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what it is to be overwhelmed with deep horror at guilt and corruption. Is not this seraph altogether such a one as that "one of the elders," in Rev. v. 5, who, seeing the apostle weep, forthwith proffered comfort? It needed no command from Him that sat on the throne: the elder felt his compassion drawn forth to a sorrowing brother, and volunteered to dry up his tears" Weep not: behold!" And with like overflowing humanity, that other elder, Rev. vii. 13, no sooner saw the perplexity of John, than he essayed to remove it. Even thus does this seraph; and we cannot but think that he does it as one who knows both what it is to feel guilt, and what it is to get relief by atonement brought nigh.

No angel ever had any right to touch our altar. An angel sends Cornelius to Peter, but does not himself handle the blood. But this seraph, representing one of ourselves, knows the way to it, and knows its power.* How instinctively he fixes on the one only relief for the guilty-the atoning altar! Unbidden (for he needs not a command in such a case, any more than a sympathising pastor needs a heavenly vision ere he arises to go and visit a distressed soul)-unbidden "one of the seraphim" flies toward the prophet with a live coal from the altar a coal still burning, after having consumed the sacrifice and licked up its blood-a coal that said, "Justice has already found its victim." The seraph reminds Isaiah of the altar and all its meaning; and in connexion therewith, wakening up the memory of God's way of accepting sinners, he whispers in the prophet's ears a verse of a psalm which probably he had often sang (Psalm xxxii. 1, 2), “Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." Thus truly is the family in heaven and the family on earth one in spirit, one in mind, one in heart. "One Lord, one faith."

This is all we hear of the seraphim. They are withdrawn from our view, like Elias and Moses on the transfiguration hill. But they seem to ring in our ears- "Use atoning blood, and be at peace; forget not the altar, and the sacrifice on which its fire has fed; live, ever looking hither, while ye look up to the glory of the King." Live thus till "the whole earth be filled with his glory."

We have got one glimpse of these glorious ones, these seraphim, the nobility of heaven; and now they are departed, and are both unseen and unheard. They fulfil their part, but

* It is one of the cherubim that hands out the live coals to the man clothed in linen, Ezek. x. 7; for an angel is never represented as having liberty to handle the things in the holiest. So, Rev. xv. 7, it is one of the living beings who gives the vials to the angels; because the vials are vessels of our temple.

leave us to hold direct communication with Him that sitteth on the throne, and to emulate themselves in reverent, delighted worship. Isaiah now hears the voice of the King, asking for himself, as being (so to speak) the executive of the Godhead in ruling over earth, "Whom shall I send?" and then next, in the name of the three persons in the Godhead, "Who shall go for us?" The King does not wish to employ seraphim on this message. It is such as ourselves, still on earth below that throne, to whom he speaks; and see how the prophet at once offers himself! With all the alacrity of a seraph, he cries, "Here am I; send me!" Again we feel that the family in heaven and the family on earth are one-one in spirit, one in love, one in delighted service. May we not say, that a pardoned man, who feels himself pardoned, and whose eye, which once would not so much as look up to heaven, but which now is able to behold the King in his beauty, is the man who is prepared, as fully as the seraphim, for going on the Lord's errands? We must not merely have sense of sin-that burdens and crushes; we must have pardon, and pardon made known to us the Spirit witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God. And in addition to this happy deliverance from bondage, we must have an ear that can hear the seraphim's song, The whole earth is filled with his glory;" and an eye that can see the throne and the King, as distinctly as we saw the altar. Then we are equipped, but only then we are equipped, for hard, self-denying labour. It may be we may be sent, like Isaiah, on an awful errand, on an embassage that ends in hardening the people to whom we go, instead of converting them; but if we feel the power of the altar's sacrifice, then, indeed, carrying our pardon with us, and that pardon irradiated with the glory of the throne, we are able to go forward. We need not to be buoyed up with the unwholesome excitement of fancying that a whole kingdom, or a world even, will yield before us. We need not to betake ourselves to the glare of splendid success, in order to prevent gloom overclouding our souls while we labour. We need no other motives for persevering, no other stimulus to devotedness in the Lord's work, than a realised pardon and an anticipated day of glory, when we shall see our King, and shall hear seraph cry to seraph over a world at length delivered, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory." Let me be an Isaiah here, whether there be few or many elect among those to whom I am sent; and shortly I shall be a seraph there, at the throne, in presence of the King, "counted worthy to escape all things, and to stand before the Son of Man." I shall be a

