Poetry. THE CLOUDLESS. "Sorrow and sighing shall flee away."-Is. xxxv. 10. 1 No shadows yonder ! And say, How long Shall time me sunder From that dear throng? 2 No weeping yonder ! 3 No partings yonder ! Hearts cannot sever; Hands clasp for ever. 4 None wanting yonder ! The evergreen palm ;- NOTICE. All readers of the Journal are most earnestly besought to give it room in their prayers; that by means of it God may be honoured and His truth advanced; also, that it may be conducted in faith and love, with sobriety of judgment and discernment of the truth, in nothing carried away into error, or hasty speech, or sharp unbrotherly disputation. BALLANTYNE, PRINTER, EDINBURGH. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF PROPHECY OCTOBER 1853. ART. I. THE THREE SONS OF NOAH.* THE names of Noah's sons, which had been given before (vi. 10), are repeated in the 9th chapter, Shem being still placed first and Japheth last, though it is evident from chap. x. 21 that Japheth was the eldest. The frequent naming of Shem first seems intended to mark the peculiar honour put upon him as the beginner of Messiah's line, the progenitor of Abraham and of Israel, the centre round which all God's purposes and pro mises were to revolve. The way in which Ham's name is introduced intimates that it was on account of his connexion with Canaan that he was so specially mentioned. We shall see immediately Canaan's sin: we know that afterwards the nation of Canaan became the great adversary of God's people, in whom the seed of the serpent was especially, during many ages, to find its development; and for these reasons Ham's name is set down here in its connexion with his younger son, as if it were on account of Canaan alone that he is spoken of at all. Then, again, it is repeated, "These are the three sons of Noah," as if to certify to us that these were all who went into the ark and came out of it along with him. And in reference to these, it is explicitly added, "Of them was the whole earth overspread," giving us, at the very outset of the new world, God's own testimony as to their being the sole fountainhead of mankind, and that to this threefold origin must be traced the various nations, and races, and kingdoms of the earth. And whatever have been the rash deductions of one or two hasty reasoners upon this subject, the judgment of all the truly wise and cautiously learned has been an affirmation of the divine declaration. The old world had one fountain; the new world has three, out of which the population pours forth over earth's surface: yet, in both cases, there is the fulfilment of the purpose of the all-wise Jehovah as to the times, and the places, and the varieties of the race-all contributing to hasten on the fulness of times when the woman's seed should be born. Ver. 20. Noah takes to husbandry,* not, doubtless, in the spirit of Cain, yet with some sad results. He begins to be a husbandman, or, literally, a man of the ground; and he plants a vineyard. And now, for the first time, we hear these words vine and vineyard, afterwards to be so well known, and so made use of by God himself among his many symbols of heavenly truth. What associations gather themselves round these words, both in Israel's history and in connexion with the Lord himself! We remember the name Jehovah gives to Israel, a vineyard of red wine;" and we call to mind Him who said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." 66 But Noah forgot how the lawful comforts of life may become instruments of sin. We can hardly suppose that he knew not the intoxicating power of the juice of the grape, unless, indeed, on one supposition, that the altered sky and soil had injured the vine, and infused into it properties which it possessed not before. For this conjecture, however, there is no real ground in Scripture, and we throw it out merely as an idea which might be thought of. Noah sinned. The words are not, indeed, such as to imply that brutal drunkenness which is so often and so awfully denounced in Scripture; yet still it is written, "He drank of the wine, and was drunken." Sad position in which to find a saint, even were we admitting the palliations of ignorance, or incautiousness, which have been urged in his behalf! Most sorrowful, most humiliating spectacle! A saint overcome with wine! O horrid and incredible inconsistency! O desperate malignity and power of sin! What grief to his godly children-what a stumbling-block, nay, what a triumph, to his ungodly ones! And this was the man that had stood alone in his purity and righteousnessalone in his resistance of temptation-alone in his testimony *Or perhaps returns to it. See Calvin,-"Noah, though an old man, quietly returns to his former labours." Some think the expression implies a greater amount of needful toil than heretofore, in consequence of the deteri oration of the ground.