before had no existence. Even in those parts, which had suffered a less violent alteration, an awful change must have taken place; a change from fruitfulness to desolation, from animation to stillness. The natural process of vegetation was for a time suspended, and all living creatures were destroyed upon the earth, except those few, which had been saved by Divine command. The patriarch must have looked, with thankfulness shadowed with horror, upon the places, where once stood cities thronged with population: where nations, perhaps, had flourished in arts and arms: where luxury had by degrees infected all society with her baneful influence, until the whole earth was corrupt, and filled with violence. Among those who Had perished, there might have been some, whom, as a preacher of righteousness, he had earnestly laboured to convert, and hoped to save. Some for whom, with all their vices, he had felt great interest, and much anxiety. And, even in the midst of his thankfulness to God for the many mercies of his own deliverance, he must have experienced many feeling of loneliness, when he viewed around him nothing but the dull traces of the retiring waters, and reflected that he and his family were left the sole possessors of a deluged world.

We read of the devotion with which he

sacrificed, as soon as he came out from the ark, burnt-offerings of every clean beast and of every clean fowl, upon the altar which he built unto the Lord and we know the blessing which God then pronounced upon him.

But the fearful judgment, which he had just witnessed, must have had a powerful influence upon his mind. He could not soon forget the terrors of that scene, when the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up; and the waters prevailed and were increased greatly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered.a Accustomed as we are to the regular return of the seasons, which was then promised to mankind; seeing that seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, do not cease, we can hardly bring ourselves to imagine the thoughts, which might not unnaturally intrude themselves into the mind of the patriarch, when he reflected upon the mighty change, which he had witnessed in the most stable elements of nature. He might, humanly speaking, be excused, if he felt at times some doubt even respecting the recurrence of the ordinary phenomena of the natural world: if he sometimes feared, lest some second catastrophe

a Gen. vii.

might overwhelm the earth, all the foundations of which were so out of course. Especially when the heavens became black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain, if he did not expect, he might at least apprehend, that the Almighty was a second time about to cut off all flesh with the waters of a flood. As long as this influence continued upon his mind—and it was of a nature to last all his life, and to be transmitted to his descendants for many generations—he might look with a timid eye even upon the cloud, which was dropping fatness upon the earth. The time, in which the showers "drop upon the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side,"—when "the pastures are clothed with flocks, the valleys also are covered over with corn: they shout for joy; they also sing"-might to the patriarch be but a season of doubt and dismay.

But the Father of goodness delights not in the suffering of his creatures. He revealed himself to Noah, with many assurances of support, and many promises of blessing. And he pointed out to him a sign in the heavens, immediately connected with the subject of his apprehensions, to be a token of a covenant between God and the earth, that he would not any more bring a flood to destroy the earth.

b Psalm lxv. 12, 13.

"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."

The selection of this peculiar symbol, as the token of a covenant thus solemnly made between God and man, has given rise, as might be expected, to great diversity of opinion. That vicious species of allegorical interpretation, which distorts plain facts, has here been introduced. It would not easily be imagined that the words of Scripture—" God said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth,"— could be taken to be any thing, but a plain narration of a fact. At an early period, however, of the Christian church, the words were considered to represent only, under the figure of a bow, the Divine providence, which is sometimes extended, for the infliction of more severe punishment, and sometimes relaxed, by the

loving kindness of God, who in his judgment remembers mercy. It is true that the mercy of God is immediately suggested by the event. But thus to explain away the literal meaning of the sacred volume is to introduce a principle of exposition totally at variance with sound judgment.

Other interpreters, both Jewish and Christian, struck with the emphatic manner in which the sign is pointed out, have been of opinion that until the deluge, the bow was never seen in the cloud. There is indeed nothing in the brief account which is given of the antediluvian world, to contradict this supposition. Some time, undoubtedly, elapsed after the creation, when God "had not caused it to rain upon the

Non enim, sicut plerique arbitrantur, arcum istum dicit, quem aiunt homines esse, quo pluviarum signa aliqua declarentur, in quo colores diversi... figurantur..... Sed absit ut hunc arcum Dei dicamus.... Ergo videamus, ne, quia arcus quo sagittæ jaciuntur, nunc tenditur, nunc resolvitur, quandam extensionem et remissionem videatur scriptura significare, per quam neque penitus per nimiam extensionem universa rumpantur, sed sit quædam mensura et quoddam Divinæ virtutis examen. Est ergo virtus invisibilis Dei quæ et specie istius arcûs extendendi et remittendi moderatur pro Divina voluntate, misericordia, potestate, quæ neque omnia confundi nimia solutione, neque dirumpi nimia irruptione patiatur. Quam ideo in nubibus dicit poni, quia tunc maximè opus est Divinæ auxilio prudentiæ, quando agmina nubium procellas tempestatesque cogantur. Ambrosius Lib. de Arcâ et Noe; c. 27. apud Heidegger. de Hist. Sacra Exercitat. XIX. §. 26.

Aben Ezra or Gen. ix. 14.