from the earth, and separated it from the approach of men. This was an important precaution. Had it been placed upon a hill, then when the floods began to rise sufficiently to produce conviction, it might have been easily assailed, and made the triumphant refuge of rebels, instead of the exclusive shelter and salvation of the righteous. But how dreadful must have been this gradual but steady rise of the waters! How sad the scenes of inevitable misery! How sad to see helpless, despairing, but still rebellious men, shrinking step by step from the mighty tide, rising, by the convulsive struggle that terror gives, to Alpine solitudes that they had never scaled before; and to see numbers weak and exhausted dropping gradually down, till the last few resolute spirits, gathered upon the loftiest and only remaining height, waited as the representatives of universal man, the crisis of their fate. I remember to have scen in a picture of this scene by a great master, one inimitable stroke of eloquence. Raised above the heads of the last perishing family, himself the last surviving remnant of the reptile race, coiling himself round the last branch that remained uningulfed, the serpent, the emblem of him who caused the whole mischief, stretched his scaly form into the air, and, in the convulsive wreathing of his last agony, spits forth his venom in the face of avenging heaven.

But the vengeance of God must be complete. Whatever were these scenes of horror, still the flood rose. All flesh must die; the highest hill was covered, and the last cry of hopelessness,— the last shout of violence,—the last throb of the corrupted heart of man, the last curse of concentrated bitterness and atheism, were lost in the resistless sweep of the prevailing waters. "Every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground; both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the foul of heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth." The curse of avenging holiness was fatal.

But 6th and lastly, We must observe that this destruction was not universal. The waters rose, but they bare up the ark. They covered the highest mountains; but the ark of divine mercy still floated triumphantly upon the buoyant wave. All flesh died on the earth. But Noah remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark! One wide waste of tossing waters rolled round the ruined world, and silence and darkness brooded again over the deep. It was the silence of death. It was the gloom of

Jehovah's frown. It was the completion of the threatened curse. It was the close of the hundred and twenty years. It was wrath unto the uttermost. It was the judicial removal into everlasting misery, of the inhabitants of a world. But still in the midst of wrath, God remembered mercy. In the very bosom of that tremendous ocean, the ark bore its solitary but sufficient testimony to the grace and faithfulness of God; and as the bright messengers of Jehovah's power sped through the abyss, to say to him who sent them forth, "It is done as thou hast commanded"; they would hear from within the ark the voice of thanksgiving and praise, vibrating along the deep, and ascending to the throne of the Eternal. "Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are thy ways, thou king of saints."

II. But having thus taken a hasty view of the destruction that came upon the old world, let us now direct our attention to some of the points of resemblance between it and that still more fearful evil spoken of in the text "as the coming of the Son of man." "As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of man be." The Son of man, the once crucified Jesus, who is now exalted to the throne in heaven, shall come in his glory to judge the quick and the dead,—to bring the last dispensation of this world to a close by a judgment yet more awful than that which opened the windows of heaven upon mankind. "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, to take vengeance on those who know not God, and who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." And the circumstances of that visitation shall be in many respects similar to the evil which we have previously considered, Let us trace them through the same particulars, which in the former instance we have already noticed.

1st, The evil has been long threatened. The Scriptures state distinctly, that a fearful vengeance awaits an unbelieving world. "At the end of the world," said the Saviour, "the Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire." And St. Peter says that "the heavens and the earth which are now, are reserved unto fire at the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." And the book of the revelation plainly intimates an awful contest at the last, between the Saviour and the abettors of iniquity, which shall end in the messengers of his power casting them, and all, both

dead and living, whose names are not found written in the book of life, into the lake of fire. So plainly is the awful evil of the Saviour's second coming declared to the world. But,

2d, This evil has been long delayed. Eighteen hundred years have passed since these declarations were uttered, and still things remain as they were. The heaven is still bright and peaceful over our heads. The sun still rises and sets, and brings on summer and winter, and the appointed weeks of harvest: and the sign of the Son of man is not yet seen in heaven. The trumpet of judgment does not yet begin to sound; and though "Tophet has been ordained of old, and the pile thereof is fire and much wood, and the breath of the Lord, as a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it;" its gates are not yet thrown manifestly open to execute conclusive vengeance upon mankind. And this delay is, as in the former case, in mercy. It is to give men more abundantly the opportunity of repentance. It is that the offer of salvation may be faithfully and fully made. It is that the godly among men may send the tidings of salvation round the world; and that a multitude may be redeemed out of every tribe, and nation, and people; and then the end shall come.

