favoured family; and what displays of wonder, for the conviction of the hardened spectators! how surprising, that the appointed number of animals, of every kind, should assemble around Noah, and enter the ark, and there remain, submissive to him and peaceable with each other! Yet even this seems to have produced no effect on the scoffing generation : perhaps they expressed much contempt or pity at the credulity of Noah, when they saw him remove with all his family into the ark: but a short time proved who was right-those who despised the warnings, and defied the wrath to come, or those who sought refuge from it in God's appointed way. "The Lord shut them in," at once testifying his engagement for their preservation, and the certain destruction of all who were without-who would probably be crowding round and seeking admittance, when the judgment was actually in view, however light they might have made of it before: but it was too late now; the door was shut; no other method of safety was provided, and no access remained to that in which the faithful few were secured from the approaching vengeance. So it will be with the despisers of the gospel; when ruin begins to take hold of them, they will cry vehemently, "Lord, Lord, open to us :" but it will be too late then; the day of mercy will be for ever past, and there will remain "only a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, that shall devour the adversaries." And now the floods descended: for forty days the rain continued incessantly; and every living thing was destroyed, and every man; not one escaped, except those that were in the ark. The waters prevailed sufficiently to bear up the ark, which floated as a ship on the surface of the sea.-Grateful as Noah and his family must have felt for their own preservation, yet they could not without horror and distress contemplate the vast scene of ruin and desolation, and mourn over the fate of those who rejected counsel and despised reproof. Nothing could support the mind, when surrounded with so gloomy a scene, like recurring to the established principle, "the Judge of all the earth will do right;" and realizing the delightful appropriation, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble; therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the depths of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof." The waters having risen about seven yards above the highest mountain-tops, continued unabated for a period of about five months. "And God remembered Noah, and those that were with him in the ark :" a strong figurative expression ; for we must not suppose that God had ever forgotten them, or that he does in any instance forget his people, though he may see fit to lay them under sore afflictions, and long to exercise their faith and patience by delay. The phrase is expressive "of |