NATURAL HISTORY

AND

THE DELUGE OF NOAH.

HE first Man, Adam, as he came out of his Maker's hands, was an innocent, holy, and happy being; was, after his kind, a perfect creature physically, mentally, and morally. Sense, intellect, affections and conscience were in perfect harmony with one another, and with the Divine Will. His was a per

fectly sound mind in a perfectly sound body. In all the varied exercises of his faculties, in all the emotions of his heart, in all his converse and activity, there was a complete and faultless conformity to the mind and law of God. And his love to that blessed and glorious BEING, while it was the governing principle of his whole conduct, was also to him a perennial source of the most pure and sublime happiness. In the image of God, and in his own likeness, was man created.

The primogenitor of the human race, however, did not long continue in this happy and honorable state.

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Though placed in "a garden of delights," surrounded with everything that was delicious to the taste, and pleasant to the eye, yet, in an evil hour, he yielded to temptation, and put forth his hand to pluck and eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. And dismal and disastrous, indeed, were the immediate consequences of this transgression. His whole relation and intercourse with his Creator were instantly changed. He was bereaved of the sweet presence and favor of God-dreadful light broke in upon his soul, revealing his guilt and miserythe Divine voice, before transporting music, became a terror-a sense of alienation, distrust, and fear invaded his whole being—and a dreadful proneness to evil carried him continually contrary to the dictates of both reason and conscience. He had become a fallen and sinful creature.

The direful effects of that one transgression did not terminate with Adam himself; he begat his children in his own likeness-in his own fallen, sinful, and mortal likeness. And thus by the fall of one all became sinners. The contagion of sin affected all his posterity. Iniquity and crime spread and multiplied among them as they spread and multiplied. Nay, the stream of corruption flowed on with increased speed and violence as increased the human family on the earth. Though the descriptions given us of the earlier generations of our race are brief and general, yet they present to us a most dreadful and revolting picture of the state of depravity and wickedness to which they came at a comparatively early date in their History. This is the Divine record :

And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth: God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually: The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence: and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved HIM at his heart.

A more comprehensive summary of the greatness and extent of human wickedness it is scarcely possible to conceive than this. The mind is left where it must fill up the outline of this horrid picture with everything that is degrading to the human character; with everything that is profligate and abominable in manners; with everything that is base, false, deceitful, licentious, and profane; and with everything that is horrible and destructive in war, and ruinous to the interests and happiness of the human family. Let us glance at the several particulars included in this record.

The language employed is most intensive in its character. 1. God saw,-observed a condition of things among men demanding his special attention. 2. All flesh;-impiety and wickedness had become universal; it was not merely the majority of mankind that had become corrupt, and given unbounded scope to their passions and licentious desires, while smaller societies were still found fearing God and keeping his commandments, but all, all flesh had corrupted their ways. 3. Every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually;-every invention, and every pur

pose and scheme devised both by individuals and communities, were of a malevolent nature; the spectacles of misery and horror which the universal prevalence of such principles and practices produced must have been beyond the power of imagination to describe or conceive. 4. The earth was filled with violence;-violence was the order of the day; there was no safety for life or property, for reputation, rights, or chastity. From this declaration we are necessarily led to conceive a scene in which universal anarchy and disorder, devastation and wretchedness, everywhere prevailed; the strong and powerful forcibly seizing upon the wealth and possessions of the weak, violating the persons of the female sex, oppressing the poor, the widow and the fatherless, overturning the established order of families and societies, plundering cities, demolishing habitations, desolating fields and vineyards, and carrying bloodshed and devastation through every land; exhibiting everywhere a scene in which cruelty, injustice, and outrages of every kind, revelry, riot and debauchery of every description, triumphed over every principle of decency and virtue. 5. And it repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth, and it grieved him at his heart,-a figurative, but a most affecting expression, of God's disapprobation and abhorrence of human conduct; words that set forth, with an energy and impressiveness which probably nothing purely literal could have conveyed, the exceeding sinfulness and provoking nature of man's character. The race had reached a pitch of iniquity that rendered correction or reformation alike utterly hopeless. The infection of sin was passed all remedy.

Such was the condition of the world towards the middle of the age of Noah, and such was the character of human society that drew from the lips of the Almighty this awful threatening against the whole earth: "And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." To this threatening God proved fearfully true, and executed it with unmitigated severity upon the whole human family, and upon everything that breathed upon the earth, save Noch and his household, together with the animals he was directed to take with him into the ark to preserve them alive, in order to restock the world. "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.