havoc that are latent within. The description, therefore, is not that every human being is a drunkard, an adulterer, a blasphemer, covetous, wicked, proud, foolish, a murderer, a thief, and so on; it does not say, every individual is so; but it says, in every individual's heart these elements exist, in some in the bud, in some slightly developed, in some powerful, in some irresistible, and in some exploding in awful manifestations. It is therefore the picture of what the human heart is, and what it may develop, if circumstances permit it. We do not know how much we owe to never having come within reach of some specific temptation; and how much of our excellence we are indebted to, for never being placed in circumstances where the match that would ignite would have been applied. We do not know, in other words, what we owe to the providence of God that placed us here, and not there. And very often, when you rebuke with just severity the offender, temper your rebuke with the inner recollection I might have been worse, if I had been in his place; and at all events, give for your safety and preservation all the glory, either to the providence of God that kept you as you are, or to the grace of God that made you triumph, where otherwise you would have foully fallen.

Having seen this picture of what humanity has become, let me notice the following lessons. First, long life is no preservative against the degeneracy of man. Man lived in the days of Noah twelve or thirteen times longer than man lives now; but did he improve? Did experience teach him more excellent lessons? Did his contact with evil prove to him experimentally its bitterness? Did he grow better as he grew older? The language of Scripture indicates the very reverse that the longer he lived the more corrupt he became, and the inference naturally forced upon us is, that it is well that man's life is shortened, or the world would become far worse than it ever was before. The

shortening of our life is partly in judgment, but it is partly in mercy in mercy to the good, that they may be sooner transplanted to a higher and better world -in mercy to the bad, that they may not have space and scope to develop all the inherent depravity of their nature. And therefore, what seems to us a judgment because of our sins, is lightened by the thought that it is also mercy on the part of God. To wish, therefore, that we lived a couple of hundred years, instead of seventy, is not worth wishing. There is no evidence that we should get better by it. We shall find old men just as depraved in one way, as young men are in another, if both be strangers to the grace of God.

Tradition is no sure preventive of corruption. Here was a grand field for the experiment, whether tradition, or the oral transmission of truth, would preserve the human race from apostasy. Between Adam and Noah there was only one single link. Methuselah could tell Noah what he learned from Adam, and the lessons that Adam taught; and Noah could thus treasure them up for his generation. If ever oral transmission of truth was placed in circumstances favorable to its perfect efficiency, it was in the antediluvian world. But what was the result? It failed to prevent utter apostasy; it failed to prevent the corruption of all mankind; it failed to perpetuate that truth which Adam had learned in Paradise, but which the antediluvians had forgotten soon after they learned it from Adam's lips. And if oral transmission of truth failed in such favorable circumstances, how inevitable is the conclusion that it must have failed in the medieval ages of Europe, and that the traditions of the Western Apostasy, instead of being the truths of God, are the perverted, and corrupted, and distorted traditions of once great truths, now travestied into utter and anile fables.

We learn in the next place, that God's great forbearance

did not repress wickedness. How long did God bear with man after man had fallen into this apostate, demoralized, and lost condition! One would have thought that such forbearance so vividly illustrated in the case of spared Cain, would have made the rest of mankind say, So good a God surely merits a different treatment at our hands. But they denied his existence; they defied his judgments; they doubted the inspection of his providence, and lived as if there were no God, and sinned as if there could be no judgment. The long forbearance of God had, therefore, no arresting influence on the increased corruption of man.

Again, the visible example of the effects of sin had no effect upon them. In other words, punishment did not deter them. Cain walked the world, blasted within and branded without, a vagabond and a fugitive, the punished of heaven and the shunned of earth, proving by his dumb but expressive spectacle, that it is a bitter and a wicked thing to depart from God. They heard, thundering behind Cain, a law that said, "Thou shalt not ;" and they heard, speaking from the earth, the blood of Abel that still cried for vengeance; they saw an earth blasted, flowers blighted, and Paradise, like a bright vision, departing in the distant horiall reminding what sin was, and what sin had done, and what terrible punitive retributions awaited it: and yet, with a high hand they sinned against God, and defied the judgments, and mocked at the penalties of the transgression of his holy law. More than this, they had seen one instance at least of a miracle adequate to teach them that the path to heaven was the path of piety and virtue. They had seen Enoch walk with God, and they had seen him ascend in a bright cloud to the presence of God-a testimony visible to the eye, and audible to the ear, that God loved and regarded the righteous, and that his ear was ever open to their cry. But this did not arrest their course; there is no proof

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that this miracle exercised a regenerating or transforming influence upon antediluvian society. And so will it ever be-"If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” No demonstration of power can ever change the human heart; what therefore we need in the present day is, not that God would bow the heavens, and work visible miracles before us, but that God would be pleased to bring on another Pentecost, and pour his Holy Spirit into our dark and corrupt hearts. And it always seems to me that the demand for miracles to convince us that Christianity is true, is an admission of scepticism and unbelief. The miracles wrought by our Lord and his apostles sufficiently affirm the truth of Christianity. They convince me. I do not wish to linger longer at the porch - I am satisfied that the temple is built by God, and that its inner chambers are filled with the glory of God; and, persuaded of this, I can no longer remain without for proofs of it, I must go within and hear the heavenly oracle, and receive the blessings that are for me, and feed upon the living bread that God has provided for them that love him. It is certain, that no miracle, however vast the power of which it is the exponent, will ever serve to make a man a Christian. Thousands will appear at the judgment-day, and say, "Lord, have we not in thy name done many wonderful works? And he will say unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." This shows us, that wonderful works may be done in Christ's name by men who are not Christ's people. And we read in the Scriptures, that there shall come a day when such signs and wonders shall be done, that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. And we are told, that the "man of sin" will come with "lying wonders" — not "false wonders," but réguoi yevdovs, "wonders to confirm a lie" — wonders wrought to prove that a lie is God's truth.

But, if any such were to be performed before us, if one were to come, and raise a dead man from the grave, and say, "I have done so, and I show you this proof of power to convince you that the Bible is not the word of God, and that you are to hear tradition, and not the Bible;" first of all, I should recollect that there shall come wonders in the last days, such as, if it were possible, shall deceive the very elect; I should then recollect that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light; and lastly, I should recollect, I trust, to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou savorest not of the things that be of God." This book ends all controversy about what is truth, and therefore all the miracles that power can exhibit upon earth will not in the least degree shake my confidence in the contents of this book for if God wrought miracles to prove that it is true, he never can work other miracles to prove that it is false; and therefore the other miracles must come from beneath, they never can come from the source of light and truth.

In the next place, we find in the antediluvian world that the very preaching of the gospel failed to arrest the prevailing degeneracy. Noah was a preacher of righteousness; and in 1 Pet. iii. 18, a passage which has been much misunderstood, we read: "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit by which" Spirit - the "Spirit that shall not always strive with man," (Gen. vi. 3,) —“ also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the