both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” (Gen. vi. 6, 7.) What a contrast in His eyes to that world which He had made so fair, * and concerning which He said that it was "very good!" and now He resolves to destroy it with a flood, and sweep away the guilty inhabitants before His righteous indignation.

ance.

men.

But whilst He resolves on judgment, He forgets not mercy. He will give time and space for repentHe will still allow His Spirit to plead with Mark well the long-suffering of God in this arrangement. It is referred to by St. Peter, who records how "the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, whilst the ark was a preparing." (1 Peter iii. 20.) Before the forty days of judgment shall arrive, men shall have-shall we say forty days? shall we say thrice forty days? Nay, they shall have a thousand times forty days; they shall have thrice forty years, for repentance: "his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." (Gen. vi. 3.) God might have destroyed them without warning, without respite; but judgment is His "strange work," and He forbears the uplifted stroke; and so He warns Pharaoh, and Nineveh, and Jerusalem ; and so also He gives days for repentance, and times of visitation to us all, if so be we will turn from our sin and be saved.

But not only did He give them respite, He sent them a preacher. St. Peter alludes to this also, and

records it to the honour of God's long-suffering, that He sent this "preacher of righteousness" to the "world of the ungodly." (2 Peter ii. 5.) During all these hundred and twenty years, the faithful voice of Noah was heard exhorting men to repentance. He was preaching to them not only with his lips but with his life, and especially by his work in building the ark before their eyes, and thus proving to them that he was himself convinced of the judgment that was approaching.

The ark was itself a sermon. It told of God's mercy for the penitent and believing, whilst it told of destruction to the ungodly. It was a type of that better ark into which we may run and be safe; and as year by year it rose into form and completion, it was a silent but eloquent appeal to a guilty and rebellious world.

Thus was God striving with men, by patience, by preaching, by visible signs, and above all, by His Holy Spirit. For it is a solemn reflection, forced on us by the narrative, that God's Spirit does strive with men, yea, even with the guilty and impenitent. So He strove with Israel in the days of old; for we read that "they rebelled and vexed His Holy Spirit, therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them." (Isaiah lxiii. 10.)

The sinner may think that he is only resisting man, when really he is resisting his. Maker; that he is only rejecting the messenger, when he is really rejecting Him that sent him. Is there one amongst

us with whom God has not at one time or another dealt either by conscience, or by preaching, or by providence, or by sundry and varied mercies? Well, then, let us remember that by all these the Holy Spirit strives with us, in the patience and long-suffering of our God, and that in despising or resisting these warnings, and invitations, and forbearances, we are striving against His Holy Spirit!

But how did the hundred and twenty years affect the antediluvian world? Do we read of one sinner converted? one soul humbled on account of sin? Not one! Nay, from what our blessed Lord has said we would rather gather, that as those years rolled on they became more careless, more worldly, more hardened than before: "For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matt. xxiv. 38, 39.) The words are remarkable, "They knew not;" because they would not know; because they would not believe, "until the flood came," and then-it was "too late!"

During all that time there was no appearance of the coming judgment " All things continued as they were." The world pursued its way as heretofore; the seasons came and went; the laws of nature remained unchanged; and because sentence against their evil work was not "executed speedily, therefore

the heart of the sons of men was fully set in them to do evil." (Eccles. viii. 11.)

We can imagine the scorn and unbelief with which Noah and his little company were treated by his contemporaries. And because the latter were in an overwhelming majority they would encourage one another in unbelief: why should they be intimidated by the silly fears of a handful of fanatics? Was this miserable minority more likely to be in the right than the whole company of mankind? "To the higher ranks," observes an acute writer of our day, "the whole matter would be one of perfect indifference or proud scorn; scientific persons would laboriously prove that a vessel of such dimensions would not hold together, much less endure any stress of weather; some would ask with a smile, 'How are all the animals to be collected and brought in?' and others would object, 'How are they to be tamed and kept in safety when they are in?' Imagine this construction going on in some suburb of London, and think what the avowed builder and promoter of it would have to encounter. What crowds of Sabbath-breakers would stroll that way to look at the work as it advanced! What laughter it would create; some jeering at its size; others at its shape; all denying that it will ever be wanted for its avowed purpose; many affirming, that if it were, it must be a failure; ridiculing the waste of time, and labour, and materials! And imagine all this going on for more than a century, until Noah, and his deluge, and his ark, had become a stale jest amongst the wits of the old world!" But after all it is better

to be saved with the few, than lost with the many. It is safer and wiser to believe God's revelations than to give heed to man's scepticism and unbelief.

They were as distant

Now how did Noah differ from those around him? In two things-in reverent faith and in holy fear. So writes the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "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." (Hebrews xi. 7.) Note well the expression, "Things not seen as yet." from him as they were from them. Such a deluge was as unprecedented in his experience as in theirs. It was difficult to realize that such a catastrophe was possible; but Noah realized it, because he believed God, and had the "evidence of things not seen." He took God at His word, both as to the ruin and the remedy, the judgment and the deliverance; and it was in this spirit he preached, and worked, and warned, and differed from the world around him.

And he was 66 I moved with fear." He realized what sin was, and what sin deserved. He knew that God and sin could not agree. He felt that judgment was inevitable, though it might be long postponed, and so he acted throughout with a reverent awe of the Almighty's warnings.

Is it not want of faith and want of fear that still urge sinners on in their rebellion against God? They do not realize either what sin is in its sinfulness, or what God is in His holiness. They judge by sense