deluge of sin. The one saved from bodily death; the other saves from spiritual death. The one was a shelter from temporal danger; the other is a "refuge whereunto we may alway resort" in the hour of spiritual extremity. The one was, so to speak, the life of the material world, containing him from whose loins every region of it was to be covered with inhabitants; the other was the life of the spiritual world, containing within Himself the principle and essence of spiritual life, and communicating them to millions, who will eventually receive, through Him, the immortal fruits of the Resurrection. But for the one, this populous planet, which we now inhabit, would have been without a human body to people it; but for the other, heaven would have been equally void of a human soul, divested of the trammels of mortality and fitted for everlasting fruition with its Redeemer in heaven.

When Noah entered the sanctuary that was to waft him from death to life-from the ruins of universal destruction, to the glories of universal replenishment-the world was overspread with wickedness. So absolute was its dominion that, as I have said, only one family was selected from the general devastation contemplated, to signalize God's mercy through the tremendous manifestation of His judicial severity. The wrath of the Creator fell terribly upon His finest works. The Flood rushed from beneath and above, and all things breathing the breath of

life, would have gone down to the fathomless abyss, had not the ark opened her door of refuge for the salvation of a doomed race. Within it, amid the ruin which guilt had provoked, he found a safe asylum, who was to be the instrument, in the hand of God, for diffusing life over the dismantled globe; of restoring it, through his posterity, to its original fecundity and beauty. When the waters were assuaged by that Almighty power, which had loosed them from their hidden sources and united them in one vast inundation, for the punishment of mortal delinquency, Noah stepped forth upon the scene of recent desolation, to restore, to gladden and to bless.

So, when Christ, the Saviour of mankind, "the brightness of His Father's glory, the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power," came among us"in the likeness of sinful flesh," it might have been truly said, as was precisely the case in the days of Noah-" the whole world lieth in wickedness." The profligacy of the old world, was revived in all its revolting enormity. That race, which had been especially chosen of God, and over whom His protecting hand had been so remarkably extended, from their migration into Egypt, to the period of their settlement in the promised land, and subsequently under provocations continually renewed, until the coming of the long foretold Emmanuel;-that race, in whom it had been declared by God Himself, that

"all the nations of the earth should be blessed," were, at this auspicious period abandoned in the most deplorable degree. They stood out in bold relief among the communities of the earth. They had, in fact, like the antediluvian races, "filled up the measure" of their iniquities, and were marked as "vessels of Divine wrath fitted for destruction." But the ark of the Covenant "went upon the face of the waters,"-" the waters of strife" and of sin, and, though the judgments of God fell heavily, and the whole stock of Abraham was doomed to a political death, consummated in the subsequent abrasion of their government from the records of time, still the whole world was redeemed by, and received life through, Christ. He communicated a new existence to those who were "dead in trespasses and sins." He brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel." As He said of Himself, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." They had it. "Look unto Me," said that WORD, which was God in Christ,"look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else."

Brief as the sacred history is upon all events occurring before the Flood, the narrative is sufficiently comprehensive to convey to our minds a very distinct, as well as a very full, impression of the extreme wickedress existing at the time Noah was commanded to build the Ark and the Deluge threatened. The words of an inspired

writer, who, though he wrote long subsequently, was in the pure spirit of inspiration, transported back to those times of primitive delinquency, of which the Holy Ghost imparted to him a knowledge "above that which is written," are remarkably significant, in spite of their brevity. He says, "they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the Ark, and knew not until the Flood came, and took them all away." "So, also," he goes on to say, "shall the coming of the Son of Man be."

It is evident from these words, that revelry and dissipation, even in those primitive times, had grievously corrupted the whole human family, and that the excesses of gluttony, added to the more detestable vices of sensuality, were universally prevalent. Sad must have been the spiritual condition of mankind to have provoked the God of all mercy, as well as of "all power and might," to overwhelm the entire earth with a general inundation. The extent of the moral mischief at that time prevailing, is sufficiently attested by the extent of those consequences in which it terminated. The mind can hardly fail, under circumstances, to conceive the universal and excessive depravity which must have then existed, audaciously challenging those tremendous judgments that ultimately befel, when "the ark went upon the face of the waters." Adam lived to see the full operation of the malediction he had provoked. All the evils of that

sin, which he first let loose upon the earth, had reached to fatal maturity even before he was called to a happier state. They were, not long afterwards, grievously multiplied, and the serpent-the tempter in paradise-fatally triumphed in the ruin he had wrought.

Deplorable indeed was the condition of mankind when that sanctuary of gopher-wood, erected by the "preacher of righteousness" at the command of God, was launched upon the liquid expanse of the Flood. What was the state of the world generally, and of the Jewish race especially; when the Ark of the Covenant appeared ploughing its majestic way amid the turbulent elements of strife and of sin ?—that ark, afterwards beheld by St. John in his vision at Patmos? "And," says this inspired man, "the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in His temple the ark of His Testament; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail." Idolatry everywhere abounded. It had obtained such universal influence, that even the Jews, clamorous as they were against it, were not free from its contamination. It was like a baleful star, carrying death and desolation upon its beams. The horrors of war were multiplied in all lands. Peace had abandoned the world, then altogether morally disorganized. The heathen arms had obtained complete ascendancy. Oppression bared her sanguinary brand, and exercised it with the might of a giant. The greatest enormities-the