"prevailed upon the earth," by which I understand, the entire covering or overwhelming of the earth.

"The fountains of the deep, and the windows of heaven were now stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained, and the waters returned from off the earth, continually; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days, the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen." From this account it appears, that for ten weeks after the ark rested on Mount Ararat, nothing but water was visible; but at the end of this time, the lonely inhabitants of the ark began to spy land. If the first sight of land excites an indescribable emotion of pleasure in the common sailor, after a long and perilous voyage, what shall we say of the feelings of Noah and his family, when, after being tossed upon the bosom of the mighty deep for many months, they at length saw the summits of some lofty mountain left bare by the retiring waters? Some have conjectured that the ark remained near the place where it was built all the time, and was merely raised up by the rising flood; and when this retired, rested on the mountain where it was built; but this is very improbable. During such a convulsion of nature, the air as well as the water must have been agitated by one perpetual storm, and the ark, consequently, must have been exceedingly tossed upon the water; and there is no intimation in the sacred history, that Mount Ararat was situated any where near the place of the erection of this vessel. The mountains of Ararat are in Armenia, and tradition still points out one of the highest peaks as the spot where the ark rested.

Forty days after the tops of the mountains first began to be visible, Noah ventured to open the window of the ark, and sent forth a raven to ascertain whether the waters had withdrawn from the earth. This bird found means to subsist by resting on the summits of the mountains, or on articles floating on the water, so that it did not return again to Noah, but "went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth."

Noah also sent out a dove for the same purpose; but the dove, finding no rest for her foot, returned unto him, into the ark; and he put forth his hand, and received her into the ark. After seven days he again sent forth the dove, which returned in the evening, bearing in her mouth an olive leaf, which she had plucked from this evergreen. By this, Noah ascertained that the waters were abated from off the earth. And after the interval of another week, he sent out the dove

for the third time, which, finding the earth free from water, returned no more to the ark.

Noah now received express directions to disembark, and bring out with him all the animals which had been preserved in the immense fabric.

This remarkable event occurred in the six hundred and first year of Noah's life, and on the first day of the first month. And as he entered the ark in the six hundredth year of his life, it follows that he remained shut up in the ark exactly one year.

SECTION VII.

NOAH AND HIS FAMILY LEAVE THE ARK.

THE first act of Noah, after leaving the ark, was worthy of the patriarch. "He builded an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." Hence we may learn, that altars and burnt-offerings were before in common use, by Divine appointment; for we have no account of their institution on this occasion; but the history speaks of them as things well known and understood.

We have also in the narrative of this transaction information that worship of the right kind is exceedingly pleasing to God, and powerfully efficacious to obtain rich blessings for man. The Divine acceptance of Noah's offering is figuratively but beautifully expressed in the following words: "And the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I any more. smite every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and gave them two precepts, which are incorporated in the history, though the tradition of the Jews is, that he now repeated the six which he had originally given to Adam, to which he added a seventh. The two on record are-1. To be fruitful and multiply. 2. To eat no flesh "with the life thereof;" that is, the blood. Some suppose that this is simply a prohibition of eating blood, but others think that it respects the eating of the flesh of living animals;—a cruel custom greatly practised in Abyssinia.

A solemn admonition is also given respecting taking away the life of man; and a terrible threatening of the murderer: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

God also made a covenant with Noah and all living things; that is, he entered into a solemn engagement, which was confirmed by establishing the beautiful bow in the clouds, after rain. The thing promised was suspended on no condition whatever. It was that the human race should not again be cut off, with all living creatures, by the waters of a flood. It seems probable, that it had never rained upon the antediluvian world before the windows of heaven were miraculously opened at the commencement of the deluge; or, that partial showers, which left one part of the heavens clear, did not occur then; for I cannot persuade myself that when it is said, "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant," &c., it had before existed, and was already set in the clouds. If it be inquired how the earth was watered when there was no rain, the answer is, "There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." I am aware, however, that many judicious commentators are of opinion, that the bow in the clouds was no new thing, but was now applied to a new purpose; that is, God selected the rain-bow as an appropriate sign of that covenant in which he promised that the world should never again be deluged with water.

After Noah came from the ark, he followed agriculture, the original and most necessary occupation of man. For this work he had brought with him a vast stock of knowledge and experience; and we may be sure, that in his solicitude to preserve animal life, he would not neglect to bring with him into the ark a large supply of vegetables; especially of the species most useful to man. Among other things, he had preserved the roots or shoots of the vine, the fruit of which is among the richest of the productions of the earth, and from which wine is expressed.

