And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.
Noah lived, in all, 950 years; a sojourner in two worlds it may be said of him, and yet but a sojourner; for at length he died, and came under the universal sentence. Genesis 3:19
REFLECTIONS.
READER! if your feelings correspond with mine, from the perusal of this sweet chapter, you will like to dwell with peculiar rapture on what God saith in it, concerning the rainbow; and if, under the Holy Ghost's teaching, you are led to discover some of those precious things, which seem to be connected with it, you will love to consider it again and again, in the most devout contemplation. Methinks, I could forever gaze on it, while the words of the Lord vibrate on my ear, or are present to my remembrance. What though I know that beautiful arch it forms in the heavens is produced from natural causes, and is constructed solely from the reflection of the sun-beams on the drops of rain; yet do I not know, also, that the God of nature is the God of grace too; and that such is the sovereignty of his goodness and his power, that all things are made to act subordinate to his high designs, who worketh according to the counsel of his own will. And shall I not indulge the pleasing thought, when my God causeth this glorious object to be hung out for man's notice in the heavens, though the means producing it be natural, yet the sign intended from it is gracious? Great Father of mercies! hast thou said, that thou wilt set thy bow in the cloud, that it shall be a token of thy merciful engagements to mankind; that thou wilt look upon it, and that thou wilt remember thine everlasting covenant? Oh! then, give me grace, to look upon it also; and to behold in it, by an eye of faith, that mighty Angel, even the Lord Jesus Christ, whom John, the beloved apostle, in after ages, saw clothed with a rainbow round the throne. May I so look by grace, until mine eye awakens all the affections of my heart, and my soul is confirmed and established in the full assurance of faith and dependence upon all the covenant promises of God the Father, in Christ Jesus the Lord.