seraph, covering my face with my wings, to betoken (as one has said) that I see such a glory in God as I am unworthy to look upon, and such inferiority in myself as is not worthy to be looked upon by him. I shall be a seraph, covering my feet with my wings, "in remembrance of my unworthiness, and conscious continually of my former sinfulness-ay, that I and my brethren may teach creation that meek, humble, self-abased carriage, in presence of God, for want of which angels fell." I shall be a seraph, "hiding myself, that God only may be discovered;" yet ready with my wings to fly on his errands, doing his commandments, hearkening to the voice of his word. Yes, I shall be a seraph, whose song of praise shall attract the notice of the King more than all the songs of his angels, incessantly adoring, and eternally blessed in him.

ART. IV.-GENESIS.

CHAP. VI. VER. 13-" And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth."

*

The pre

IT is to Noah, face to face, that God now speaks. The ceding utterances, though probably spoken through him, were general proclamations, meant for all. He tells him that now at length his long-suffering is exhausted, and that the end of

* The Seventy give kaupòs as the rendering of VP; while Aquila, more correctly, gives τελος, and Symmachus πέρας. The following passages will shew that our translators have rendered it correctly by "an end:"-Gen. viii. 6; xli. 1; Jer. li. 13; Lam. iv. 8; Ezek. vii. 2; Amos viii. 2. The last of these passages resembles the one before us clearly-" The end is come upon my people." "All flesh," a very universal term, including man and beast. See ch. viii. 17; Numb. xviii. 15. Most critics interpret the clause thus"The end (or destruction) of all flesh has been determined by me" (see Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Dathe, &c.); and perhaps this is substantially correct. But may it not be as if God were looking on the earth (ver. 12), and after each scene, from the first to the last, has presented itself to his view, he speaks" I see the end of all flesh"? Philo has a curious passage of mysticism on the clause-understanding the words of the Sept. as if they had meant, "the time of mankind has come against me" (evavτiov). See his "Questions and Solutions." "Through them "-lit. Heb. before their face, i.e., coming forth from them, see Exod. viii. 24—“the land was corrupted by reason of" (Heb. from the face of) "the swarm of flies;" Judg. vi. 6," by reason of;" Heb. "from the face of;" Jer. xv. 17; Ezek. xiv. 15. We may notice that the word ' occurs above 2200 times in various applications. "With the

earth." That this is the proper rendering of N is evident from ch. ix. 11, where the destruction of the earth is spoken of. That this is a literal meaning is plain from ch. xxxvii. 2; xliii. 16; Judges i. 16; Jer. li. 59. The Sept. has kaι Tηu yn, which is the same meaning. Is it not to this that the Apostle Peter alludes (2 Pet. iii. 6) ó кósμos áñάλeто?

all flesh has come up before him. It had been long delayed, but it comes at last-the end of all flesh-the end of their day on earth; and with the end of that day, the end of grace, the end of hope, the beginning of wrath and everlasting woe! How simply, but how solemnly, God speaks! Not in anger, yet with awful decision! Such shall be the judgment of the great day.

