While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
How hath time, through a period of near 4000 years, stamped the truth of this, all over the earth.
REFLECTIONS.
I SHALL detain the Reader but with two observations, only, on this Chapter; and if they are well founded, may a gracious God give them their due weight on the mind!
Did Noah and his family remain perfectly secure in the ark, in the time of such awful destruction of the whole world? Think, then, O my soul, what infinite and inexhaustible resources are in Christ Jesus, for all the wants of all his people. There are no straits, neither is there any narrowness, but what we ourselves make, in the everlasting covenant of grace, founded on the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ; but abounding love and abounding mercy, answering to every necessity of his people. Gracious God! cause the reader and writer of this reflection to be abundantly supplied out of this fulness, and grace for grace, until the heart's experience of both, can join issue in the apostle's song, and, under the same assurance, say, as he did, For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things; to whom be glory forever. Amen.
The other observation I would beg to offer, ariseth from the different characters which the raven and the dove seem to suggest to our minds. May we not, without violence, consider the raven as an emblem of the carnal mind, which, amidst all its profession, can live upon the mere carcase without, and feels no desire to enter within the ark, for its comfort and enjoyment? and is not the dove a lovely similitude of a gracious soul, which can find no rest for the sole of its feet, until taken in and secured in Christ Jesus? Lord! grant that I may never be found among those that can rest satisfied without the ark; but, give me that dove-like simplicity, and godly sincerity, which pants to enter within. And Oh! Thou, who art the Almighty Noah of thy church and people, as without thee, Lord, I can do nothing, do thou, like him who was thy type, put forth thine hand, and take me into the ark, that I may live forever with thee, that where thou art, there I may be also.