It matters nothing to our understanding of the simple narrative of Scripture, whether the waters of the Deluge covered the whole globe, provided that they covered the small portion known to Noah, and peopled by the two existing races of men. We are left free to accept the plain proofs furnished by astronomy and mechanics, by geology and physical geography, that the Deluge could not have been universal unless the laws of all nature had been suspended. With this error vanishes that of requiring room in the Ark for all the species of animals, or indeed for any beyond those which the family of Noah would care to preserve, chiefly for domestic use and sacrifice. Reduced to this form, the problem of the Ark's adaptation to its use is narrowed within a compass that need not create alarm; and, feeling no necessity to work out its details, we trust more to the definite dimensions given in an authentic history than to the corrections of the acutest arithmetician. And in all similar cases, when the historical credibility of a record is once established on the broad grounds of evidence, we can afford to await the explanation of minute difficulties, without permitting them to unsettle our belief.* A respite of 120 years, during which Noah, as a preacher of righteousness, reproved the world both by word and example, produced no amendment; and, even during the building of the Ark, they went on "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and regarded it not, till the day that Noah entered into the Ark, and the flood came and took them all away." The date of this memorable epoch was handed down by Noah to the very day. It was in the 600th year of Noah's life, on the 10th day of the 2nd month (B. C. 2349, Ussher), that he entered into the Ark with his wife, his three sons and their wives, with the clean animals by sevens, and the unclean animals by pairs, and God shut them all in. After a solemn pause of seven days, the sources of the earth's waters and the clouds of the sky were broken up at once, and poured forth their floods for 40 days and nights, covering the whole surface of the earth. The surprise and terror of this sudden judgment form a theme for the poet and the painter. It is enough for us to see in that unbroken sheet of water the first end of a world ruined by sin, and in the Ark, which floats alone upon its surface, not only the promise of a new history for our race, but the far higher type suggested by the Apostle Peter, of the salvation which God ever grants to those * It may be observed, that the definite measures of the Ark prove that a metrical system was already invented. B.C. 2348.] THE COVENANT WITH NOAH. 25 who remain faithful amidst an ungodly world. The waters of the flood were at their height for 150 days; and as they began to abate, the Ark rested on some point of Mount Ararat, on the 17th day of the 7th month. It was not till the first day of the 10th month that the summits of the hills began to appear; and Noah waited 40 days more before he made those well-known experiments with the raven and dove, which, besides furnishing a fruitful theme for poetry, seem to indicate his observance of the Sabbath. At length, on the first day of the 601st year of his life (B.C. 2348, Ussher.), Noah removed the covering of the Ark, and looked out upon the earth now cleared of the flood; and on the 27th day of the 2nd month, at God's command, he left the Ark, with all that were in it. He celebrated his deliverance by a great burntoffering of all kinds of clean animals; and God's acceptance of this sacrifice marks a new epoch in the history of our race. Standing by his own altar with his sons, about to go forth on to the renewed face of the earth, Noah's prophetic spirit might have anticipated the corruption which would soon call for the waters of another flood. But God assured him that the judgment was not to be repeated. The order of the seasons, and the produce of the earth, were secured by a Divine promise to the very end of time. Till that end, man was to live under the dispensation of God's forbearance, and so to work out his full destiny. This promise was confirmed by the first of those covenants, or solemn agreements, by which it has pleased God to give a double security to our faith; and the remembrance of the covenant was perpetuated by the bright and beautiful token of the rainbow. It has been conjectured, that, till the time of the Flood, the earth was still watered by the abundant mists that prevailed before any extensive cultivation of its surface. If so, the rainbow would be as new a source of joy, as the deluge itself had been of terror. But even if this hypothesis be rejected, and it be granted that the rainbow had often appeared before, it now received a new significance, which it has ever since borne, for the devout beholder. The memory of the Noachic Deluge is preserved in the traditions of nearly every people of the earth; and most of the heathen mythologies have some kind of sacred ark. These traditions, This applies, of course, only to the countries known to the antediluvians. Geological evidence of rain elsewhere, and at another stage of the world's history, has no connexion with this statement. which are, in most cases, far too minute to be explained by any mere local inundations, attest a common origin from Noah. It is remarkable, too, that they are simpler and more distinct in proportion as we approach the original seat of mankind. Thus, the Chaldæans, the people who formed the most ancient perhaps of all nations, placed a general deluge in the reign of Xisuthrus, whose alleged place in the succession of their kings (the tenth) corresponds to that of Noah among the generations of mankind. This tradition corresponds to the scriptural account, in the divine warning (by the god Kronos or Saturn),-the preservation of Xisuthrus and his family, with all kinds of animals, in a great ark, the destruction of all the rest of mankind, the thricerepeated experiment with the birds, and the final resting of the ark on a mountain