time, and in the end, God will be found true, though all men are liars. Upon this principle Noah proceeded. By FAITH he built the ark, according to the divine directions, of a proper and durable wood, and of the dimensions prescribed, with apartments for his own family, and for all the creatures it was designed to contain, as also for the provisions that would be requisite; a door was placed in the side for ingress and egress, and a window to transmit the light of heaven to all within: the whole being covered over within and without, with an oily bituminous substance, to fence it against the waters. And thus the holy Jesus, the comforter of his chosen, the deliverer and restorer of the human race from sin and death, builds the ark of his church of the incorruptible and immortal souls of the righteous, fitted and prepared for the purpose by salutary discipline, and joined together by love in the unity of the Spirit. In it are many mansions suited to the different degrees and orders appointed, and provisions for all the possible wants of Christians during the voyage of human life. There is admission for all who will come in; while the long-suffering of God waits as once it did in the days of Noah; and, on all who do come in, the light of divine truth and saving knowledge shines from above, through the ministration of the word; while the watchful providence and all-shadowing protection of a merciful God are as a wall of defence, to the preserving evermore their souls and bodies from all evil, and from all sin, from the repeated assaults of their spiritual enemy, and from the horrors and torments of everlasting death. By this great work,

the building the ark of the Christian church, Christ and his apostles condemned the infidelity of the Jews, who were soon after swept away by the Roman armies, the Christians then in Jerusalem being first called forth, and preserved in the little city of Pella. The same testimony ever hath been, and to the end of time ever will be borne against the infidelity of the world, by faithful ministers raised up in their several generations, for the edification of the church of God; who, unmoved by the arguments of sensualists, and the scoffs of atheists, steadily and uniformly carry on the great work they have taken in hand, through faith in the revelations of God concerning the destruction of the world and the salvation of the church. Let every clergyman consider whether he is bearing this testimony, and every layman whether he is giving heed to it.

12. The Creatures come to the Ark.

All things being now prepared, and Noah having finished his testimony, a new and strange set of witnesses appear to condemn the infidelity of the antediluvian word. The birds of the air, and the beasts of the field, not only the tractable and domestic, but the most wild and savage species of them, as if sensible of the impending calamity, and warned to flee from the wrath to come, assemble by pairs and sevens round the ark, as the only place of refuge; and, a way being prepared for them, they enter in and dwell there, in perfect obedience to Noah, and in as perfect peace and harmony with each other. In that happy day when Adam, the first formed father of the world,

reigned king in Eden, all the creatures were subject to him, and lived at unity among themselves. Rebellion and discord, driven down from heaven to hell by the all-conquering sword of Michael, were then confined to their proper place. They had not, as yet, approached the gates of Paradise, or found their way into the new world. Man was at peace with God, and therefore the creation was at peace with man; and even brutes did not bite and devour one another. The enmity afterwards introduced by sin subsided, in the case before us, for a season; the sovereignty over the creatures originally vested in Adam, the father of the world, was put into the hands of Noah the restorer of it, and the halcyon days of Eden came over again in the ark. Thus ought it to be in that other ark, the Christian church, built by the bessed Jesus for the salvation of all, whether Jews or Gentiles. The enmity subsisting between these was to be abolished, and to cease for ever, the moment they entered the holy doors of the sanctuary by the sacrament of baptism. What God had once cleansed by the washing of regeneration was no longer to be called common or unclean, as St. Peter was admonished by the vision of the mystic sheet, in which, as in the ark, were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air, met together, without any difference or distinction; in order to convince him, that the Gentiles, whose tempers and dispositions in their state of heathenism were represented by the instincts,

P Acts x. 12.

properties, and qualities of the wild and unclean creatures, were now taken into the ark of the church, and that therefore he was not from henceforth to call any man common or unclean. God is no respecter of persons, and in Christ Jesus there is no distinction of age or nation, sex or condition. All who enter into the church, therefore, should put off the prejudices and prepossessions, the enmities and animosities against each other, arising from these and the like causes, and live quietly and peaceably together in their habitations. That such an event as this was to take place Isaiah foretold in terms literally descriptive of the state of things in the ark.-The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the or. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain'. This prophecy was fulfilled in the early days of the church, when Christians were every where known by the blessed change wrought in their tempers, and by the love they bare to each other: when, coming to the ark at the call of the true Noah, they forgot their natura] fierceness, intemperance, lust, and every other savage and unclean disposition, and became new creatures, conformed, in meekness, to the Lamb of God, in pu

rity, to the holy Dove. But if this be CHRISTIANITY, whither, ah, whither must we go to find it! Shall we find it among the numberless armies of most Christian, most Catholic, most Apostolic, and Faith defending kings, slaughtering one another, by thousands and ten thousands, in the field of battle? Shall we find it in courts, or in cities, among clergy, or laity, supplanting and overreaching each other for a larger share of the pleasures and gratifications of sense, which preferment and gold are to put them in possession of? When we have looked abroad for it, should we have looked in vain, let us look into our own hearts, and see if we can find it there. If we can, happy are we. If otherwise, let us remember,

that in the same hand are the hearts of men and the instincts of animals. He who caused lions and oxen, wolves and lambs, to live quietly and lovingly together in the ark, he it is who maketh men to be of one mind in an house; who maketh the new Jerusalem to be a city at unity with itself; who maketh a family a little model of that city; and fashioneth a heart to the still more minute resemblance of such a family, where all is obedience, and peace, and love.