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Expositions of Holy Scripture by Alexander Maclaren
page 72 of 764 (09%)
which it guarantees. But consider how important such an assurance
was in two aspects. Note the solemn light which it threw on the
past. It taught that the flood was an exception in the divine
government, which should stand unrepeated for ever, in its dread
pre-eminence testifying how awful it was as a judicial act, and how
outrageous had been the guilt which it drowned out of existence and
sight. A wholesome terror at the unexampled act of judgment would
fill the hearts of the little group which now represented mankind.

Consider the effect of the covenant in encouraging hope. We have
said that the one thing needful for Noah was some assurance that the
new order would last. He was like a man who has just been rescued
from an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. The ground seems to reel
beneath him. Old habitudes have been curled up like leaves in the
fire. Is there to be any fixity, any ground for continuous action,
or for labour for a moment beyond the present? Is it worth while to
plant or sow? Men who have lived through national tempests or
domestic crashes know how much they need to be steadied afterwards
by some reasonable assurance of comparative continuity. And these
men, in the childhood of the race, would need it much. So they were
sent out to till the earth, and to begin again strenuous lives, with
this covenant to keep them from falling into a hand-to-mouth style
of life, which would have brought them down to barbarism. We all
need the same kind of assurance; and then, when we get it, such is
the weakness of humanity, we are tempted to think that continuity
means eternity, and that, because probably to-morrow shall be as
this day, there will never come a to-morrow which shall be quite
unlike to-day. The crust of cooled earth, on which we walk, is thick
enough to bear man and all his works, but there comes a time when it
will crack. The world will not be flooded again, but we forget, what
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