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must also have been gigantic wickedness and gigantic crimes. Everything then must have been upon a gigantic and impressive scale. And perhaps it was in mercy that God shortened human life. It is, perhaps, in mercy to mankind, in kindness to the individual, that human life, in its present abnormal and diseased state, is made so short as it is, and that the days of the years of our life are few and full of evil.

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There is also indicated here a new genealogy. It is not, you observe, a statement of Abel's descendants. There is no record of them; and very remarkable it is that Cain is altogether omitted here. We step into the records of a new race, and that race springing from Seth the son substituted to Eve, and called by her Seth, from the word "substituted,” of which it is the Hebrew, in consequence of God's having taken Abel. You have, therefore, here, not Abel's generations, but those of Seth substituted in the room of Abel, whom Cain slew. And it is this record which constitutes the family from which the Lord Jesus Christ was to spring, of. the house of David, and of Abraham's or the woman's seed.

We read of one patriarch in this group signalized for his great piety, and for his glorious destiny. "Enoch," it is said, "walked with God." What a brief but beautiful memoir! He "walked with God, and he was not; for God took him." Then he must have been agreed with God; for how can two walk together except they be agreed? He must have been of one mind with Him; he must have lived under a deep and constant sense of responsibility to Him, and thus he has been celebrated for his piety and his consistency. And the reward, or if not the reward, the issue of it was, "God took him;" that is, he was translated he did not taste death. This is a beautiful exception amidst those who died. If the records of this chapter had been without a break in " he died," it would have been almost darkness and despair. But this incident, starting from the darkness like a ray from

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the presence of God, illuminates the whole, and tells us that there is a pathway through or beside the grave, and that life has been brought to light through the knowledge of Christ Jesus. It is thus that the darkness of this chapter is illuminated by one bright light, and that bright light given to teach man 'that when the aged die it is not the end of them, that there is something far beyond. It was in its place, too, a pledge, and a foretoken of Him who, when He had overcome the sharpness of death, should open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

I think I explained to you before, indeed I am sure I did, the remarkable fact - in which there may be substance, or which perhaps may be fancy; but I think it is not fancy, but fact - that the names that are given in this chapter, when literally translated from the Hebrew, contain a prophecy of the gospel of Christ. I told you that every name in this chapter has a meaning; and I think I said, when preaching from a text in Malachi, that all the names convey a great and blessed truth. Adam is the first name, which means "Man in the image of God;" Seth, "substituted by;" Enos, "frail man;" Cainan, "lamenting;" Mahalaleel, "the blessed God; " Jared, "shall come down;" Enoch, "teaching;" Methuselah, "his death shall send;" Lamech, "to the humble;" Noah, "rest or "consolation." It is thus that, if you take the whole of the names, you have this truth stated by them: "To man once made in the image of God, now substituted by man frail and full of sorrow, the blessed God himself shall come down to the earth teaching, and his death shall send to the humble consolation."

This is just an epitome of Christianity, a comment on Isaiah 9: 6, and on John 3: 16.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WICKEDNESS OF THE WORLD PROVOKES GOD'S WRATH, AND CAUSES THE FLOOD- NOAH FINDS GRACE- THE ORDER, FORM AND END OF THE ARK.

the period that - had fallen into which is briefly but "It came to pass," it

Ir appears, from the chapter I have read, that the human race, in the course of fifteen hundred years. had transpired since the creation of man that degree of depravity and crime, graphically delineated in the chapter. is said, "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." You can see that there is a contrast here. The one verse describes a certain class under the epithet "sons of men," with their daughters; the other verse describes another class, called "the sons of God." Now, it seems to me, that the one class were the descendants of the corrupt and depraved Cain, and the other class were the descendants of Seth, or those who believed in and worshipped the living and the true God. It appears from this, therefore, that these sons of God, who knew better, yet, in the face of their own convictions, selected for wives the daughters of the lineage of Cain, or wives morally depraved, and solely because of their personal beauty, or outward attractions, in their place, proper enough, but, in this instance, accepted for, and superseding that real because moral beauty, which in the sight of God is alone of great price. In other words, it was the unsanctified and the un

Christian, married to the Christian and the sanctified, and the result was then what the result ever has been, the corruption and the increased degeneracy of both, and the spread and transmission of the influence of moral evil throughout the whole of the creation in which it takes place.

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"The Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." This verse has a parallel expression in the book of the prophet Nehemiah, where it is said (9: 30), "Yet many years didst thou forbear them, and testifiedst against them by thy Spirit in thy prophets." And, therefore, I conceive that when God said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man," he did not mean that the Holy Spirit had begun to change the heart of any, and had withdrawn from that process, but that in the prophets, speaking through and by them, he had ceased to remonstrate with man, as it is explained in the passage from Nehemiah which I have now read, "thy Spirit in thy prophets." And "yet," he says, "his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." thought susceptible of two interpretations. hundred and twenty years here mean the period that should elapse from this point, or when Noah should begin to build the ark, until the flood should come; that the hundred and twenty years was the respite or the day of grace to the antediluvians, preparatory to that overwhelming judgment which should sweep them all away. Others, again, think—and it seems to me that it is fully as natural so to think. that this is the general declaration of what should be the limit of human life in this dispensation; for, you observe, God says, "He also is flesh yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." It does not say, "Yet an hundred and twenty years shall elapse between this and the moment when the flood shall come," but it is spoken generally: "Yet man's days shall be an hundred and twenty years." And if you connect this

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with the fact that men lived seven hundred, eight hundred, nine hundred, and even a thousand years before, it does seem more natural to adopt the latter interpretation, and to understand that this was the new fixing of the length of human life, and that the days of our years, therefore, as divinely arranged last, are one hundred and twenty. Occasionally we do meet with men who reach that age, and some even exceed it; this is evidence of the possibility of reaching it. And, as I have said before, there may be defects in our social, national, domestic habits, our excesses in eating and drinking, and especially the frightful oppression on the brain superinduced by commercial anxiety, that reduce it to some fifty, sixty, or seventy years; but I see no scripture ground for concluding that man's life is to be less than one hundred and twenty years long; for at that age it seems to have been last fixed. And I may add, that Moses, the very writer of this book, lived one hundred and twenty years the author of the book thus illustrating the sentiment of the book. It is said, in the fourth verse, There were giants in the earth in those days." Some have thought that that means giants in physical stature; but it seems to me that that is merely equivalent to the last clause in the verse, men of renown," and that it denotes men of headstrong and impetuous passions, giants in crime, depravity and rebellion against God, and not physically of greater stature than ourselves. The only thing that would lead us to suppose that they were so is tradition, as we fully admit, not a very safe organ; but in the Greek and Latin poets there is a constant reference to a period in the world's history when men were of gigantic stature. We must conclude that there was some reason for this; for tradition has generally foundation in a positive truth, and not generally in an absolute untruth.

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We read, that on God looking down on this wickedness, "It repented him that he had made man on the earth, and

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