Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; Thy judgments are a great deep. Psalm xxxvi. 6. He that buildeth his stories in the heavens, and hath founded His troop in the earth, He that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out on the face of the earth: the Lord is His name. Amos ix. 6. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. Revelations xii. 15, 16. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. Isaiah lix. 19. A Annotations ON THE DELUGE. Noah was safe when the flood came; and was the great type, and instance too, of the verification of the safety of the righteous through patience and confidence; he was put into a strange condition, perpetually wandering, shut up in a prison of wood, living upon faith, having never had the experience of being safe in floods. Jeremy Taylor. If God should not interpose by the hearts of a miraculous and merciful grace, and put a bridle in the mouth of our lusts, and chastise the sea of our follies by some heaps of sand as the walls of a rock, we should perish in the deluge of sin universally, as the old world did in that storm of the Divine anger, the flood of Jeremy Taylor. waters. Adam fell by his folly, and did not perform the covenant of one little work, a work of a single abstinence; but he was restored by faith in the seed of the woman. And of this righteousness Noah was a preacher: and by faith a remnant was saved at the flood. Jeremy Taylor. Time's waters will not ebb nor stay, Thou wouldst have us linger still Upon the verge of good or ill, That on Thy guiding Hand unseen Our undivided hearts may lean, And this our frail and foundering bark Glide in the narrow wake of Thy beloved ark. Keble. In times past the fabric of the Church, as to the nave or body, was built somewhat in the form and fashion of a Ship, which very figure might mind us thus much; that we were in this world as in a sea, tossed and troubled with the troublesome waves, and boisterous winds, of divers temptations; which we could not be carried safely through, to our haven of rest and happiness, but only in the ship of the Church. Sparrow. The world was grown so foul with sin, that God saw it was time to wash it with a flood. If there had not been so deep a deluge of sin, there had been none of the waters. God needed not to have given these men any warning; but the building of the ark was a real sermon to the world, wherein at once were taught mercy and life to the believer, and to the rebellious destruction. Many a one wrought upon the ark, which yet was not saved in the ark. Our outward works cannot save us without our faith; we may help to save others and perish ourselves. How securely doth Noah ride out this uproar of heaven, and earth, and waters! He hears the pouring down of the rain above his head; the shrieking of men, and roaring and bellowing of beasts, on both sides of him; the raging and threats of waves under him; he saw the miserable shifts of distressed unbelievers; and in the meantime sits quietly in his dry cabin, neither feeling nor fearing evil. He knew that He which owned the waters could steer him; that He who shut him in would preserve him. How happy a thing is faith! what a quiet safety! what a heavenly peace doth it work in the soul, in the midst of all the inundations of evil. After forty days the heavens clear up-after one hundred and fifty the waters sink down. How soon is God weary of punishing, who is never weary of blessing. Noah stays well near two months before he will forsake the ark; and not then, unless God, that commanded him to enter, had bidden him depart. There is no action good without our faith no faith without a word. Happy is that man who in all things depends upon the commission of his Maker. Bishop Hall. Make your best of your worldly advantages, or good parts, or civil righteousness; all shall prove poor shifts from the flood of wrath which rises above all these and drowns them. Only the ark of our salvation is safe. Noah seemed to have entered rather into a grave as dead, than into a safeguard of life, in going into the ark; yet being buried there, he rose again, as it were, in his coming forth to begin a new world. The waters of the flood drowned the ungodly, as a heap of filthiness washed them away, them and their sin together, as one inseparable; and upon the same waters the ark, floating, preserved Noah. Thus the waters of baptism are intended as a deluge to drown |