Imatges de pàgina
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SECTION I.

State of Morals in the ancient world.

Man was originally formed after the moral image of his Maker. His understanding was quick and vigorous in its perceptions; his will subject to the divine law, and to the dictates of his reason; his passions serene and uncontaminated with evil; his affections dignified and pure; his love supremely fixed upon his Creator; and his joy unmingled with those sorrows which have so long been the bitter portion of his degenerate race. But the primogenitor of the human race did not long continue in the holy and dignified station in which he was placed. Though he was placed in "a garden of delights," surrounded with every thing that was delicious to the taste and pleasant to the eye, yet he dared to violate a positive command of his Maker, and to stretch forth his impious hand to pluck and to taste the fruit of the forbidden tree-a picture and a prelude of the conduct of millions of his degraded offspring who despise the lawful enjoyments which lie within their reach, and obstinately rush on forbidden pleasures, which terminate in wretchedness and sorrow. The dismal effects of the depraved dispositions thus introduced among the human species, soon became apparent. Cain, the first-born son of Adam, no sooner reached to the years of maturity, than he gave vent to his revengeful passions, and imbrued his hands in his brother's blood. And ever since the perpetration of this horrid and unnatural deed, the earth has been drenched with the blood of thousands and of millions of human beings, and the stream of corruption has flowed without intermission, and in every direction around the globe.

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Of the state of mankind in the ages before the flood, the sacred history furnishes us with only a few brief and general descriptions. But those descriptions, short and general as they are, present to us a most dreadful and revolting picture of the pitch of depravity and wickedness to which the human race had arrived. We have the testimony of God himself to assure us, that, within 1600 years

from the creation of the world, "the wickedness of man had become great upon the earth-that the earth was filled with violence"-yea, that "every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually,"—or, as it may more literally be rendered from the Hebrew, "the whole imagination, comprehending all the purposes and desires of the mind, was only evil from day to day." "God looked upon the earth; and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.” A more comprehensive summary of the greatness and the extent of human wickedness it is scarcely possible to conceive. The mind is left to fill up the outline of this horrid picture with every thing that is degrading to the human character, with every thing that is profligate and abominable in manners, with every thing that is base, false, deceitful, licentious, and profane, and with every thing that is horrible and destructive in war, and ruinous to the interests of human happiness.

The description now quoted, contains the following intimations-1. That, previous to the deluge, wickedness had become universal. It was not merely the majority of mankind that had thus given unbounded scope to their licentious desires, while smaller societies were to be found in which the worship of the true God, and the precepts of his law, were observed. For "all flesh had corrupted their ways." And, at this period the world is reckoned to have been much more populous than it has been in any succeeding age, and to have contained at least ten billions of inhabitants, or many thousands of times the amount of its present population. So that universal wickedness must have produced misery among human beings to an extent of which we can form no adequate conception. 2. The description implies, that every invention, and every purpose and scheme devised both by individuals and by communities, was of a malevolent nature. "The imagination of every man's heart was only evil continually." The dreadful spectacles of misery and horror which the universal prevalence of such principles and practices which then existed, must have produced, are beyond the power of human imagination either to conceive or to delineate. Some faint idea, however, may be formed of some of these spectacles, from the descriptions I have already given of

the effects which would inevitably follow, were the principle of benevolence to be eradicated from the mind, or were any one of the precepts of the divine law to be universally violated-(see Ch. II. sect. iv. and Ch. III. throughout.) 3. The effects produced by this universal depravity are forcibly expressed in the words, "The earth was filled with violence." From this declaration, we are necessarily led to conceive a scene in which universal anarchy and disorder, devastation and wretchedness, every where prevailed the strong and powerful forcibly seizing upon the wealth and possessions of the weak, violating the persons of the female sex, oppressing the poor, the widow, and the fatherless, overturning the established order of families and societies, plundering cities, demolishing temples and palaces, desolating fields, orchards and vineyards, setting fire to towns and villages, and carrying bloodshed and devastation through every land-a scene in which cruelty, injustice and outrages of every kind, obscenity, revelry, riot and debauchery of every description, triumphed over every principle of decency and virtue-a scene in which the earth was strewed with smoking ruins, with the fragments of human habitations, with mangled human beings in a state of wretchedness and despair, and with the unburied carcasses of the slain.