in Armenia. The Persian tradition is less clear than that which is found at the extremities of the world, among the Chinese in the East, and the Mexicans in the West. All are acquainted with the Greek legend of Deucalion and Pyrrha. We do not consider it necessary to discuss the question of antediluvian longevity. There is nothing improbable in the enjoyment of great length of days in the first vigour of our race; and the Scripture certainly marks the shortening of human life as at once the fruit and the penalty of sin. We can see one great use of such longevity in the more rapid peopling of the earth, and another in the transmission of knowledge by a very few steps over a very long period. Thus, according to the numbers of our received text of the Bible, Adam was for more than 60 years the contemporary of Noah's father, Lamech; and Shem, the son of Noah, died only 24 years before the death of Abraham. may therefore have related to Abraham what Lamech had heard from Adam. But, in accepting these genealogies as possessing historic credibility, we are not bound down to any definite chronological results obtained by adding together their numbers, which differ, as we have already seen, in the different chief copies of the Scripture. The same remark applies to the Post-diluvian patriarchs. Shem THE NOACHIC PRECEPTS. 27 CHAPTER III. THE POST-DILUVIAN WORLD, FROM THE DELUGE TO THE DISPERSION; OR, MAN'S SECOND PROBATION AND FALL. "Heroes and Kings, obey the charm, Withdraw the proud high-reaching arm,- That ne'er on brow of mortal birth 'Her many voices mingling, own He shall descend, who rules above, All tongues of men shall tune."-KEBLE. THE NOACHIO PRECEPTS-ABSTINENCE FROM BLOOD-SENTENCE AGAINST MURDER-THE PRINCIPLE OF LAW AND THE AUTHORITY OF THE MAGISTRATE-ORIGIN OF CIVIL SOCIETY-THE PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION-AUTHORITY OF THE PATRIARCH BOTH CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS-REMNANTS OF THE PATRIARCHAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT — INCIDENTS OF THE POST-DILUVIAN HISTORY-NOAH'S FALL, AND HAM'S INSULT-THE PROPHETIC CURSE AND BLESSINGS ON HAM, SHEM, AND JAPHETH-DIVISION OF THE EARTH IN THE TIME OF PELEG-MONARCHY OF NIMROD CITY AND TOWER OF BABEL -CONFUSION OF TONGUES. ment. WHEN Noah and his family left the Ark, to people the world anew, God repeated to them the blessing He had pronounced on Adam: they were to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and to subdue all living creatures beneath their governBut their new state was marked by new laws. All the animals were granted to them for food, as the herbs and fruits had been granted to Adam; nor were they restricted to those afterwards defined by the Mosaic law as clean. No reason is given for this change; but, coupling the principle, that laws are made for existing practices, with what we know of the antediluvian age, we may view it as an example of God's condescension in permitting practices which it would have been hard for human nature to give up. This opinion seems confirmed by the emphatic prohibition against the use of blood for food. We may well believe that, in those antediluvian feasts to which our Lord refers, not only was animal food indulged in, but even blood was not refrained from, especially by a people who set at naught other first laws of nature. And, as the use of bloody banquets marks a sanguinary disposition, this prohibition of blood is naturally associated with the second of the new laws, that age inst murder, the crime which had stained the antediluvian age, from Cain to his descendant Lamech. Murder was not now first made a crime. The blood of the murdered had from the first cried to God from the very earth that had drunk it up. The new point in the law seems to have been this: under the previous dispensation the murderer was left in the hands of God, a devoted being, whom man must not touch, even in the way of vengeance; but now he was handed over to human law. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” The reason is given for the murderer's death, that he had defaced God's image in his victim; and to enforce the sanctity of that image, even the beast who should kill a man must be put to death. Such are the first examples of positive law committed to the administration of man; for the law of the forbidden fruit was in the hands of God alone, who could alone enforce its penalty; and His law of labour carried with it its own penalty of want. The former, indeed, was not a law to regulate life, but a special trial to test the spirit of obedience. Henceforth, therefore, man lived under LAW, a dispensation which antediluvian lawlessness had proved necessary. The laws against murder and the eating of blood, and the authority of the civil magistrate to punish the criminal, may be regarded as the new code of the human race, under the name of the NoACHIC PRECEPTS. We are not to suppose that they include all the positive law of that early age. Marriage had been instituted from the first; and the recognition of civil authority, as a principle, would naturally include all that the common-sense of mankind regarded as needful for protecting life, property, and good order, and enforcing subjection to and reverence for God. Hence the Jews extended the Noachic precepts which were binding on Gentile proselytes to seven-the other four being the laws against idolatry, blasphemy, incest, and theft. Thus the elements of civil society were established before the Family had grown into the State, forming what is called the PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION. And in this earliest form of social order we may observe the truth of Aristotle's great saying, that the State exists not merely that man may live, but that he may live well. By the first principles of nature and common-sense, the government was placed in the hands of the Patriarch (the fatherruler). It was ensured to Noah by his peculiar position and character. When it was called in question by his son's contempt, |