spite of the scoffings, the disputings, the contemptuous indifference, and the violence of His enemies. It will be so again, and at the most momentous crisis of all. You have the advantage of former examples, and therefore your rejection of the only refuge from wrath is the less excusable. O, my fellow-sufferers from the fall and its dire results, bethink you of the object for which a gracious Father is now constructing His spiritual ark. Behold one and another around you fleeing through Jesus to its protection. You hear the voice of God's messenger becoming louder and louder every day, and you see the nations of the earth heaving to and fro as agitated by some extraordinary element of coming convulsion. "Be wise to-day, 'tis madness to defer." Lay hold of the proffered hand of Jesus, and take your place with the redeemed for ever.

Be assured that the ark will be completed in spite of you. While you look on and smile, thousands and tens of thousands will flee into it. The deluge of fire and brimstone will come, and whither then will you betake yourselves? By that time the ark will be closed-you will see Jesus, but you will not fly to Him but from Him-you may climb a tall tree, as we may suppose the foolish antediluvians did, but that tree will burn-a high mountain, but that mountain will be set on fire, Ps. lxxxiii. 14-the housetops, but from them the people of God will be precipitantly hurrying away, Mat. xxiv. 17. What a scene of desolation, of terror, of wo! What cries of mortal agony will rend the glowing air! What frenzied calls on the Master of the House of Refuge, who hath risen up and shut to the door, Luke xiii. 25. What pleadings for mercy when " mercy shall be clean gone for ever," Ps. lxxvii. 8. O brethern, think of these things, and "seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon him while he is near," Is. lv. 6. May the terrors of a God of justice startle you into repentance-may the pleadings of a God of love win you to Jesus and to peace.

2. To the decently religious a word of faithful expostu lation is scarcely less necessary. If, my friends, your object merely is to think yourselves, and that others should think you to be religious people, I must assure you, however startling be the assertion, that your case is

not a whit better in the sight of God, and as regards deliverance from approaching judgment, than that of the openly profane. You too had your representatives among those who perished in the deluge of waters; men and women who spoke respectfully of God and His truth, but who saw no necessity for fleeing into the ark. The fiood came and swept them all away; they might have been well-meaning, kind, amiable, honest, and in their way, religious people; but they were in the world and not in the ark; and so it is with you-you love the world, its pleasures, its occupations, its objects of attention, its people-your place is among these and not among the devoted servants of God who are engaged about His cause, and who are seeking to advance His kingdom. Therefore, you are not in the ark. You may be members of a Christian Church, but you are not members of Christ, for He is in heaven and your heart, soul, body, and all your faculties are on earth and devoted to earthly things. You are like shrubs, brambles, growing just now in the same enclosure with the vine, or like fungi attached to its stem, but not branches; you are not entitled to any protection from the unquenchable fire of the last day. Perhaps you are members of religious societies, or office-bearers in Christian Churches, but remember that the men who wrought with Noah in the construction of the ark fell victims to the judgment which they helped others to escape, and you may be builders up of the Church, and yet have neither part nor lot in the great salvation to be found only within it. Consider these things, my friends, and rest not until you have renounced the world over which the black cloud of vengeance is suspended, and taken your place in the ark on which the Sun of Righteousness shines, and shall shine for ever.

3. Believers in Jesus. Yours is the distinction of staying the uplifted arm of Jehovah until your salvation is completely provided for. The earth on which you tread is preserved in being on your account, for God says He cannot do anything with it until you are gathered out, "this honour have all His saints,' Ps. cxlix. 9. You are, therefore, the salt of the earth in this point of view, but also in another, that it is yours to resist and as far as possible to neutralize the

corruptions of the world around you. In both views "Salt is good," that is, while it preserves the peculiar quality by which it acts thus, but if it should "lose

its saltness," it is thenceforth good for nothing, but "to be cast out and trodden under foot of men," Mat. v. 13. Remember, therefore, beloved brethern, your "high calling of God in Christ Jesus," Phil. iii. 14. I beseech you by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service; and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and perfect, and acceptable, will of God," Rom. xii. 1, 2. Blessed be God you are in the ark. It is yours to feel that while the floods of wickedness are prevailing every day more and more in the earth, you are borne upward nearer and nearer in all holy conversation to that gracious Father who sits above beholding the steadfastness of your faith in Christ,” Col. ii. 5.

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LECTURE IX.

NOAH.

THE BOW IN THE CLOUD.

"And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh”—Gen. ix. 12-15. WITHIN the limits of the ark which contained Noah and his family, together with all the living things that were shut up with him, were included all the purposes and promises of God regarding the human race which He had banished from His presence, and the earth which He had cursed for their sake; and though deep and angry rolled the mighty waters beneath that frail vessel, heaven and earth should pass away before those precious ones could perish through whom these purposes and promises were to be fulfilled. Upward and upward rose the waters, and upward and upward was borne the ark, as though the more formidable grew the deadly evil with which the earth was visited, the nearer did a loving Father draw the objects of His love and His solicitude to His paternal bosom for shelter and for safety. Thus, in seasons of common disaster, when the hearts of the ungodly are overwhelmed with sorrow and consternation, those who have made the Lord their trust are drawn more closely to Him, and enjoy their sweetest seasons of prayer and praise, brought nearer than ever to the source of all good on the bosom, as it were, of those afflictive dispensations beneath which others sink and are lost for ever.

The vast difference between the fate of Noah, riding triumphantly above the swelling flood, and that of his fellow-men submerged beneath it, exemplified tellingly the law of direct consequences by which we shall find God rules in the affairs of men. Noah set his affections on things above-his eyes were ever to the Lord, and his citizenship was in heaven. Hence, though on the earth, he was not of the earth-it was not there he rested his hopes, or from thence derived his consolations, for he knew that from them God had been driven and there a usurper ruled. Now, therefore, in his season of necessity, his supplies are not from below, but from above. The billows of earthly affliction cannot overwhelm him, for he never trusted himself to the smooth but treacherous waters of carnal prosperity, but made the Lord his trust, and now "in the time of trouble He hides him in His pavilion: in the secret of His tabernacle He hides him, and shall set him upon a rock," Ps. xxvii. 5. On the other hand, his fellow-men, among whom five hundred years of his life were spent, had, like the beasts that perish, turned their eyes down to the earth, in obedience to the law of their fallen instinct, for those helps and enjoyments which, in their circumstances, they required. Dust they were, and with the dust alone they claimed kindred-spirit, too, indeed they were, but the spirit was dead because of sin, the body alone was alive because of its carnal propensities, and they never dreamt that " man shall not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord," Deut. viii. 3. Consequently, they never looked upward for provision or guidance-it was not their wont, and in the day of peril they knew not how to resort to it. Doubtless when the long-threatened judgment actually arrived, they tried various expedients for evading or averting it, but those were all earthly in their character and could not succeed, because "the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the -earth." In the high hills, as an obvious resource, they would put their confidence, but "all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered," ch. vii. 19. The fact was, their idol, for which they had forsaken the Lord, failed them in the hour of their necessity, as all idols will do. The earth had