noted, renowned, or notorious for their wickedness, shown in deeds of lawlessness and daring defiance of the holy God. And as this union had become all but universal, the declension from God was general. The "seed" which God had set apart, to show forth the glory of his righteousness and grace in the world, had become limited to one household. In such circumstances "it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (ver. 6); and he arose to judgment, "bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly" (2 Peter ii. 5); " And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years" (ver. 3). Josephus held that the last clause of the third verse intimates that God at this period shortened the duration of man's life. Instead of the longevity enjoyed by them previously, God now, "cutting short their lives, made their years not so many as they formerly lived, but one hundred and twenty only." Several modern biblical critics of great ability and learning have followed the opinion of the Jewish historian. But the interpretation, which assigns the space of one hundred and twenty years to the preparation of the Ark, and, in connection with this, to the exhibition of the testimony to the grace of God before the wicked, is both more natural and more in harmony with other portions of Scripture. "The long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing" (1 Peter iii. 20). Besides, it is not found that the duration of man's life after the flood was 120 years. Noah himself lived 950, Peleg died at the age of 239, Nahor at the age of 148, Reu at the age of 239, Terah at the age of 205, and Abraham at the age of 175 years. Arphaxhad, the grandchild of Noah, must have survived twelve years after Abraham removed into Canaan; and Shem himself, who died at the age of 600 years, must have lived during fifty years of the life of Abraham's son Isaac. One who had seen the violence of the antediluvian people, who had looked on the Nephilim, listened to the rehearsal of the daring deeds of the mighty men of renown, who had been in the ark, had looked out on the dark waters of the deluge, and stood under the covenant bow as it lay on those dark clouds which still told of the ruin that had been on the earth, may have twined his aged fingers in the locks of Abraham's children, and told to Isaac, the child of promise, the awful story of the judgment of God against the "world of the ungodly." In any inquiry into the cause of the longevity of men before the flood, we must, after all theorizing, be satisfied with the acknowledgment of the fact according to the sovereign purpose of God. So God willed it. The question of the shortening of the period of man's pilgrimage on earth to its present "brief span," must resolve itself into the same confession. The solution has been sought "in an undiminished youthful vigour in the men of the first generations, and a corresponding deeper energy in earthly and natural life generally." The vegetarian believes that the alleged abstinence of the antediluvians from animal food accounts for the whole matter, and he can appeal to physiological facts in proof! Sin and toil have been appealed to as the chief causes of the shortening of life:-" Man was originally intended for an immortal existence; sin brought death upon him; every progress in the career of sin caused a new reduction in the years of his life; toil increased, and the years were again curtailed; the greater the interval which separated man from the happy days of paradise, the shorter grew his life, till it was at last contracted to its present narrow limits, and became comparable to the 'shadow that passes,' or 'the cloud that vanishes,' or the dream that disappears.' It is, however, fatal to all such theories that the systematic, gradual shortening of life demanded by each of them nowhere appears. Even before the flood there was as great a variety in the duration of single lives as there is now. The change was brought about much sooner than such natural causes would have done it. The natural law would be constant in its operation, and the average of the years of the life of man would have long ago been far below what it is at present. The divine interposition would in its general bearings have a direct influence for good on the morality of the world. The evil example of a wicked man will of course be influential so long as he lives; and if his life be brief, his influence for evil will be cut short. If, for instance, the lives of Cain's immediate descendants were as long as those of the children of Seth, which is indeed likely, we can see what power Lamech would have to familiarize his brethren with polygamy first practised by him. Lamech was the fifth from Cain ; and if his life were as long as Jared's, the fifth from Seth, his years would be nine hundred and sixty-five. There is something very grand both in the picture presented to us in the remaining verses, and in the style of the whole narrative. The wickedness of the world serves as the dark background on which the great purpose of grace, seen in the building of the ark and in the salvation of Noah, is brought boldly out. God sees the earth full of violence, and "every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart only evil continually." The strong expressions of verse 6 testify to the utter depravity of men-" It repented the Lord that he had made him, it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (ver. 6-8). The word "heart," used in verse 5, is peculiarly expressive. As in most other passages of Scripture in which it occurs, it denotes the whole moral and spiritual man. It includes conscience and consciousness both; will and desire; intellect and emotion; understanding and affection. All this had become depraved; and because of this utter depravity, ruin comes on the whole race of man-yea, even on the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the creeping things. The lower animals are again associated with the spiritual history of man. This subject has already been alluded to, but I reserve its full