neighbourhood of which life and blessing still lingered. In like manner, it is said of Cain, after he had assumed the attitude of rebellion, that “he went out from the presence of the Lord,” obviously implying that there was a certain region with which the divine presence was considered to be more peculiarly connected, and which can be thought of nowhere else than in that sanctuary on the east of Eden. But with the flood the reason for any such restriction vanished. Noah, therefore, reared his altar, and presented his sacrifice to the Lord where the ark rested. There immediately he got the blessing, and entered into covenant with God-proving that, in a sense, old things had passed away, and all had become new. The earth had risen in the divine reckoning to a higher condition; it had passed through the baptism of water, and was now, in a manner, cleansed from defilement; so that every place had become sacred, and might be regarded as suitable for the most solemn acts of worship.1

This more sacred and elevated position of the earth after the deluge appears, farther, in the express repeal of the curse originally laid upon the ground for the sin of Adam: "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake" (Gen. viii. 21), was the word of God to Noah, on accepting the first offering presented to him in the purified earth. It is, no doubt, to be understood relatively-not as indicating a total repeal of the evil, but only a mitigation of it; yet such a mitigation as would render the earth a much less afflicted and more fertile region than it had been before. But this again indicated that, in the estimation of

1 If we are right as to the centralization of the primitive worship of mankind (and it seems to be only the natural inference from the notices referred to), then the antediluvian population cannot well be supposed to have been of vast extent, or to have wandered to a very great distance from the original centre. The employment also of a special agency after the flood to disperse the descendants of Noah, and scatter them over the earth, seems to indicate, that an indisposition to go to a distance, a tendency to crowd too much about one locality, was one of the sources of evil in the first stage of the world's history, the recurrence of which well deserved to be prevented, even by miraculous interference; and it is perfectly conceivable, indeed most likely, that the tower of Babel, in connection with which this interference took place, was not intended to be a palladium of idolatry, or a mere freak of ambitious folly, but rather a sort of substitution for the loss of the Edenic symbols, and, as such, a centre of union for the human family. It follows, of course, from the same considerations, that the deluge might not absolutely require, so far as the race of man was concerned, to extend over more than a comparatively limited portion of the earth. But its actual compass is not thereby determined.

Heaven, the earth had now assumed a new position; that by the action of God's judgment upon it, it had become hallowed in his sight, and was in a condition to receive tokens of the divine beneficence, which had formerly been withheld from it.

2. The second point to be noticed here, is the heirship given of this new world to Noah and his seed-given to them expressly as the children of faith.

Adam, at his creation, was constituted the lord of this world, and had kingly power and authority given him to subdue it and rule over it. But, on the occasion of his fall, this grant, though not formally recalled, suffered a capital abridgment; since he was sent forth from Eden as a discrowned monarch, to do the part simply of a labourer on the surface of the earth, and with the discouraging assurance, that it should reluctantly yield to him of its fruitfulness. Nor, when he afterwards so distinctly identified himself with God's promise and purpose of grace, by appearing as the head only of that portion of his seed who had faith in God, did there seem any alleviation of the evil; the curse that rested on the ground rested on it still, even for the seed of blessing (Gen. v. 29), and not they, but the ungodly Cainites, acquired in it the ascendancy of physical force and political dominion.

A change, however, appears in the relative position of things, when the flood had swept with its purifying waters over the earth. Man now rises, in the person of Noah, to a higher place in the world; yet not simply as man, but as a child of God, standing in faith. His faith has saved him, amid the general wreck of the old world, to become in the new a second head of mankind, and an inheritor of earth's domain, as now purged and rescued from the pollution of evil. "He is made heir," as it is written in Hebrews, "of the righteousness which is by faith,”—heir, that is, of all that properly belongs to such righteousness, not merely of the righteousness itself, but also of the world, which in the divine purpose it was destined to possess and occupy. Hence, as if there had been a new creation, and a new head brought in to exercise over it the right of sovereignty, the original blessing and grant to Adam are substantially renewed to Noah and his family: "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you, and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon

every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered." Here, then, the righteousness of faith received direct from the grace of God the dowry that had been originally bestowed upon the righteousness of nature-not a blessing merely, but a blessing coupled with the heirship and dominion of the world.

