Note 42 — LECTURE II.

Noah affords another striking example of a wonderful prolongation or delay of time. The first nine Patriarchs of the primitive world propagated their race at the mean or average term of the hundredth year of their lives:—some near that period—others considerably earlier—and others again much later. But in the case of Noah we find that, to the mean term of a hundred years, four hundred were yet added; and that the Patriarch was five hundred years of age when he propagated his race. The high motive of this evidently supernatural delay may be traced to the fact that, although during this long prophetic period of preparation, the holy Seer well foresaw and felt firmly assured of the judgments impending over a degenerate and corrupt world, it was not equally clear to him that he was destined by God to be the second progenitor of mankind, and the renovator of the human race. But that great doom of the world, already foretold by Enoch, Noah probably expected to be its last end; and hence perhaps might consider the propagation of his race as not altogether conformable to the divine will, till the hidden decrees of the Eternal were more fully and more clearly revealed to him.