sacrifices. God "had respect to the offering of Abel." He "smelled a sweet savor" in the sacrifices offered by Noah (Gen. 8: 20, 21.) The other alternative therefore, viz. that bloody sacrifices originated in a direct revelation from God-is the only supposition left us. We must adopt it.

It can not be necessary to draw out an argument to prove that in instituting this system of bloody sacrifices God gave his people some notion of its significance. The whole record shows that he was on most familiar terms with them and therefore can not be supposed to have left a point of so much importance utterly blank. It is not too much to say that unless some light were thrown by the Lord himself upon the meaning and purpose of these bloody offerings, the command to make them would require some apology; for apart from their expiatory significance, they are most revolting to even human benevolence-most foreign to all just notions of what is due treatment of innocent lambs, bullocks and doves from our hand. It should also be considered that their moral value depends on their significance. All these bloody sacrifices must have been practically valueless unless their expiatory significance was in some good degree understood. That God ordained them for the sake of their moral value, who can for a moment doubt?The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that God not only enjoined these bloody sacrifices, but gave his people to understand in general their significance to the extent of fulfilling that unconscious prophecy of Abraham (Gen. 22: 8): "My son, God will provide for himself a lamb for a burnt-offering."

These views, if just, are of vast historic value as showing how much God taught his people at that earliest day, pertaining to his great thoughts of redemption for a lost race.

3. The great moral lessons of the antediluvian age.

(1.) It may be regarded as God's experiment of a very long life-probation for man. Of course this experiment is not to be thought of as made to satisfy himself as to its wisdom, but to satisfy created finite minds in this and in every other world. In a case where issues so momentous were pending on the results, it must be vital to the honor of Jehovah before all created minds

that he should fix the average period of human probation in this earthly life at the best possible point. If he had begun with the same average limit which has obtained since the days of Moses (three-score years and ten), he must have anticipated the general impression that this is much too short for the decision of destinies so vast as the welfare of an immortal existence. It was therefore eminently wise that God should begin (as we see that he did) with a much longer, even a tenfold longer average life-period. This very long life, moreover, carried with it an extraordinary physical vigor, apparently a very great exemption from sickness, frailty, suffering, save as induced by the violent and murderous passions of man toward his fellows. The discipline of suffering seems to have been at its minimum for all human history. The experiment of almost unimpaired physical well-being was afforded the freest scope for its manifestation.

What was the result? The words of Solomon express it well: "Because vengeance against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Eccl. 8: 11). The mass of those generations sunk down morally to the lowest point possible, short of a general and promiscuous destruction. "All flesh had corrupted its way." "Every imagination of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually." "The earth was filled with violence." Human life had no sacredness; society, no safeguard; murderous passions, no restraint. The race were fast becoming too corrupt to live. If the Lord had not swept them by a flood, the earth would fain have opened her jaws to swallow them from the face of the sun.

(2.) This social and moral degeneracy becomes a very instructive lesson for all time upon the results of the non-punishment of murder. It was doubtless wise for God to begin as he did with Cain; but it was not wise to continue that policy after such results had been brought out before both this world and the whole intelligent universe. What men socially related must needs do for their mutual protection in order not merely to make society a blessing but to make the existence of men in society a possibility, was precisely the problem to be solved; and to its solution this first period of human life-the antediluvian age-was definitely

No

adapted. It brought out the solution perfectly. other experiment can ever be necessary. When the race started anew after the flood, the Lord advanced to the true doctrine and enjoined on social man the solemn duty of shielding human life by taking the murderer's blood. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed" (Gen. 9: 6). This was one step of manifest progress in the revelation of God's will as to the responsibility and duty of men in their social and governmental relations. It was progress in the origination of society-progress built on the great lessons of human history.

