when God spoke to him, how could he help obeying Him?' But, my friends, ask yourselves seriously,for, believe me, it is a most important question for the soul and inner life of you and me, and every manhow did Noah know that it was God who spoke to him? It is easy to say God appeared to him; but no man hath seen God at any time. It is easy, again, to say that an angel appeared to him, or that God appeared to him in the form of a man; but still the same question is left to be answered, how did he know that this appearance came from God, and that its words were true? Why should not Noah have said, 'This was an evil spirit which appeared to me, trying to frighten and ruin me, and stir up all my neighbours to mock me, perhaps to murder me?' Or, again: suppose that you or I saw some glorious apparition this day, which told us on such and such a day such and such a town will be destroyed, what should we think of it? Should we not say, I must have been dreaming-I must have been ill, and so my brain and eyes must have been disordered, and treat the whole thing as a mere fancy of ill health; now why did not Noah do the same?

Why do I say this? To show you, my friends, that it is not apparitions and visions which can make a man believe. As it is written, "If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." No; a man must have faith in his heart already. A man must

first be accustomed to discern right from wrong-to listen to and to obey the voice of God within him; that word of God of which it is said, "The word is nigh thee, in thy heart, and in thy mind," before he can hear God's word from without; else he will only explain away miracles, and call visions and apparitions sick men's dreams.

But there was something yet more wonderful and divine in Noah's faith,-I mean his patience. He knew that a flood was to come-he set to work in faith to build his ark-and that ark was in building for one hundred and twenty years: one hundred and twenty years! It seems at first past all belief. For all that time he built; and all the while the world. went on just as usual; and, before he had finished, ol dmen had died, and children grown into years; and great cities had sprung up perhaps where there was not a cottage before; and trees which were but a yard high when the ark was begun had grown into mighty forest-timber; and men had multiplied and spread, and yet Noah built and built on steadfastly, believing that what God had said would surely one day or other come to pass. For one hundred and twenty years he saw the world go on as usual, and yet he never forgot that it was a doomed world. He endured the laughter and mockery of all his neighbours, and every fresh child who was born grew up to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toiling for a hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they

thought it; and yet Noah never lost faith, and he "never lost love either-for all those years, we read, he preached righteousness to the very men who mocked him, and preached in vain-one hundred and twenty years he warned those sinners of God's wrath, of righteousness and judgment to come, and no man listened to him! That, I believe, must have been, after all, the hardest of all his trials.

And, doubtless, Noah had his inward temptation many a time; no doubt he was ready now and then to believe God's message all a dream-to laugh at himself for his fears of a flood which seemed never coming, but in his heart was "the still small voice" of God, warning him that God was not a man that he should lie, or repent, or deceive those who walked faithfully with him; and around him he saw men growing and growing in iniquity, filling up the cup of their own damnation; and he said to himself, "Verily there is a God who judgeth the earth-for all this a reckoning day will surely dome;" and he worked steadfastly on, and the ark was finished. And then at last there came a second call from God, "Come, thou and all thy house, into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth, and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the earth." And Noah entered into the ark, and seven days he waited; and louder than ever laughed the scoffers round him, at the old man and his family

shut into his ark safe on dry land, while day and night went on as quietly as ever, and the world ran its usual round; for seven days more their mad game lasted-they ate, they drank, they married, they gave in marriage, they planted, they builded; and on the seventh day it came—the rain fell day after day, and week after week-and the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood arose, and swept them all away!

SERMON XI.

THE NOACHIC COVENANT.

"And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And I, behold I, establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you."-GEN. IX. 8, 9.

IN In my last sermon on Noah, I spoke of the flood and of Noah's faith before the flood; I now go on to speak of the covenant which God made with Noah after the flood. Now, Noah stood on that newlydried earth as the head of mankind: he and his family, in all eight souls, saved by God's mercy from the general ruin, were the only beings left alive, and had laid on them the wonderful and glorious duty of renewing the race of man, and replenishing the vast world around them: from that little knot of human beings were to spring all the nations of the earth.

And because this calling and destiny of theirs was a great and all-important one-because so much of the happiness or misery of the race of mankind depended on the teaching which they would get from their forefathers, the sons of Noah, therefore God