily reach the hearts of a world. God therefore resolved to deprive the future enemies of his Church of so tremendous an engine. This purpose he executed on beholding them there on the plains of Shinar, combining together and erecting a city and tower which would make them one vast and powerful people. "Go to," said he, "let us go down and confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." The builders of Babel were thrown into confusion and scattered abroad, and the little Church was left to gather strength, unmolested by so great a weapon. Another thing, which before the flood, had nearly destroyed the Church, was the great age which the wicked were suffered to attain. Worldly power would not be the portion of God's people. Should the wicked therefore, who ordinarily inherit it, be continued again centuries upon earth, and for centuries persecute the Church, how could she live? She almost expires in particular provinces, even under the tyranny for a few years, of some merciless persecutor. God therefore, out of regard to his Church, shortened the lives of men, first to a few centuries; and then, to three score and ten years. Where to look for the Church at this period we know not; but it continued in the family of Noah, and in the line of Shem. Shem lived an hundred and fifty years after the birth of Abraham, and must have been venerated for his piety and age, by all about him; but he seems to have been unknown by the family of that pious patriarch. His descendants, however, we soon find in the regions of Chaldea and Assyria; though, by many able and learned writers, it is thought they had no concern in the building of Babel. They feared God. They maintained among them the true religion. They were the branch from which Christ was to come. God was their God, and Christ their Redeemer; and, if they sometimes partook of the general corruption around them, and "served other gods," yet the gates of hell were never suffered to prevail against them. In the providence of God, the world, which had been in so awful a manner depopulated, was soon filled with inhabitants. Japhet had seven sons. These settled Armenia and Greece, and from them came the present inhabitants of Europe and the United States. Ham had four, whose posterity filled Babylonia and Arabia-Canaan and Egypt. Shem five. From these descended the Assyrians, Persians, Jews, Hindoos, and Chinese, and aborigines of America. These were the sons of Noah, "after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations; and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood." Some will ever affirm that the Negro, the Chinese, the European and the American Indian could not have had a common origin; but the candid inquirer after truth will receive the testimony of God, and by this be satisfied that all mankind descended from the patriarch who was preserved in the ark. CHAPTER V. Early defection from the true religion. History of Idolatry. THE awful judgment of God upon the old world, did not eradicate depravity from the human heart. Even Ham, the youngest son of the patriarch Noah, one who had witnessed all the wonders of the flood, soon exhibited an unnatural and depraved spirit, and went out, like Cain, with his posterity, from the presence of the Lord, an ungodly generation. The Cushites, his immediate descendants, were probably the chief families that were concerned in the building of Babel; but neither were they brought back to the Lord by the new and fearful judgment |