SERMON III.

NOAH'S ARK.

HEB. II. 7.

By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

During the 1656 years which were before the flood, if men increased as fast in proportion to their longevity as they do now, a much greater population must have accumulated on the earth than there is at present. In that period when the age of man was more than 900 years, the temptation to put death out of view was great. A Church there was; but by intermarrying with the wicked world it had become corrupt, and at last almost extinct. This was the first illustration of the fatal consequence of too close a connexion between the Church and the world. The children of the Church became ambitious of power and fame, and sought renown by violence and war. By these means the Spirit of God

was provoked to depart, and general licentiousness ensued. The Church became reduced to a single family, and the rest of the world sunk into infidelity and vice.

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually ;"—that "the imagination of man's heart" was "evil from his youth." Thus the universal and complete effect of the fall was publicly ascertained. This done, God determined to cast away the world as ruined, and to make a new beginning on the foundation of grace, commencing a new stock in the family which included the whole church. This rejection of the world is expressed in the following strong eastern figure: "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."

"And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me ;-behold I will destroy them with the earth." Noah, who was born 69 years after the translation of his great grand father Enoch, was now 480 years old, and seems to have been childless. Except his grandfather Methuselah, who, though born 243 years before the death of Adam, lived till the year of the flood, and his father Lamech, who, born 56 years before the death of Adam, died five years before the deluge, he was perhaps the only religious man on earth. But though God determined that his Spirit should "not always strive with man," he graciously allowed the antediluvian sinners a respite of "a hundred and twenty years;"

1 in the meantime ordained Noah "a preacher of

righteousness" to them. At the same time he directed him to construct an ark of gopher wood, about 547 feet long, 91 broad, and 55 feet high. This immense building, which covered considerably more than an acre of ground and was three stories high, was capacious enough to hold "eight" persons, with a pair of every sort of unclean beasts and unclean fowls and creeping things, and seven pair of every sort of clean beasts and clean fowls, and provisions for their support for more than a year.

For a hundred and twenty years "the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing." The history leads us to suppose that the whole of this period was taken up in building the ark, as we cannot reckon the hundred and twenty years of respite from any other date than the issuing of the command to commence the building. In the infancy of the arts such a vessel must have cost immense labor, and it was so unpopular an undertaking that few if any besides the family of Noah would be induced to engage in the the work. His sons were born about twenty years after the building commenced, and for a long time could afford him no assistance. Cheered by the society and counsel of his venerable father and grandfather, he wore out the hundred and twenty years in patiently waiting for the fulfilment of the prediction.

When the ark was finished, God brought all the creatures into it and shut Noah and his family in.

In the account which follows, there is so obvious

a proof of the division of time into weeks, and consequently of the existence of a sabbath, that I cannot pass it by unnoticed. If we knew the day of the week on which Noah entered into the ark, we could tell the day of the week on which almost every event took place till he came out. Suppose then it was Tuesday. And this seems perhaps the most probable. For after the devotions of the sabbath to prepare for the solemn scene, one day was sufficient for God to collect the animals that were to enter. On Tuesday then, let us suppose, Noah and his family entered the ark. After seven days' that is, on the following Tuesday, the rains commenced; which after a continuance of forty days, ended on the sabbath, the day of blessings from the beginning. On Friday, exactly five months, of 30 days each, from the commencement of the rain, the ark rested on Ararat. In better than ten weeks more, on Tuesday, just 33 weeks after the family entered the ark, and just 32 weeks after the rains commenced, the lesser mountains appeared. Near six weeks after, just 32 weeks after the rains had ceased, on the morning of the blessed sabbath, Noah opened the window of the ark and sent out the raven and the dove. The next sabbath he sent out the dove again, which returned in the evening with the olive leaf of peace. The next sabbath he sent out the dove the third time, which returned no more. This was on the 25th day of the 11th month, just 34 weeks after the rains had ceased.

Hitherto we have proceeded on sure grounds; but now we are to pass the end of the year and find