It is an awful view of this world, but it is a true one, that its existence is only prolonged, with a deadly curse impending over it, till all the redeemed shall be gathered from the four winds of heaven; and that the interests of the mighty, and the fates of empires, great as they may seem, are nothing in the scale, when weighed against the interests of the church of God. The final judgment of the wicked is only delayed, as the Saviour said, "for the elect's sake." While the spiritual temple of God is building, while believers are seeking shelter in the ark, the storm will sleep; but once let the last redeemed soul be safely housed; once let this world be exclusively a scene of rebellion and resolute impenitence; and then, "as the lightening cometh from the east, and shineth even to the west," so shall the flaming sword of a Saviour's vengeance leave its mysterious scabbard, and bathe that world in flames.

3d, Whenever this dreadful judgment shall come, it will be amply deserved. It is merited at any moment. The state of society, if it be judged by the laws of God, by the revealed rule of godliness, is fearfully wicked. The great evil lies in the native corruption of the heart. "In every man born into the world, it

deserveth God's wrath and damnation;" and in every individual in whom the power of sin has not been subdued by divine grace, it calls for vengeance. But as the world goes forward, the actual evil of depravity and alienation from God increases. It is not the tale of old age, nor the unfounded fable of an alarmist, to say that the wickedness of the wicked is assuming a deadlier dye. They who have watched society closely, know that some years back, before the revival of religion, there was a large neutral mass of persons, who were without lively influential religion, but who did little active mischief; but since that day, this neutral body has been rapidly diminishing in two ways: while true religion has had its triumphs in many who are saved-many also have declined to more ungodliness; have worn a less equivocal character of open irreligion; and vice has assumed among them a degree of inveteracy and concentrated virulence before unknown. Perhaps the corruption of the juvenile population, the practiced villainy and hardihood of mere infant delinquents, is one of the worst features of the times, and one of the strongest indications of the approach of this dispensation towards its close.

Now, though at all times the wickedness of man deserves its doom, yet we conceive that by this progress in wickedness, this gradual secession from God and goodness, there will be in the last days presented for the endurance of divine wrath, a people wrought to the very acmé of ungodliness, prepared for any act of impious desperation, and fit only for the burning.

4th. Whenever this event shall come, it will be unexpected. "The day of the Lord shall so come as a thief in the night.""When they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction shall come upon them, and they shall not escape." "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of man." They shall be immersed in the occupations of this present life, and utterly heedless of the life to come.

There is at first an instinctive revolting from this, as a thing impossible. And yet if we look fairly at the case, how much of probability there is in it. We have seen it happen at the deluge, and there is every reason to conclude from facts, that it will happen again. If the day of the Lord were to dawn to-morrow, and with the morning light the sign of the Son of man were seen in the heavens, would it not find the great mass of mankind totally indifferent and reckless? Are there not multitudes of nominal VOL. II.-3

Christians, even in this enlighted land, who have not a single serious thought of preparation for such a day? They buy, they sell, they plant, they speculate, they eat and drink, and marry and are given in marriage; but for any thing they feel or care to feel respecting the coming of the Son of man, there might have been no promise, no warning, no revelation, no future state, and no God. They have no practical reference to these things, but to make sport of them. Any thing is interesting to them, but the will of God and the promise of the Saviour's coming.

We may easily see, then, how the day of final vengeance shall be as unexpected by the world, as the day of the flood. It has only to come upon us as the last day of this year gradually steals upon us; and excepting the comparative few, who are in carnest about their salvation, it will find the mass of society just what the last day of this year will most probably find them, "minding earthly things," and regardless of eternity, and "without hope and without God in the world;" and in the face of a faithful record and a faithful ministry, utterly unconscious and unbelieving of any threatened danger. And then,

5th. This judgment will be fatal. It will be fatal indeed. We are informed that many will be alive on the earth at the day of Emanuel's coming; but at his call, also, the sea, and death, and hell, will deliver up their dead. "All nations shall be gathered before him," and a final decision will then take place on every individal case. And on that day, all who are not found in Christ will be precisely in the same cicumstances as those who were not in the ark. They will be without a refuge. They may "say to the rocks, fall on us, and to the mountains cover us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand;" but it will be in vain. They can no more escape the overwhelming terrors of the lake of fire, than the rising waters of the deluge. The convictions of conscience will then be too late; the pang of regret will then be unavailing. "The earth and all the works that are therein, shall be burnt up." And how vainly will the condemned multitude strive to fly from the devouring element, when it pours its flood of flame around the world; and as they shrink from spot to spot, to the cold caverns of dark primeval night, how sad will it be when those searching fires enter the last recesses of their shelter, and ingulf them all!