SIXTH CHAPTER OF GENESIS.

1. "AND it came to pass, when MEN began to multiply [observe it is men, not the sons of God, which are here spoken of, as the next verse proves beyond all controversy] on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

2. "That the sons of God saw the daughters of MEN, that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."

If the terms employed in the above verses are to be looked upon as figurative, we must allow that they are figurative of we know not what; but if the language is allowed to be literal, and to mean what it says, then are we undeniably informed of two separate and different sorts of people, the one acceptable to God, and the other offensive in their natures; but having coalesced, they are collectively termed man in the following verse.

Verse 3. "And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that HE ALSO is

flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."

Do not the remarkable words, for that he also is flesh, concur with the supposition that alien and unwelcome spirits had become participators in the flesh; and what power but that derived from the denunciation of the multiplied conception could enable bad seed to become incarnate in the master's field, the world? And nothing can be more evident than that the people called men in this chapter are considered as inimical to God, and a race with whom his spirit strives; but that cannot rationally be supposed of Adam's, or of Seth's selected line, which is traced down in righteousness to Noah.

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These strange people are well-favoured, and not doubt acute; as in the distinct genealogical line of Cain we first find "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ," also the "INSTRUCTOR every artificer in brass and iron;" and the New Testament informs us, that "the children of this world," that is, the children of the flesh," are in their generations wiser than the children of light." The matter of this chapter cannot be vague information, as the alleged transgression is followed

by the punishment of shortening man's life; and the children of the offending matches are described as different in their principles and stature from those sons of God who remain perfect in their generations.

Verse 5. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

6. "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

7. "And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

12. "And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt: for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

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."

Such a preponderance of evil, we never can sup

pose, sprang from the uninterrupted work of God; we have, on the contrary, every reason to suppose that it did not, having been, from the first, apprised of the extreme subtlety and of the hostile intentions of Satan against the new creation. And we again find, in this chapter, that by the means of an evil race of people, the sons of God in Adam's uncontaminated line were seduced into offensive alliances, which eventually proved so fatal to the good order and peace of the world, that the deluge was determined upon, to sweep away, by one Almighty judgment, the mingled and greatly corrupted race of men.

But, notwithstanding, as it was denounced at the commencement of the world that Satan's seed should ever be at enmity with the woman's seed, it follows that they must still be contemporary; and accordingly we find, by the figure of the metallic image in Daniel, which prefigures the four successive empires, that there will be, at the latest period of time, which it represents, a mixture or mingling of a certain people with the seed of

men.

Daniel, chap. ii. 43. « And whereas thou sawest

iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay."

The above is a clear corroboration of the information given in the sixth chapter of Genesis concerning two distinct sorts of people, and evidently without design, by a prophet long subsequent to Moses. It is prefaced, at the 28th verse, by the declaration, that "There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the LATTER

DAYS."

This shows to what a late period the men, emphatically so called, remain upon the earth. And in the Revelations they are several times mentioned, being there also emphatically termed men.

As a common reader, I cannot but apprehend the 43d verse of Daniel (chap. ii.) as a literal explanation of that foregoing part of the prophecy which relates to two different sorts of people upon earth. The sixth chapter of Genesis clearly described a race of men who were positively adverse