consideration until we come to consider the words of the Lord to Jonah (Jon. iv. 11). In the ninth verse we get another glimpse into the life of the Sethites, who still remained faithful. Enoch had walked with God, and the distinguished piety and uprightness of Noah are characterized by the same terms "Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." His righteousness and his singular holiness not only stood out immediately before the flood, but, touching the sinful practices of the generations of men which he saw coming and going in the world, he was blameless. The Lord with whom he walked instructed him in his purpose. "Make thee," he said, "an ark of gopher-wood." And by faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house" (Heb. xi. 7)— "Faithful found Among the faithless, faithful only he; His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; Nor number, nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind The measurement of the ark guides us to a general idea of its shape. It could not, according to the proportions indicated here, be built in the form of a ship. It must have been shaped like a chest, much like that "ark of the tabernacle" which stood within the vail. In size it was Fig. 76. three hundred cubits long, fifty broad, and thirty high-or a total of 450,000 cubits in contents. It was lighted from above by a window, had a door in the side, and consisted of "lower, second, and third stories," which were divided into small compartments, rooms, or, literally, nests. Its timbers were strengthened and made waterproof by being covered on both sides-within and without-with pitch. The material from which it was constructed was gopher-wood. The measure was by cubits. A cubit is equal to the distance from the elbow of a full-grown man to the end of the middle finger-that is, say, one foot nine inches. It consisted thus of two spans, or of six handbreadths-the span being ten and a half, and the handbreadth three and a half inches. Taking, then, the size of the ark according to cubits, and reducing these to English measures, we have 525 feet for its length, 87 feet 6 inches for its breadth, and 52 feet 6 inches for its height. The building of a vessel of this size implied the possession of great mechanical skill on Noah's part. It is, moreover, clear from this that the knowledge. of the arts was not confined to the Cainites, and that the descendants of Seth did not limit their energies to the "work and toil of the hands" only in cultivating the ground. The wood of the ark was gopher-wood, literally pitch-wood, or wood yielding resin. The etymology of the word is the only guide we have in attempting to identify this wood. By most it is held that the gopher is the same as one of the well known cypress trees-the Cupressus sempervirens, or ever-green cypress, one of the Coniferæ or cone-bearing family of trees. Cupressus Sempervirens. Two things have led to the supposition that the cypress is referred to here. On the one hand, it is held that there is a strong phonetic resemblance between the Greek name for the cypress and the Hebrew gopher, and, on the other hand, the cypress must have been a common tree in the district in which most likely the ark was constructed, while the well known durability of the timber would probably attract Noah to it. But as this word occurs only in Gen. vi. 14, we must be satisfied with the general supposition, that some one of the Coniferæ is referred VOL. I. 2 A to. Lightness, rather than durability, would be the quality chiefly sought by Noah when he began to build. This, indeed, has led some to believe that Noah's ark may have been of wicker-work, and, like that of the bulrushes in which the infant Moses was laid, made waterproof by being daubed with pitch. But the burden which the vessel was to convey makes this little likely. If much doubt exists as to the gophertree, it is said there can be almost none as to the identity of the "firtree" (berosh) named in other passages of Scripture with the evergreen cypress, represented above. It is still common, as a tree of great beauty, on the mountain sides of Lesser Asia. It formed part of the wood-work of the temple. The following passages are quoted in support of this rendering:-" Hiram told Solomon, I will do all thy desire concerning timber of cedar, and concerning timber of fir" (1 Kings v. 8). The ships of Tyre were formed of this wood: "They have made all thy ship-boards of fir-trees of Shenir" (Ezek. xxvii. 5). Isaiah gives the cypress a place in the bold figures in which he refers to the bringing down of Babylon, "the golden city," and its mighty king: "Yea the firtrees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller has come up against us" (xiv. 8). He also uses it to indicate the advent of blessing to the church: "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off" (lv. 13). In another passage it is noted as distinguished for its beauty: "The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box-tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary" (lx. 13). In Isaiah xliv. 14, our translators have rendered the Hebrew word, derived from the root "to be hard"tirzah-by cypress, whereas, the tree pointed to is the evergreen oak (Quercus ilex). To retain, it is alleged, "fir-tree fir-tree" as the translation of berosh, would both be inconsistent with the broad distinction which the Scripture writers drew between it and the cedar, when they referred to these trees in the same passage, and would shut us up to a conclusion most unlikely in the circumstances-that the tree which, more than any other, was, with the cedar, "the glory of Lebanon," had not attracted their attention at all. A fuller notice of the Coniferæ will be given under Judges ix. 15. That "fir" is the true rendering of berosh will be shown under 1 Kings v. 8, which see. The material to be used by Noah in careening or calking the ark, was pitch-"Thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch." Three words are used by the writers of Scripture to express certain kinds of |