(3.) Here are also lessons of faith and of heroic virtue in the godly lives of the small and it would seem constantly diminishing group of pious men living among the multitudes of the ungodly. Here was Enoch, "the seventh from Adam," who preached a righteous God and a coming judgment to a hardened generation, but seems to have met with only resistance, to the extent apparently of relentless persecution. The remark of the apostle (Heb. 11: 5)-"He was not found because God had translated him," may perhaps imply that his enemies sought him for purposes of bloody violence, from which the Lord took him away in his chariot of fire by translation to heaven!Here too was Noah, also "a preacher of righteousness," who "walked with God"-and was warned by him of the impending deluge of waters. He warned his fellow men of their threatened doom, but warned them only in vain. "They ate, they drank; they bought, they sold;" they revelled and scoffed-till the day that Noah entered into the ark-no longer!-But we speak now of the example of Noah's faith in God. He saw no portents in the sky; heard no muttering thunders in the distant heavens; yet he held on year after year till the ark was ready-himself preaching and warning; fearlessly and heroically witnessing by his labors upon the ark to his positive faith in the forewarnings of God. Thus his faith rebuked the godless unbelief of his generation, and testifies to us of the wisdom and blessedness of taking God at his word and of adjusting our life to his command, though in the face of a scoffing world.

(4.) Yet another point in this cluster of great moral lessons is indicated for us by Peter (2 Pet. 2: 4-9);

"For if God spared not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly:-the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to preserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." That awful word, retribution, gathers into itself the fearful significance of these stupendous events. They are God's foregoing judgments, brought out in this world to foreshadow the sorer visitations of that coming day when God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, good or evil. God surely does take note of the sins of men, how long soever he may stay his uplifted hand and delay to smite. If wicked men were wise they would believe God's words of warning, and take care not to live over again the life of that doomed generation and meet a final judgment more awful even than theirs!

(5.) Let us not fail to notice those wonderful and beautiful ways of God with his children, coming down in such condescending and most familiar communion, talking with them apparently almost as man talks with his dearest friend; and this not in Paradise only before the fall, but after the fall scarcely less; and onward as the narrative indicates in the case of Enoch and of Noah. What more could he have done to reveal a personal God to mortals? Surely the God who thus revealed himself in the fresh morning of our race is no dim abstraction, no impersonal Nature or Essence, diffused and diffusible throughout space, the ideal soul of all matter. This effort to dispose of a God with whom it is man's privilege to walk in positive personal communion, but who also takes cognizance of man's iniquity, and to transmute him into an empty, forceless ideality, finds not the least countenance in these earliest manifestations of himself to our race. Note how he dwells with men; how he walks with them and lets them walk with him! What is this but free and loving communion? What less can it imply than just what the narrative of man's creation witnesseth, viz. that God "made man in his own image"-capable therefore of real and most intimate communion of spirit with his Maker? This lesson is written all the way through the Bible. It stands out here with beautiful prominence in this first great chapter of God's revelation of himself to man.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FLOOD.

1. FIRST, let us note its moral cause the reason why God swept off the living from the face of the earth by a deluge of waters.- -It was essential to the moral results which God sought that this reason should be given very definitely. So we find it given (Gen. 6: 5-13): "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thought of his heart was only evil continually." "The earth was corrupt before God; and the earth was filled with violence." These points are reiterated in most distinct and emphatic terms, showing that, outside of the household of Noah, the whole living race had deeply apostatized from God and were boldly and even defiantly irreligious. Eliphaz in Job (22: 15-17) gives the tradition current in his time, thus: "Who said unto God, 'Depart from us,' and, 'What can the Almighty do for them"" i. e. for Noah and his godly associates? Despite the words of Noah who bore to them God's awful forewarnings and preached the righteousness of repentance, they pressed on in their sins unmoved and recklessmercy reached its bound and turned to vengeance there"! It was a whole generation hopelessly corrupt, daring the Almighty to make good his awful words of warning! The result is on record that all sinners of every age, tempted to like hardihood and defiance of God, may study it with profound consideration.

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2. The antecedent occasions of this deep apostasy from God as given in the narrative, next demand our attention. They are

(1.) The pious families intermarry with the godless.

(2.) The Spirit of God, persistently resisted, is withdrawn. (1.) "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose." The "sons of God" were his professed children of the godly race of Seth, Enos and Enoch. The "daughters of men" were of the Cainites, cultured