of being cut off from the celestial union, and a necessary expulsion from that divine community.

Men in general seem little sensible of the absolute incompatibility of sin with the happiness of heaven. But let them deeply and solemnly meditate the holy Law -let them see how it exposes the black and malignant quality of sin,—and demonstrates how impossible it is, that with one particle of that retained, a soul can unite in the harmony, or enjoy the bliss, of Heaven.

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LECTURE XLIV.

NOAH AND THE DELUGE

HEBREWS xi. 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."

THE apostle was to inculcate the importance and necessity of faith, that is, the assured and efficacious belief of things on the divine testimony, these things not being themselves present, in their own evidence, either to the senses or to

reason.

Things unseen; some of them unseen because they are of a spiritual nature; some, because far off in past time; some, because yet in futurity. So wide a sphere must that faith extend to, which is yet absolutely essential to religion. These things, of so grand a compass and variety,—are to be firmly believed, in the simple intellectual sense ;—and more than so, they must be "believed with the heart;" so believed, that they shall have their due and commanding influence on the active powers of the soul. This is the required faith; this, from the beginning of the world to the end, is essential to the character of the children of God; a most noble, a sublime power in the human soul,—if it can exist there.

But, if there were not examples, it would seem difficult to conceive that such a power can be there, considering how the soul is enclosed in matter, within the bodily senses, and

thickly and closely surrounded by material objects; continually occupied and affected by present objects and interests; pressed upon by a thousand matters of present good and evil; and in addition, a fatal contentment for it to be so; a perverse, a deplorable indisposition to go out from and beyond this enclosing sphere of present objects, to converse with God, and an unseen world; and to go forward in solemn thought into hereafter. All this considered,-it would seem as if such a faith as that required were something quite beyond the capacity of our nature, and so it is utterly, except by a divine change wrought upon that nature. Great indeed would the difficulty of such a thing appear. It was well, therefore, for the apostle to bring in view a splendid assemblage of examples of this faith; real instances, in which faith has been embodied as a living spectacle; showing its possibility, its power, its manner of operation, its worthiness, and its great reward. And this assemblage (in chapter xi.) contains (with some exceptions, of inferior character) the prime of the ancient world. (Comparison between them and the heroes and demigods of mythology; nay,-the heroes, the sages, and the men celebrated for virtue, in the ancient heathen history.)

Very early in the series appears the patriarch Noah, the second grand progenitor of the human race, a pre-eminently conspicuous object,-inasmuch as the whole human world is seen reduced and contracted down to him and his small family; a very narrow isthmus between a world of men before, and a world after. If but there a fatal breach had been made!-If the dart of death had fallen on that one family, in the only inhabited tenement in the world! And, the frailty of mortality, and its surrounding dangers, were there! A fire might have kindled there; lightning might have struck; a malignant fever might have seized that little. household; one of the formidable beasts there might have

broken loose, and the supernatural restraint and spell on its fierce temperament might have been for a moment suspended! There, and thus liable, (but for special divine intervention) was all that existed of man on the earth! but for which intervention, the vast scheme of Providence for the subsequent ages had been set aside; the appointment of a Redeemer had been frustrated! There, as in a cradle surrounded with perils, was the infancy of the immense population that has spread over the world.

But

In this great crisis man was preserved. Our complacency in contemplating this great preservation would have been much greater, if man, in the transition, had left his depravity behind, with the ancient and extinguished race. that was a radical quality—it faithfully and fatally inhered and accompanied! Millions of deaths, and deaths expressly and specially on its account, could not cause IT to die. It lurked in the ark itself, infinitely the most fell and direful serpent that was there. Yet the wickedness of man appears to have been more universal and unmingled in the times before the flood. It seems an exclusive expression when the Lord said to Noah, "Thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation." A nearly solitary individual of determined piety and holiness in such a generation, would be in circumstances to need habitual direct communications from heaven.

Among these communications was one which could not, reasonably, surprise the patriarch,-though it would make a most awful impression. He was "warned of God!" The time of the catastrophe was signified to him—one hundred and twenty years before-hand. This, however, would seem to place the event far off (according to men's calculations of time). There was now the trial of the patriarch's faith. Would the Almighty really make a vast blank in his creation? Was the declaration meant for

more than a mere general expression of his wrath, a menace, to alarm and intimidate? No event the most remotely like this, had ever yet been known in the world. And how, by any possibility, was it to take place? And, as to constructing an enormous vessel, to save himself and all the terrestrial animals, by what means was he to effect any such unparalleled work? (A vessel of burden equal to nearly twenty ships of the line.) While attempting it, would not he be assailed by the universal scorn, and at length by the destructive violence, of the wicked multitude? How were all the various animals to be brought to the receptacle, and kept in order there? And, even supposing all this were done, what safety still could there be amidst such a dreadful commotion and confusion of the elements ? in such a breaking up of the whole order of nature ? Then, is not this apparent revelation from God a visionary fancy, a gloomy delusion?

So might he have mused and questioned with himself. And, certainly, a case so strange and astonishing did require that he should make sure he had the clearest evidence of a divine communication. He did make sure of this. It was evident to him that it was God that had spoken to him, and he believed the declaration. The proper consequence followed; he was "moved with fear," and he set about the work that was commanded him. Believing, simply believing, is the basis of vital faith; but if this be all, it comes to nothing. It avails and suffices no more than if Noah had contented himself with drawing a plan, or shaping a model of the prescribed ark, and perhaps marking the trees that would serve for the timber. To each belief, relative to important concerns, there is some appropriate affection or passion: and the belief must bring that into exercise. Noah's belief excited his "fear." And, in conzerns involving practice, there is an action appropriate to