END OF VOLUME XI.

BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

THE QUARTERLY

JOURNAL OF PROPHECY.

JANUARY 1859.

ART. I.-GENESIS-CHAP. VII.

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Ver. 1.- "And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation." THE ark was now ready, and, perhaps, had stood ready for some time, a silent witness before an unbelieving generation. The judgment came not; no sign of wrath was seen; shower fell. Where was the threatened flood? Suns had risen and set; moons had waxed and waned; men lay down and slept and arose, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage (Matt. xxiv. 38); and there was no note of warning to alarm them, save the voice of the unheeded prophet; and he was as one crying in the wilderness. Song, and mirth, and dance, and revel, went on, unbroken by his messages.* Noah might wonder; but his faith failed not, though no sign was given; nothing but the bare word of God to lean upon, or with which to stop the taunt of the scoffer. "Warned of God of things not seen as yet." Faith waited and rested.

At length the silence is broken, and the message comes from Jehovah, "Enter into the ark." Faith now reaps its recompence, and learns how true are all the words of that God whom it has trusted. With these words, the world's day of grace is brought to a close, though without a word spoken to * It was thus that the Greeks feigned Cassandra to speak

VOL. XI.

"And men my prophet wail deride,

The solemn sorrow dies in scorn,

And lonely in the waste I hide

The tortured heart that would forewarn."

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itself. From it God now turns away. He had spoken long;

and He is now done with it. The world is now to see Him acting, not to hear Him speaking.* Such is God's way; long forbearance, swift recompence. From the long-entreated world He turns to His chosen ones, whom it is His purpose to rescue; for until they are safe, not a drop shall fall (Gen. xix. 22). We do not mean to say that it is solely for His elect's sake that He lengthens out the world's day; it is to manifest His own long-suffering and unutterable compassion for the perishing; but still, in all His arrangements, He has His chosen ones in special remembrance. Come into the ark," was His message to Noah,† when giving up an unbelieving world to the flood of waters; "Come, my people, enter into thy chambers" (Isa. xxvi. 20), are His words of gracious mindfulness to His people, when the long pent-up flood of fire is about to be let loose upon the earth,

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For all his house Noah gets salvation as well as for himself. His righteousness is but the righteousness of a man; yet, because of it, there is deliverance for his house. And if the righteousness of a man can do such things, what will not the righteousness of the Son of God be able to accomplish! Oneness with Noah is the salvation of his family; and oneness with Christ is the salvation of the family of faith. Let parents think what blessing they may bring to their children; let children remember the preciousness of a godly father.

Noah, besides, got God's testimony to his own faith and righteousness. And how blessed must have been such testimony from such lips to the soul of Noah. It is the next thing to the "Well done, good and faithful servant." How cheering it must have been to his weary spirit, vexed and fretted by a scoffing generation. What a recompence for the reproach and toil of a hundred and twenty years!" Thee have I seen righteous before me." Yet even this acknowledgment will be swallowed up in the joy of being confessed before men and angels by the Master in the day of His appearing. Coming from such lips, the commendation would not puff up. Man's praise may do so; God's praise but humbles; for we feel that He who is praising us is but praising the wonders of His own matchless grace; "Not I, but the grace of God in me.”

And there was much to solemnise and sadden in such a testimony. It told him that among millions he stood alone!

* See something similar in Exod. x. 29.

+ Luther suggests that God spoke this message through Methuselah, and that these were that aged patriarch's dying words; for we know that he died just before Noah entered the ark.

The world was cast off as hopelessly rebellious; he alone, once no better than they, is accepted. Oh, most solemn and startling commendation! One out of a world. He saved; they lost! The Divine approval of himself involves such a condemnation of all, that it seems as if the sorrow must almost have outweighed the joy. How we shall be able to stand such an approval in the great day of the Lord, He only knows. How we shall rejoice in the joy, we can understand; but how we are to prevent or swallow up the sorrow, He only can tell

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Ver. 2.- "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female; and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." Ver. 3.-" Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.” "His tender mercies are over all His works." God cares for the earth that He made, and for the creatures upon it. He gives a large part of it over to destruction to testify against man's sin, and to shew how terrible and wide-spread are its effects; but He spares some, to shew that He loves the race, and will not have it swept away. He might have destroyed it and then created it anew. But this is not His way. He preserves the identity of the race. He will not

break the link at any point; and however attenuated it may become, He must preserve it. Man is not man if his continuous identity be lost, and hence, as man's great spiritual change is a regeneration of the same being, so is his resurrection a reconstruction of the same body. Earth would not be the earth of God's purpose if the continuity were to give way at any point, and if the "new earth" were to rise out of the annihilation of the old. So with regard to the animals that people it. Neither in this case must the line be broken between the first and last points of creation. It seems as if some great principle of moral government were involved in this. Certainly God's desire to preserve the continuity unbroken indicates something more than a mere purpose not needlessly to multiply miracles. Man deals in fragments; He who sees the end from the beginning deals in wholes. There is something in the unbrokenness of all the series, which, in God's sight, makes it one creation,―the one creation with which He means to deal, for which all His laws are framed, and in whose history and destinies He is to be glorified. One small link is sufficient for this end; yet one there must be, that the promised Seed of the woman may spring from the very race which He placed in Paradise.

A distinction is here spoken of between the clean and the unclean. It is assumed as previously existing and well-known;

yet it has not been mentioned before.* It was no doubt revealed at the first, when sacrifice was commanded. It could not be a distinction in reference to food; for, as yet, no flesh was allowed to be eaten. It must have been in connexion with sacrifice; and this is one of the many proofs of the Divine origin of sacrifice; for the distinction is evidently not one of man's devising. It must have been made by God, in connexion with some rite or institution.† How precious to us are these discoveries of God's mind respecting sacrifice-His purpose to provide the unblemished Lamb, even "the Son who is consecrated for evermore."

Of clean beasts, seven couples were to be taken in; of unclean, but two; not only because they were to be needed in sacrifice, but to become man's food. Thus God measures exactly the number required for the carrying out of His future purposes in the earth. He does all by number and measure; He neither saves nor destroys at random. "Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are mine" (Ps. 1. 10, 11).

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Ver. 4. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth."

Judgment now lingereth not, and damnation slumbereth not. "The end is come; the long day of grace is over; the hundred and twenty years expire. Noah and his family enter the ark, in testimony that there should be time no longer. Yet not just so. In the greatness of His compassion, God adds other seven days ‡--days of grace over and above the long years of forbearance. How truly is the long-suffering of our God salvation (2 Pet. iii. 15)! How unwilling He is to smite! how slow to bring about "the perdition of ungodly men!" But seven days are to be the utmost limit; and, during these

So with the Sabbath. It is first mentioned when Israel was in the desert; but it is assumed as having previously existed. Those who think that no day ought to be a Sabbath, and those who think that every day should be a Sabbath (both equally anti-scriptural), like to tell us that the Sabbath is not spoken of in patriarchal history. This is no proof of its nonexistence; and as the first mention of clean and unclean clearly assumes the distinction as long established, so does the first mention of the Sabbath take for granted its previous observance and obligation-" Remember the Sabbathday."

The Jewish idea, that it was Noah who, in his wisdom, made the distinction, is a mere fable. Noah is here commanded to act on something that he knew already.

The Jews have a strange tradition here. It is, that the seven additional days were the days of mourning for Methuselah, who died about this time. De Sola, p. 28.