THE BOW IN THE CLOUD.

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by a gracious covenant with Noah, accompanied by favours and conditions of a new and remarkable kind. To Adam, the vegetable products alone were given for food, and we have no intimation that flesh was at all used for that purpose by man until after the flood, when God said to the patriarch and his family, '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 hands are they delivered.' And then follows the use and purport of this gift: Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.' Here, then, was a new promise and new grants, visibly ratified by the beautiful figure of the rainbow, which accompanies the blessing of rain in its mildest and most. genial form. 'This is the token of the covenant which I make between you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud.'-GEN. ix.

THE TOWER OF BABEL.

BOUT two hundred years after the flood, we find it stated that the whole earth was of one language,

and of one speech.' It appears that the increase of the human family had rendered necessary a vast migration, probably for the sake of food. 'And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east' [or eastward, as the margin has it], they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.' It seems that the memory or tradition of the flood yet haunted them, and a plain, which afforded no sort of safety in case of an inundation, perhaps suggested to the people the expediency of providing some remedy of their own for the deficiency;-they would sooner trust to their own feeble powers than to the promise of God made to their father Noah. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM.

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And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.' But God confounded their language, and they left off building the city.-GEN. xi.

S Noah was selected from the men before the flood

as a worshipper of the true God, so was Abraham from the families which succeeded it. God said to him, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: and I will make of thee a great nation.' But years passed away, and still Abraham had no son. Here, therefore, was the trial of his faith. The first promise of posterity had been made when he was seventy

five years old: it was repeated when he was ninety-nine; and he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Notwithstanding the doubts of Sarah, God was true to His word, and she bore to Abraham his son Isaac when he was an hundred years old.-GEN. xxi.

LOT'S WIFE.

LTHOUGH God had promised that He would no

more destroy the whole race of man by a flood, He had not said that signal judgments on individuals, families, cities, and even nations, should not take place occasionally, to serve the ends of His moral government of the world. The sin of Sodom had exceeded the limits of divine forbearance, and, notwithstanding the pathetic intercession of Abraham, the city was doomed to the flames by a tempest of fire and

ABRAHAM OFFERS UP ISAAC.

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brimstone. It was required of the whole family of Lot, who were by special mercy informed of the impending vengeance, that they should leave the devoted city, and should not so much as cast a lingering look behind, lest they should be consumed. But Lot's wife could not refrain from glancing, regretfully, her eye at the scene of fiery indignation. Her disobedience was instantly fatal: she underwent the change from life to death, and became a pillar of salt.-GEN. xix.

ゲ

ABRAHAM OFFERS UP ISAAC.

HE patriarch's abounding faith in God had been put to the test, when the promise of a son was given

under circumstances the most unlikely in the usual

course of nature. But the most severe and agonizing trial yet remained for him; and one in which the strongest

B