speaks, or it ought to speak, with more awakening effect. And if the preacher of righteousness to the old world be allowed to stand forth as a type of the messenger of peace and salvation to the new, if the deliverance from a flood of water be the picture of as sure a deliverance from the flood of sin and death, over which we are to be borne triumphant, through faith in Christ Jesus, then the history applies itself to all our hopes, and to all our fears; then it gives to precept the confirmation of experience; and in its beginning, its progress, and its end, marks the rise, the success, and accomplishment of a Saviour's doctrine and kingdom.

To establish the final covenant between the Creator and his creatures, to fulfil the last promise of forgiveness to his rebellious subjects, and to shelter us from the wrath to come by timely notice of our danger, did the Son of GOD (the seed of the woman that was to bruise the serpent's head) take our nature upon Him, and visit us in great humility. And unless we refuse to attend to the purport of his coming; unless we disdain, like those in the time of the despised Patriarch, to listen to his admonitions;

we shall see the same protecting arm held forth to save, the same avenging hand uplifted to destroy; we shall find a repetition of the same consoling promises, and the same tremendous consummation. My spirit, said the Almighty, shall not alway strive with man, for that he also is flesh, and the end of all flesh is come before me; but come thou and thine house (addressing himself to Noah) into the ark. Is the language of our Saviour less authoritative, or less explicit-Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish? But, as in the case of Noah, holding forth the means of salvation to all believers, Come unto me, says he, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He saw the tempest that was ready to break on a guilty world, and viewing it in all its desolating consequences to impenitent men, he prepared an ark for the saving of his house; he instituted and ordained his church, against which the gates of Hell were not to prevail, to shelter the family of the faithful from the impending storm.

Here, safe with our spiritual Noah, we may defy the raging elements; from hence the Angel of Peace, at the final wreck of all things,

will go forth and return like the Dove with the olive branch, to tell us that our footing is sure, that new heavens and a new earth appear, and that we may again tread with safety in the pre-. sence of our GoD and Saviour.

If, then, salvation by Jesus Christ be the object of our hopes and wishes; if in faith we would truly turn to him, lest with hearts of unbelief we should fall into condemnation; if also the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian dispensations (as we trust to prove) were only different inclosures, which GOD by several ordinances had fenced, to keep his church unmixt with and separate from the world, and to preserve within its fold the adopted children of Christ's holy family; are we not summoned to look to our everlasting Deliverer, and to consider how these things are accomplished in us, who live in this last age of the world?

The same Spirit, my brethren, that preached in Noah to the old world, and in Christ to the Jews, preaches now to you in the ministration of the Gospel. We are appointed and ordered to warn you from GOD of things not seen as yet, of a sudden and invisible destruction coming like a

whirlwind from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, upon all the inhabitants of the earth; when, at his second advent, the Lord himself, terrible in judgment, as He is rich in mercy, shall descend, in flaming fire, the earth shall be dissolved from its foundations, the rocks melt, and the mountains flow down in liquid fire at his presence. The earth, which was of old, says St. Peter, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and earth, which are now, are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. Surely, such a warning from GOD, of things the more terrible for that we see them not, of things that will assuredly come to pass, though all mankind should resolve not to think of them, should move us, like the holy Patriarch, with fear. Nor unless daily observation evinced the truth of it, could the thought'lessness and indifference with which some can listen to such warning, be deemed credible.

We cannot better illustrate our meaning than by a familiar though painful comparison. Some of us may have felt, but all of us can imagine, the horror and distraction of a man's

mind, when his house is on fire, without any place of shelter provided for himself and destitute family; and yet that same man shall sit and hear of the heavens melting all around him, a fiery gulph rolling beneath, the earth he stands upon sinking into it, and no care taken to assure an everlasting habitation to receive him, with a careless unconcern, an idle curiosity, or a sort of mental inattention, thinking only what is to become of the rest of the day, when the customary tribute of public worship is over.These things are, and will be for a lamentation; all that we can do is to give you the warning we have received from GOD, to pray that it may be recorded in the book of everlasting remembrance, that after the warning given, should the sinner die in his iniquity, his blood may not be required at the watchman's hand; to tell you, that though the elements be dissolved with fervent heat, and a fiery deluge shall swallow up the world of the ungodly, in the ark of Christ's church the family of the faithful shall remain unhurt; but if we are not found among that blessed number, when terror and desolation drive us to seek for refuge, the door will be shut.