God does not judge hastily, or in a spirit of revenge, against poor sinning man. He has reasons for what he does, and they are worthy of himself. No stroke comes at random. All is calmly spoken, and calmly done. And will not this, O sinner! be the aggravation of your endless sorrow? You cannot soothe yourself with the idea that you are suffering unjustly, or are the victim of a hasty sentence. The wisdom and the justice of the proceeding will be clear even to yourself. This, too, makes your case so hopeless. Were the reasons for your condemnation weak or partial, you might hope for a reversal of the decision; but they are so wise, so good, so holy, that reversal is eternally impossible. In the case before us, God's reasons are man's total corruption of his ways and his filling the earth with violence. He has not only let in evil, but he has made it overflow-he has filled earth with it." The earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof" (Isa. xxiv. 5). It is not one sin that brings down the judgment; no, nor many. It is the persisting in sin till others are corrupted, and the earth polluted, and the Spirit grieved away. God hates even one sin; but he is slow to punish. Not till sin has become an overflowing flood, does he smite. But when he does judge, how terrible the stroke! Thus God waits now in his patient love. Earth is full of sin, but he waits. He will not cast it into the winepress of his wrath till its grapes be fully ripe (Rev. xiv. 18). The flood of waters waited till iniquity had filled the earth; so is it with the flood of fire-it waits till the wickedness of the last days has reached its height. Then the judgment sits; and it is seen that sin was no mere disease which needed healing, but guilt, which could only be dealt with at a seat of justice by the great Judge of all. For the inflicter of the sentence is God himself: " I will destroy them with the earth." They have corrupted the earth, I will corrupt them with that earth which they have corrupted. They and their earth shall be destroyed together; for the sentence comes forth against both. This destruction does not infer the annihilation

* The word in the original is the same in both clauses: "They have corrupted the earth, I will corrupt them," &c. The Sept. has preserved the identity of phrase. Trapp paraphrases it, "I will punish them in kind, pay them in their own coin," &c.

of either man or the earth. Nor does the Apostle Peter, when he speaks of the old world "perishing," mean annihilation. So when this earth is spoken of as consumed by fire, we are not to understand annihilation. It passes through fire, only in order to be purified; and thus, purged from its dross by the Refiner's fire, it comes forth a more glorious world than before.

Ver. 14-16. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. (15.) And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. (16.) A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it." *

"How shall any escape!" would be Noah's feeling, on hearing God's sentence against the world. Without delay, God reveals the provision to be made for the deliverance of the few. That deliverance was to be of God as directly as was the destruction. Yet man was to make the vessel of deliverance. "Make for thyself," is the express and urgent command. Deliverance was secured and provided by God, yet everything was made to depend on man's using the appointed means, just as in the case of Paul's deliverance from shipwreck.

The ark was well planned, well proportioned-admirably adapted for its end, not for sailing but floating, not for ornament but safety. God knows how to deliver his own, yet he does so by means, though these means are sometimes apparently slender enough. His providing means, and placing them at our disposal, implies the promise that, in using them, we shall attain what they were meant to lead to. God does not mock us. He

* There is no need for minute criticism on the words of these three verses. Gesenius, Robertson's Clavis, and Moses Stewart's Chrestomathy (p. 153), will give the radical meanings and common uses of the terms, which our translators have rendered with sufficient accuracy. The word used for "ark" occurs only in connexion with Noah's vessel and Moses' basket-a proof that the word is a general term applied to any sort of chest, great or small-made to float on the water. The word is not the same as that used for the "ark of the covenant.' Gopher wood, a resinous tree, such as the pine or cypress, probably the latter, from the likeness of the letters-Kuπapioσos. The word translated pitch (both noun and verb) means properly "cover"—" cover inside and outside with a covering"-the word nowhere else means pitch. It always means covering," or "ransom," or "atonement," save in Canticles, where it is translated “camphire” (ch. i. 14; iv. 14). We ought to add, that in 1 Sam. vi. 18 it means village, giving origin to Capernaum, or Caphernaum, and similar prefixes. The ark was divided into chambers, or nests, or rooms. (See Num. xxiv. 21; Job xxix. 18; Hab. ii. 9). It had a window, or transparency, or clear light. It was finished or sloped to a cubit above. Its door was in the side. It had a threefold division (which the Fathers greatly loved to mystify). It was 300 cubits long, 50 broad, 30 high-a measurement in which Augustine finds profound signification.

VOL. VIII.

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