a view does this give us of the wickedness of man at that period! How solemn was that voice echoing through that world of sin and transgression-like the last trump in the morning of the resurrection! If many mocked, with what anguish must they have remembered it in a future age, when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floods came and swept them all away.

Enoch lived a life of faith, maintained holy fellowship and sweet communion with God; and God testified his delight in him by translating him, soul and body, to heaven, not suffering him to taste death. By this great event also, God gave his church a lively assurance of a future world, and the resurrection of the dead. All who had died were sleeping in their graves. No specific promise had been given that the body should be delivered from the ruins of the fall. Here the saints witnessed a rescue of Enoch from death and the grave, and had a precious intimation of the future entire deliverance of the whole man from the bondage of corruption. One instance God gave to the antediluvian church. One to the church, by Elijah, in succeeding periods, that her faith might be in God; until Christ should burst the bands of death and ascend a triumphant conqueror "the resurrection and the life."

CHAPTER III.

Long lives and numbers of the Antediluvians. Preservation of the Church. Her enemies. Their great wickedness. God's care of his people. Deluge.

GOD was pleased to continue the inhabitants of the old world upon earth to an astonishing period. Enoch was taken to heaven in the 365th year of his age; but the rest of Seth's descendants, of whom we have any account, all lived more than seven centuries. Methuselah attained to

the age of 969 years. Many, "not knowing the power of God" have supposed that their years were lunar months: but a moment's consideration will show the absurdity of such a conjecture; for it would make them parents when mere infants, and reduce the duration of the old world to less than 130 years. By suffering man to remain long upon the earth, God gave him an opportunity to act out the wickedness of his heart, and to show to the universe the malignity and bitterness of sin.

Living as they did, through many centuries, the antediluvians must have been very numerous. When Cain destroyed his brother, they had greatly multiplied, so that he was fearful to go forth, lest any one that met him should kill him. The first generations lived through several successive periods, until the mass of men had accumulated to millions.

Among this vast population we behold the Church, small but distinct. Indeed it was the only thing of any worth in the sight of God—the only thing deserving sacred record.He has suffered every thing else-mighty kingdoms, flourishing cities, vast achievements, powerful warriors, and renowned statesmen-all to perish in oblivion; and has told us only of the holy seed, the generation of the righteous, who maintained religion, and who, especially from Enoch to Noah, were doubtless hated of all men. following is

their record:

The

The enemies of the Church were mighty. Cain was a hardened wretch. He despised the sacrifice which prefigured the atonement, and attempted to please God by his own devices. Angry with Jehovah for exposing the hollowness of his heart, he wreaked his vengeance on his brother Abel. God called him to account, and inquired for Abel; but, in hardened impudence, he said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Lord pronounced him cursed, and drove him out, a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth. At hearing his sentence, remorse seized his soul; and he

Lived after his

son's birth, yrs.

Lived in all,

years.

Died in the yr. of the world.

exclaimed, "My punishment is greater than I can bear!" What a picture of impenitent misery! God determined he should live, a monument of the Divine abhorrence of his crime; and he set a mark upon him, lest any finding him should kill him. Cain went forth and forsook the presence and ordinances of God-intrenched himself in a city, and became a miserable worldling. His posterity greatly increased and walked in his steps. Of some we read, who were ingenious artificers, but of none who sought the Lord. Lamech took to himself two wives, and introduced to the world the dreadful sin of polygamy.

Not long did the descendants of Cain flourish in the earth, without exercising a baneful influence upon the children of God. These, beholding their beautiful women contracted marriages with them. Their progeny were giants in wickedness. Says the inspired historian, "there were giants in those days; when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bear children to them; the same became men of renown;"-no doubt the men of whom Enoch prophesied the Lord would be avenged for "all their ungodly deeds which they had ungodly committed, and all their hard speeches which they had spoken against him." And now the flood-gates of wickedness being open, and the torrents of iniquity overflowing the earth, the Lord sware in his wrath, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh," is corrupt, depraved, has prostituted all his noble powers, before the most debased appetites and passions.

The Spirit of God being withdrawn, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience, had a full triumph. Generation succeeded generation, practising the most open, daring, atrocious wickedness. Violence, murder, war, rapine, and vile idolatry filled the earth. Terrible were the enemies of vital godliness.

But amidst the moral desolations of the old world, the Church stood. It was the cause of Jehovah. In the little families of Methuselah and Lamech and Noah it lived; and in the last of these holy men, God designed to carry it through the most awful judgment ever inflicted upon our globe. Upon a view of the horrid impiety which filled the earth, "it repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth and it grieved him at his heart." Not only had he an extreme abhorrence of the crimes of men and

their desperate wickedness, but his soul loathed them"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and every creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them."

Easily indeed, might he have sent forth his Spirit, and converted the hearts of that ungodly generation to himself, and fitted them all for the happiness of heaven; and not less impious men of later ages have had the hardihood to contemn God, because, when it lay in his power, he did not save them and all men. But it pleases Jehovah sometimes to manifest his justice and his wrath, as well as his grace. He would have been righteous in destroying them without warning. But to exhibit further his patience and long suffering, he warned them by the preaching of Noah, for the space of 120 years. In that holy man was the Spirit of Christ; he was full of the Holy Ghost. By this Spirit, says Peter," he went and preached unto the spirits in prison," (the spirits confined in the time when Peter wrote 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."

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 of 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 labor almost too great for man, and which would expose him to the most cutting ridicule and reproach. But "moved with fear," reverencing Jehovah, he commenced 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 np, 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; 2348 years before Christ, and 4177 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 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."