-Pererius Valentinus, vol. ii. p. 362. against sin, and in his condemnation of the world! Ay; this was the man that walked with God when there was not another to walk with him on earth! O fearful and hateful fall! Who can tell the evil which this one false step may produce-the sins to which this one sin may give rise? Sad prospect for the new world when its story begins with the drunkenness of a child of God! Can any one for a moment cherish the thought that he may sin since Noah sinned, or that sin is less hateful in a saint? Most vile and atrocious imagination! As if Noah's fall were written for our example, not for our warning; or as if sin in a saint did not wear even a darker and more hideous aspect than in a daring sinner. Oh, shun each false step! Shun every shadow of an inconsistency; shun every appearance of evil; abhor that wretched, loathsome, brutal sin, so common now-the sin of drunkenness.* But the sin finds out the sinner. Each sin has its own way and its own time of finding him out; but it never loses sight of him, but tracks him until it has exposed him. Noah's sin soon found him out. His intemperance overcame him, and he was uncovered in the midst of his tent. In Adam's case, we saw the shame which the sin produced, but in Noah's, the wine has made him insensible-it has drowned the consciousness of the sin. He is put to shame, and he knows it not. Ah! surely "wine is a mocker." How it covers with dishonour and contempt!-how it stings and wounds!—how low it lays a man! -in what vile attitudes and circumstances does it present him! And this poor, exposed, uncovered creature, is Noah, the preacher of righteousness! Ah! let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Ham, who had happened to come into the tent, saw his father's exposure, and went and told it to his brethren, who were without. Shem and Japheth straightway proceeded to cover him, and in a way which at once displayed their modesty and filial love. In them we see the charity that would hide a multitude of sins. But here there are some things to be specially noted. There is no reason to suppose that Ham was guilty in this matter, though the usual opinion is against him. It is simply said he saw his father, and told his brethren what he saw; but, to say that he did so in mockery, is quite an infer * An old Latin commentator gives five causes of Noah's drunkenness ;-1, ignorance of the strength of the wine; 2, having been only used to water; 3, having drunk a large quantity; 4, his old age; 5, drinking it unmixed!Valentinus. See also Theodoret in his Questions. Augustine is not content with this:- "Vestimentum significat sacramentum; dorsa, memoriam præteritorum." ence of our own. For aught that the passage says, it might have been with the bitterest grief of spirit, and in order to consult with them as to what was to be done. I do not say that Ham really was grieved at what he saw, but there is no proof that he was not. The culprit evidently was not Ham, but his son, Canaan. It is singular that in naming Ham here (ver. 22), he should be again designated the father of Canaan. Surely this was to turn our attention to Canaan as the true actor in this sad scene. And then in the 23d verse, the expression "his younger son," is literally his "little son," meaning his grandson, Canaan, which is confirmed by the words of the awful curse which follow, "Cursed be Canaan." By understanding the passage, we get rid of the difficulty as to the curse being pronounced on Canaan, as well as render the whole passage consistent with itself.† If Ham was the guilty person, why does he escape? nay, why is an innocent person punished in his stead? Or, if it be said that he is punished in his posterity, why is only one of his sons selected? He had many others; why then are they passed by, and why is the curse made to light on Canaan? Nor does it lessen the difficulty to say that Canaan is cursed prospectively, in reference to his posterity, which were to be the enemies of God's people. This would be wholly to reverse the order of things. It would place the effect before the cause. It would make the stream to be the origin of the fountain, instead of the fountain the origin of the stream. It is not because his posterity were to prove ungodly that Canaan is so specially punished, but it is because Canaan is ungodly that he is cursed, and the curse, like a dark river, flows out of this fountainhead down to posterity, age after age. We look on Canaan as the guilty one. It was he who had mocked or injured Noah. It was he who had personally exhibited that spirit of ungodliness and mockery of the saints which drew down on him the curse of Jehovah. Whether Ham was an ungodly man we know not. He may or may * Why Ham should be so often designated the father of Canaan has been asked by many, especially the Fathers; and they generally answer that it was because of the likeness in character between them. The old historians make Ham to be the same as the Persian Zoroaster, and to be the inventor of magic. Augustine makes Ham to signify heat, and to be a type of "the hot race of heretics," hæreticorum genus calidum. Some of the Jewish commentators make "his younger son," in verse 24, to mean Ham's younger son, not Noah's; but this separates the relative too far from the antecedent. However, the Jews say that it was Canaan that first saw Noah's state, and went mockingly to tell his father. |