CHAPTER VI.

The sons of God mingle with the daughters of men. Power, corruption, and violence characterise men. God proposes to destroy them with the earth. The just Noah finds grace, and by faith prepares an ark, according to the commandment of God, to the saving of his house.

CHAPTER VII.

Noah and his house enter the ark, with every sort of beasts of the earth and birds of the air, and of every creeping thing. The flood is brought upon the world of the ungodly. The waters prevail 150 days. The Lord shut in Noah, in safety.

CHAPTER VIII.

God remembers Noah and all that were with him in the ark, and the waters decrease continually. The sending out of the raven and the dove. After a year and seventeen days, at the word of God, Noah leaves the ark, and builds an altar to the Lord, offering burntofferings thereon, the sweet savour of

which becomes the new ground of Jehovah's relations with the restored earth-no more to be cursed on the old basis of man's hopeless condition, nor smitten again with a flood; and the orderly succession of seasons is guaranteed while the earth remains.

CHAPTER IX.

Government set up in Noah. Every living thing given man for food, but the blood, which is the life, reserved. The primary law of government, as to the shedding of man's blood, whether by man or beast. An everlasting covenant established with Noah and his seed, and every living creature, that there shall be no more a flood to destroy the earth; the bow set in the cloud as the token of the covenant. Government breaks down, in Noah's failing to govern himself. The providential ordering of races in the sons of Noah, by whom the whole earth was overspread, is announced. Ham, failing in respect towards his father, is cursed, and condemned to be a servant

to Shem and Japheth. Shem is owned, as in special relation of blessing, with the Lord God. God would enlarge Japheth, even to dwelling in the tents of Shem.

CHAPTER X.

The generations of the sons of Noah. To Japheth is traced the origin of the races by whom the coasts of the Gentiles were divided, among whom are recognised the Cymry, or Celts (Gomer); the Scythians of Europe (Magog); Ionians, or Greeks (Javan); Thracians? (Tiras), and others derivatively.

To Ham: Cush (Ethiopian and Asiatic); the Egyptians (Mizraim, literally, "the two Egypts"); Phut; the families of the Canaanites, and derivatively the beginning of imperial energy in Nimrod at Babel.

To Shem: the Elamites, Assyrians, Syrians (Aram), and derivatively the Hebrews.

With their respective territories, God setting the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel (see ver. 19), by whom the

nations were separated in the earth, according to kindred, and tongue, and country.

CHAPTER XI.

The occasion of the separation (presented in its results in chapter x.), men seeking to associate and centralise in the building of Babel; the judgment of God on the undertaking, confounding the common language, and thus scattering them.

The genealogy of the favoured race of Shem then given to Abram. The average age cut down by half, in the time of Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided.

Terah, father of Abraham, moves, with his family and nephew, Lot, from Ur of the Chaldees, to go to Canaan, halts at Haran, and dies there.

"PROVING WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE TO THE LORD." EPHESIANS v. 10.

THIS is a short exhortation containing nothing attractive for the intellect, but

very

much for the heart. Are we doing it ? How much of the "proving" has there been in your course and in mine this day? How much of real, earnest, godly exercise as to what was the Lord's mind about each little occurrence?

"Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." (1 John ii. 20.) This is true of every Christian, whether only a babe, or more advanced as a young man, or a father in Christ. And this gives to us the power to do what the verse I have quoted exhorts us to do.

Is there then anything in your daily path with which Christ can have fellowship (You will be instructed as to this in the word.) Are this and that "acceptable unto the Lord"? If so then persevere in it, go on with it. Let no human influence deter you from this path. Why? Because the Lord is with you, and can there be anything like that? You have His own blessed presence, and favour, and sympathy, and they will compensate, even if have to face all the world's frowns.

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