112 CHAP. IX. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED WITH RESPECT TO RELIGIOUS DISPENSATIONS. If God is Love towards the human race in their present fallen condition, we may anticipate that the clearest demonstration of the fact will be found in his proceedings bearing directly upon the point the most important to men, their eternal salvation. On that inquiry we are now to fix our attention. Before we enter upon the consideration of the dealings of God with men severally under the different dispensations of religion, under successive disclosures, Antediluvian, Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian, of revealed truth through which He has conducted men to the present hour; we may seasonably refer to one leading appointment of His providential care, one immutable attestation of His holy purposes, one decisive proof that He is Love, which has equally characterised and pervaded all those dispensations. It is this: that obedience to His laws has always had, as it has at this moment, a settled and an indisputable tendency to promote the present happiness of every individual, and disobedience to produce unhappiness. This result, confirmed by universal experience, is scripturally and immutably established on the difference between the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit.1 Can there be found a man to maintain that licentiousness and impurity, that thieving, covetousness, drunkenness, reviling, extortion, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, revellings, conduce to the happiness of individuals, of families, of society? Can a question exist whether love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, are not main ingredients in public and private comfort,—main supports of public and private welfare? Is it not an incontestable proof not only of the holiness of God but of the divine love to men that, in the fixed arrangements of His Providence, He has caused those things, of which He has solemnly announced that whosoever does them shall not inherit the kingdom of God, to be sources of present wretchedness, as an admonitory warning to transgressors: and righteous conduct, which alone can lead to the gift of eternal happiness from our Redeemer, to be accompanied throughout its progress by the cheering conviction that godliness is profitable unto all things; that it has the promise of the life which now is, as well as of that which is to come.1 The narrative contained in the book of Genesis of the events which took place between the death of Abel and the deluge is so brief that large details cannot be expected as to the particular exemplifications by which, during that period, the love of God towards men was displayed. But we are by no means left without specific and signally impressive instances of its manifestations both in encouragements and in warnings. Enoch walked with God. And he was not, for God took him.2 A righteous man exempted from the general sentence pronounced upon the human race: exalted at once from the earth to the kingdom of God without passing through the valley of the shadow of death! What a demonstration to the world of the divine approval of holiness. What an assurance that blessedness beyond the power of 11 Tim. iv. 8. 2 Gen. v. 25. imagination is reserved in a future state of existence for every follower of holiness! In the progress of the ante-diluvian history, when all flesh had corrupted its way upon earth, we learn that the earth was filled with violence1; that is to say, with rapine, confusion, insecurity, and wretchedness. Here we have an incidental testimony to the truth brought forward in the early part of this chapter, that, by the settled arrangements of Providence, sin is the parent of misery in the present life. When the wickedness of men drew forth the declaration, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Why did Noah find grace? The Lord said unto Noah; Come thou and all thy house into the ark: for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Here we have another proof that God fails not to regard the righteous; a proof that the Lord, when he reserves the wicked unto the day of Judgement to be punished, knoweth how to deliver the godly.3 The divine love, however, had been specially exercised in the most open and comprehensive manner towards that pre-eminently corrupt ge1 Gen. vi. 11. 13. 2 Gen. vii. 1. 3 2 Peter, ii. 5. 9. neration. They had received a warning from heaven one hundred and twenty years beforehand of the impending judgement. They had been assured that this period of one hundred and twenty years was mercifully granted to them, as a term of trial whether they would turn unto God. And God was pleased graciously to appoint means singularly adapted to their intended objects of keeping the warning and the assurance in universal and perpetual recollection, and of rousing men to repentance, to be in operation during this momentous interval. The means were three. The first of them, without which the others would have been of no avail, was the continued striving of the Holy Spirit, by his inward grace, against the corruption of the human heart. The declaration of God, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, shall not strive for an unlimited period; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years, included an evident promise that during those years the striving of the Divine Spirit should not be withdrawn. The two remaining means were committed to the instrumental agency of one human individual. was that individual? Noah. What were the means? One of them was the admonitory voice Who |