most depraved.

Therefore, I am not

without strong assurance that both young and old will take the Lord alone for their God, and worship Him, as they know that He desires to be worshipped, not only with their lips, but in their lives. Let this be done, and whatever may have been the case in other days, those that remain to them will be tranquil. For the hand of the Lord will support them, while they breathe the air of heaven; the shadow of His wing will cover them, when they lie on their death-beds; God's Spirit will shed his light even into their graves; and the Son of God will bid them welcome to eternity.

SERMON V.

THE DELUGE.

GENESIS ix. 19.

These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

THE chapter which it will be our present business to examine, brings before us, as it were, the third act in the great drama of man's history. The mighty judgment with which God had threatened the earth, had befallen. The waters of the great flood had rolled their masses over the surface of the globe, and man, and beast, and bird, and reptile, all, except those which entered with Noah into the ark, had perished. In speaking by anticipation

of this fearful event, I took occasion to point out, that, severe as the punishment was, upon one guilty generation, the flood was an act of mercy towards many generations; because it cleared the soil of the bad plants which thoroughly encumbered it, and left free space for better seed to grow. A new root, if I may so speak, struck out its fibres, from which the race of man might spring; and God was enabled to keep the promise which he had given in paradise, by making a way for Himself through which to bring the Redeemer into the world. And with respect to the inferior animals, their destruction by the same judgment which destroyed all mankind was inevitable. Neither can there be said to have been either cruelty or injustice in it. The lower race of animals seem to have no natural fear of death. They all, moreover, are meant to contribute in some way or another to man's convenience; and hence, though not to be cruelly treated by man, they are still,

and always have been, his servants. But had God miraculously saved them alive, while he destroyed the whole human race except a single family, man could have exercised no dominion over them. There is, therefore, no ground for questioning God's goodness, or distrusting the history as it is related in the Bible, on the plea that the innocent perished with the guilty -for that was unavoidable.

Before I go on to speak of what befel after the waters of the great flood had subsided, it may not be amiss if I point out, that there has scarcely been a tribe or nation of men, under the sun, among whom any thing like letters or history remain, who have not preserved some vague tradition of this mighty judgment. Of the proofs afforded in the external appearance of the earth itself, that four or five thousand years ago it must have undergone some great convulsion, in which water was the principal agent, I will not say any thing; because the language

which it would be necessary to employ, might puzzle and perplex the generality of my readers. But of some of the memorials preserved among other nations than the Jews, of this first signal act of God's wrath, I think that it will both interest and instruct if I give a brief sketch. Remember that the truth of the Bible is too surely fixed on other grounds, to stand in need of support from such quarters; yet, it is quite certain, that where all tradition unites in vouching for the occurrence of some one remarkable event, we should scarcely be justified, even if there were no Divine inspiration, on which to fall back, were we to reject its testimony.

No man can have read his Bible without meeting there with frequent mention of a people called the Chaldeans, nor conversed with persons even moderately read in general literature, without learning from them that the Chaldeans were, of old, a great and a wise people. They calculated