world. You know that your best estate here is one of dark uncertainty, chilling distrust, and fading interest; but your dear Redeemer offers you an endless day of light, life, glory-an eternal now, wherein are gathered, not the hopes and expectations of good things that may never come, but the never-failing, nevercloying enjoyment of blessings "above all that you can ask or think," Eph. iii. 20-blessings now laid up for you with God in Christ, who is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," Heb. xiii. 8. Compare Methuselah's days, which, long as they were, came to an end, with the day of the Lord which is coming, and say which would you prefer to enter upon now.

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V." And he died." The man of nearly a thousand summers died the common death of all men," Num. xvi. 29. His tale, though long spun out, came to an end at last. His sinfulness which he brought into the world with him, had not worn itself out. The righteous vengeance of God had not forgotten him. The sign manual of his Creator to the warrant for his execution had not become obliterated by time. His fatal hour arrived his last enemy and ours would wait no longer. The last particle of sand in time's hour-glass ran out and he was gone. It is not unworthy of remark that the word death holds a prominent place in his name, which signifies "He has sent his death," as if the longest liver should be reminded that, however protracted his earthly existence might be, the executioner of God's justice upon Adam's sinful race had been sent with him into the world, as he had been sent with other mortals, and that he was ever prepared to execute his office when the fiat of Jehovah should arrive. The introduction of the word at which humanity shudders into the name of the man remarkable for his longevity, is the more singular, as it is the only one in the whole antedeluvian genealogy, in which the same word occurs. This surely was not accidental. But let us observe upon the words "And he died "

1. He had lived; and should exist for ever, either to bless God eternally for his being, or to curse himself and it. Of one fallen child of Adam it has been authoritatively said, "It had been good for that man if he had not been born," Mat. xxvi. 24. Can we suppose that that unhappy man exhausted the woe pro

nounced against those by whom the Son of man is betrayed? Have there been none like him since? Are there none now who "crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame ?" Heb, vi. 6. Alas! my friends, this is said of those who fall away from Christ after they have participated in the blessings of His gospel, and had their place among His chosen ones. None but a professed follower of Jesus can betray Him, therefore all professors of His religion are either saints or traitors. Soon will it be said of each of you-and he or she died. The judgement of the great day will disclose the rest.

Of

2. He had his place, his work, his influences. the manner in which he filled up the vast interval between his birth and his death, we are not told. His history is not important to us, and, therefore, it has not been written for our instruction; but it is written, and shall some day be read aloud before assembled multitudes, and, however uninteresting to us, it will form the hell or heaven of his eternity. He will remember for ever the place allotted to him here, and the manner in which he occupied it-the work which his heavenly Father gave him as an intelligent and responsible being to perform, and the extent to which he performed it-the influence which he exercised on his fellow-men-its character and its effect--and from all he will know whether he is to be ranked among the friends or enemies of God and of His Christ.

He

3. Dust he was, and unto dust he returned. sinned and died. He was born in the old Adam. Did he depart in the new? Is God the God of Methuselah? If so, he is only lent to the worm and to the clay, for his sentence is repealed, and, although thousands of years have passed away, and tens of thousands of men in successive generations have walked over his grave, and though empires have risen and disappeared, and nations have been born and died since he returned to earth, yet not a particle of his dust is forgotten before God. With Him his death is only of yesterday! He sleeps, but Jesus comes "that He may awake him out of sleep," John xi. 11. But if the world was Methuselah's God, and the prince of this world his chosen guide-if he lived like the beasts that perish and "died as a fool dieth," then he must

"awake to shame and everlasting contempt," Dan. xii. 2. The voice of the Judge shall penetrate the accumulated dust of ages, and fall upon his quickened ears with dreadful import. He shall come forth, but not to life and joy. He shall look on Him whom he hath pierced, but he shall have neither part nor lot in the great salvation which the wounds his sin inflicted purchased for believers, and his eternal history will be told in the words unceasingly echoed, "and he died!"

Reader, God be thanked, you and I still live; but where is our life? Is it flickering somewhere between earth and the grave, or is it " hid with Christ in God?" Col. iii. 3. A few more years, or weeks, or days it may be, and the last chapter of our earthly history will be written, and the whole summed up with the announcement, "He or she died." There will then be no difference, as far as this world is concerned, betwen Methuselah and us. Both were born, and both died. In the interval, we have full opportunity to lay hold on eternal life through the sacrifice and resurrection of the Son of God. Methuselah had no more; and if it shall happen that his long life and protracted season of indulgence witness against him in the day of account, our clearer light-our more efficient means of spiritual improvement, and, perhaps, greater encouragements to intercourse with God, will leave us no plea of inferior advantages, or lower responsibility in that "great and terrible day."

LECTURE VII.

NOAH.

MIXED MARRIAGES.

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And God said, My spirit shall not always strive with man."-Gen. vi. 1-3.

"But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.". Gen. vi. 8.

THE grace of the Lord which, it is here said, Noah enjoyed, is exercised in two ways in favour of His people: 1, In calling, justifying, and sanctifying them to His own use for ever; and 2, In sustaining and preserving them amidst the dangers and difficulties of their position in a world ruled over by Satan, full of people devoted to his service, and of ingenious devices for making and keeping every thing and every body subject to his will. And this proposes to us two subjects of enquiry regarding God's children: 1, Their own spiritual state. 2, The perils arising to that state from their fellow-men, with whom, though differing from them in their tastes and sentiments, they are still obliged, to a certain extent, to hold intercourse.

1. Take the case of Noah for an example: He is described as just, perfect, and like Enoch, walking with God, verse 9-obedient to God in all things, verse 22-a believer, one fearing God, and an heir of righteousness by faith, Heb. xi. 7, see Ezek. xiv. 14. This abundantly describes his spiritual state as one of God's chosen ones, a member and representative of that holy family which God was reserving to Himself on earth amidst the growing degeneracy of mankind.

We may, therefore, consider him, with Abel and Enoch, as a specimen of that small and apparently insignificant class, saved by grace from the general ruin, and put forward before a fallen world as witnesses for the Holy One, and reprovers, by their life and conversation, of the ungodliness around them.

2. The inhabitants of the earth in Noah's day are generally represented as "corrupt before God," that is, having departed farther and farther from his image, and "violent," verse 11-in other words, "living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another," Titus iii. 3, of great wickedness, so much so that 66 every imagination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil continually," verse 5, allowing no pause in the downward career of sin-no interval of conscientious scruple to admit a thought for God and His demands; but an innate, thorough, and unrelenting hostility to righteousness and truth-a constant fighting against God, verse 3. Nor was this very unaccountable; for man was flesh, verse 3, and nothing more. His

master, Satan, had succeeded in reducing him to a lifeless mass of carnality, knowing that the carnal mind would be enmity to God, Rom. viii. 7, that they who were after the flesh would mind only the things of the flesh, neglecting entirely those of the Spirit; and that thus it would be impossible for them to please God, Rom. viii. 5, 6, and that in such a condition they must become the easy victims of death, Rom. viii. 6.

But Noah's spiritual danger did not arise principally from this extreme party, whose licentiousness adopted no disguise, and pleaded no apology before God or man. To appreciate fully the power of God's grace in him, we take notice of another class with which we may suppose he held more intimate relations, and from which, considering its name, character, and pretensions, far more danger was to be apprehended. Some particular enquiry into the history of the times in which Noah lived will be necessary to enable us to understand his position, and sufficiently to glorify the sustaining favour of Jehovah vouchsafed to him. Let us observe then

1. From the brief Scripture notice granted to us, we collect that there were two well-defined parties then existing, known as the children of God and the