There was nothing strange or arbitrary in such a proceeding; it was in perfect accordance with the great principles of the divine administration. Adam was too closely connected with the sin that destroyed the world, to be invested, even when he had become through faith a partaker of grace, with the restored heirship of the world. Nor had the world itself passed through such an ordeal of purification, as to fit it, in the personal lifetime of Adam, or of his more immediate offspring, for being at all represented in the light of an inheritance of blessing. The renewed title to the heirship of its fulness was properly reserved to the time when, by the great act of divine judgment at the deluge, it had passed into a new condition; and when one was found of the woman's seed, who had attained in a peculiar degree to the righteousness of faith, and along with the world had undergone a process of salvation. It was precisely such a person that should have been chosen as the first type of the righteousness of faith, in respect to its world-wide heritage of blessing. And having been raised to this higher position, an additional sacredness was thrown. around him and his seed: the fear of them was to be put into the inferior creatures; their life was to be avenged of every one that should wrongfully take it; even the life-blood of irrational animals was to be held sacred, because of its having something in common with man's, while their flesh was now freely surrendered to their use the whole evidently fitted, and, we cannot doubt, also intended to convey the idea, that man had by the special gift of God's grace been again constituted heir and lord of the world, that, in the words of the Psalmist, "the earth had been given to the children of men," and given in a larger and fuller sense than had been done since the period of the fall.1

1

1 It presents no contrariety to this, when rightly considered, that the Lord should also have connected his purpose of preserving the earth in future with the corruption of "And the Lord smelled a sweet savour (viz. from Noah's sacrifice), and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the

man:

3. The remaining point to be noticed in respect to this new order of things, is the pledge of continuance, notwithstanding all appearances or threatenings to the contrary, given in the covenant made with Noah, and confirmed by a fixed sign in the heavens. "And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. 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" (more exactly: my bow I have set in the cloud, and it shall be for a covenant-sign,) "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." (Gen. ix. 8-15.)

There can be no doubt, that the natural impression produced by this passage in respect to the sign of the covenant, is, that it now for the first time appeared in the lower heavens. The Lord might, no doubt, then, or at any future time, have taken an existing phenomenon in nature, and by a special appointment made it the instrument of conveying some new and higher meaning to the subjects of his revelation. But, in a matter like the present, when the specific object contemplated was to allay men's fears of the possible recurrence of the deluge, and give them a kind of visible pledge in nature for the permanence of her existing order

imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. viii. 21.) The meaning is, that God delighted so much more in the offerings of righteousness than in the inflictions of judgment, that he would now direct his providence, so as more effectually to secure the former-would not allow the imaginations of man's evil heart to get such scope as they had done before, but perceiving and remembering their native existence in the heart, would bring such remedial influences to work that the extremity of the past should not again return.

and constitution, one cannot perceive how a natural phenomenon, common alike to the antediluvian and the postdiluvian world, could have fitly served the purpose. In that case, so far as the external sign was concerned, matters stood precisely where they were; and it was not properly the sign, but the covenant itself, which formed the guarantee of safety for the future. We incline, therefore, to the opinion that, in the announcement here made, intimation is given of a change in the physical relations or temperature of, at least, that portion of the earth where the original inhabitants had their abode; by reason of which the descent of moisture in showers of rain came to take the place of distillation by dew, or other modes of operation different from the present. The supposition is favoured by the mention only of dew before in connection with the moistening of the ground (Gen. ii. 6); and when rain does come to be mentioned, it is rain in such flowing torrents as seems rather to betoken the outpouring of a continuous stream, than the gentle dropping which we are wont to understand by the term, and to associate with the rainbow.

The fitness of the rainbow in other respects to serve as a sign of the covenant made with Noah, is all that could be desired. There is an exact correspondence between the natural phenomenon it presents, and the moral use to which it is applied. The promise in the covenant was not that there should be no future visitations of judgment upon the earth, but that they should not proceed to the extent of again destroying the world. In the moral, as in the natural sphere, there might still be congregating vapours and descending torrents; indeed, the terms of the covenant imply, that there should be such, and that by means of them God would not fail to testify his displeasure against sin, and keep in awe the workers of iniquity. But there should be no second deluge to diffuse universal ruin; mercy should always so far rejoice against judgment. And so precisely it is in nature with the rainbow, which is formed by the lustre of the sun's rays shining on the dark cloud as it recedes; so that it may fitly be called, in the somewhat poetical language of Lange, "the sun's triumph over the floods; the glitter of his beams imprinted on the rain-cloud as a mark of subjection." How appropriate an emblem of the action of divine grace always returning after wrath! Grace still sparing and preserving even when clouds of judgment have been threat