Such appears to have been the state of general society at the time when Noah was commanded to build an ark of refuge a state of society which could not have long continued, but must inevitably, in the course of a few generations, have thinned the race of mankind, and ultimately have extirpated the race of Adam from the earth, even although the deluge had never been poured upon the world. Wickedness appears to have come to such a height, that no interposition of Providence could be supposed available to produce a reformation among mankind, without destroying their freedom of will; and, therefore, it was an act of mercy, as well as of judgment, to sweep them away at once by the waters of the flood, after having given them warnings of their danger; in order to convince such obstinate and abandoned characters, that "there is a God that judgeth in the earth ;" and in order to prevent the misery which would otherwise have been entailed on succeeding generations.

Not only the Sacred, but also the Pagan writers, when alluding to the antediluvians, uniformly represent them as abandoned to uncleanness, and all kinds of wickedness. Eutychus, in his Annals, when speaking of the posterity of Cain, says, "that they were guilty of all manner of filthy crimes with one another, and, meeting together in public places for that purpose, two or three men were concerned with the same woman; the ancient women, if possible, being more lustful and brutish than the young. Nay, fathers lived promiscuously with their daughters, and the young men with their mothers, so that neither the children could distinguish their own parents, nor the parents know their own children."-Lucien, a native of Samosata, a town situated on the Euphrates, a spot where memorials of the deluge were carefully preserved, gives the following account of the antediluvians :-" The present race of mankind," says he, "are different from those who first existed; for those of the antediluvian world were all destroyed. The present world is peopled from the sons of Deucalion [or Noah]; having increased to so great a number from one person. In respect of the former brood, they were men of violence, and lawless in their dealings. They were contentious, and did many unrighteous things; they regarded not oaths, nor observed the rights of hospitality, nor showed mercy to those who sued for it. On this account they were doomed to destruction: and for this purpose there was a mighty eruption of waters from the earth, attended with heavy showers from above; so that the rivers swelled, and the sea overflowed, till the whole earth was covered with a flood, and all flesh drowned. Deucalion alone was preserved to re-people the world. This mercy was shown to him on account of his piety and justice. His preservation was effected in this manner :-He put all his family, both his sons and their wives, into a vast ark which he had provided, and he went into it himself. At the same time animals of every species-boars, horses, lions, serpents, whatever kind lived upon the face of the earth-followed him by pairs; all which he received into the ark, and experienced no evil from them; for there prevailed a wonderful harmony throughout, by the immediate influence of

the Deity. Thus were they wafted with him as long as the flood endured."

Such is the account which Lucian gives of the antediluvian world, and of the preservation of the human race, as he received it from the traditions of the inhabitants of Hierapolis, in Syria, where the natives pretended to have very particular memorials of the deluge. It corroborates the facts stated in the sacred history, and bears a very near resemblance to the authentic account which has been transmitted to us by Moses.-These facts, respecting the depravity of the antediluvians, present to us a striking example, and a demonstrative evidence of the dreadful effects to which a general violation of the divine law necessarily leads; and of the extensive confusion and misery which are inevitably produced, when the law of love is set aside, and when malevolence exerts, without control, its diabolical energies. All order in society is subverted, every species of rational happiness is destroyed, and the existence of intelligent beings, in such a state, becomes a curse to themselves, and to all around them. Had not this been the case in the primeval world, we cannot suppose that the Deity would have exerted his Omnipotence in shattering the crust of the terraqueous globe, and burying its inhabitants under the waters of a deluge.

After the deluge had subsided, and the race of Noah had begun to multiply on the earth, it was not long before the depravity of man began to show itself by its malignant effects; though human wickedness has never arrived to such a pitch as in the times before the flood; for this reason, among others, that the life of man has been reduced to a narrow span, which prevents him from carrying his malevolent schemes to such an extent as did the inhabitants of the world before the flood, whose lives were prolonged to the period of nearly a thousand years.The lust of ambition soon began to exert its baleful influence over the mind; and an inordinate desire after wealth, distinctions, and aggrandizement, paved the way for the establishment of despotism, and for encroachments on the rights and the enjoyments of mankind. Among the he roes and despots of antiquity, Nimrod, the founder of the

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