When we consider that Noah was a prophet, a righteous man, and perfect in his generation; and that he had been, for more than a century, a preacher to the old world, and a reprover of the vices of the people, we are perplexed and astonished to find him drinking wine to such excess as to become an object of derision to the irreligious part of his family, and a source of grief and shame to the pious. The crime is so unexpected and unaccountable, that it may even lead us to suspect either that wine was not in use before the flood, or that the juice of the grape did not then possess an intoxicating quality. But there is no need of these suppositions. The fall of Noah is sufficiently accounted for, when it is recollected that he was but a man. If Adam, who was made in the image of God, could fall, there is no difficulty in believing that Noah, in whom that image was but imperfectly renewed, might also be overcome by temptation, when left to himself.

Another thing which may be inferred from the history is, that slavery, or the subjection of one to the will of another, probably existed and was common before the flood; because it is threatened here as an evil well understood; but if the practice had never existed, the meaning of the prediction would scarcely have been understood.

Why the curse fell so heavily on Canaan has led to many critical conjectures. It has been observed that parents are never more severely punished than in the disasters of their favourite children. To others, it has seemed probable that Canaan participated in his father's crime; or, that he was the principal actor in the irreverent scene.

Noah reached the great age of nine hundred and fifty years, which did not fall short of the average age of the patriarchs who lived before the flood. Indeed, six hundred years of his life were spent before the flood. The cause of the great age of men before the flood has never been satisfactorily ascertained. If my conjecture is right, that some of the laws and conditions of the atmosphere, and of the surface of the earth, underwent an alteration, it will serve for a general reason: but the special reason why man's life was then so much longer than at present can never be discovered.

The moral reasons for shortening human life are obvious enough. Such length of years furnished both temptation and opportunity to enormous iniquity. It was needful to cut off the perpetrators of violence, that wickedness might cease. There may be some reason to doubt whether they were solar or lunar years; but the probability is, that they were years of twelve months each, and each month of thirty days.

SECTION VIII.

THE EARTH PEOPLED AGAIN FROM THE THREE SONS OF NOAH.

FROM the three sons of Noah the whole earth was peopled. The children of Japheth, the elder, spread themselves through Asia Minor, along the eastern borders of the Mediterranean sea, and the islands thereof, and towards the Black, and the Caspian sea; and thus became the founders of all the nations of Greece, and of the nations in Europe and Asia north of the 40th degree of latitude. The most powerful and polished nations now on earth are the descendants of Japheth. The Russians, Prussians, Poles, Finns, Danes, Swedes, Germans, Swiss, Belgians, Dutch, Greeks, Italians, French, Scotch, English, Irish, are, for the most part, the posterity of Noah's oldest son.

The descendants of Shem were very numerous, and migrated eastward; and to this day have retained their original habitations. Among them we must reckon the Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Persians, Hindoos, Burmese, Chinese, and Japanese, and most of the islanders in the Southern and Western Ocean. The descendants of Ham seemed to have settled at first in various places, as in Philistia, or Canaan; in Mesopotamia, and southern Arabia. But Egypt seems to have attracted most of the children of Ham. It is therefore called "the land of Ham." And one of his sons had the honour of giving name to the country; for it was called in the Hebrew, MIZRAIM, which it appears was the name of one of the sons of Ham. The other Africans were probably descended from his other sons.

During this period of history, no mention is made of any very distinguished person except Nimrod. "He began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter." The commencement of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Arad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. In the English version, it is said, "Out of that land went forth Ashur, and builded Nineveh, Rehoboth, and Calah." But most interpreters, by Ashur, understand a country, and they render the passage"He (that is, Nimrod,) went into Ashur, or Assyria, and built Nineveh." And according to the tradition and testimony of all antiquity, Nimrod had Nineveh as the seat of his empire. There is no one fact in which ancient historians are more agreed; we conclude, therefore, that this is the true rendering of the passage. By his being a mighty hunter, it is commonly understood that he was a great warrior and tyrant. By a careful attention to the names in the tenth of Genesis, some learned men have proceeded far in tracing the nations of the earth to their respective stocks. This is a curious subject; and certainly there is not upon earth a document comparable to that contained in the tenth chapter of Genesis, both as it respects its antiquity and authority. The learned Bochart has found matter enough here to fill a large folio volume, and yet the mine is far from being exhausted.

SECTION IX.

BABEL-THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES.

THE only remarkable event in the history of the human race for many hundreds of years after the flood, was the confounding the language of the people, and thus putting an end to an impious attempt to build a tower whose top should reach to