Original. ENTERING THE ARK. BY SEBA SMITH. [See Engraving.] THE reader, we think, cannot fail to be attracted and interested by the beautiful plate in the present number of this work. It is a graphic and highly suggestive embodiment of one of the most interesting and sublime passages in sacred history. It brings up to the mind with freshness and force, the whole story of the deluge, with all its wonderful, instructive, and appalling incidents. While looking at the picture, the whole scene of the one hundred and twenty years passes in review before us. We behold the earth peopled with inhabitants, as numerous, probably, as they are at the present day. We see the earth also filled with wickedness and violence; "for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth." We hear the great Jehovah, the Creator of heaven and earth, saying, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man.' "3 But in the midst of the general corruption and wickedness that filled the earth, we behold one "just man,' who "walked with God." It was the venerable patriarch Noah, who had lived to the age of five hundred years. We hear the Divine command to Noah, to make "an ark of gopher-wood," and to "pitch it within and without with pitch." For "behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female." Then we behold the sublime spectacle of Noah's unparalleled faith under the long trial of a hundred years. He commences the mighty structure; the great work goes steadily on from year to year; the multitude scoff and jeer at what they deem his folly and madness; but the faith of Noah wavers not; he toils on year after year; the immense fabric gradually rises before him, and at the end of a hundred years, or, according to some commentators, a hundred and twenty years, the great work is completed. Then, by Divine direction, Noah and his household enter the ark, while the unbelieving world look on with scorn and ridicule. "Of clean beasts, and beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and female, as God had commanded Noah." The huge elephant with slow and solemn tread, the tall and beautiful camel-leopard, the patient dromedary, the fierce lion, the graceful tiger, the spirited horse, the quiet ox, with all the animals that walk the earth, and all the birds that wing the air, at least one pair of each kind, moved by divine impulse, found shelter in the ark, and were preserved alive upon the earth. Then "were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." And "And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark went upon the face of the waters. the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the face of the earth, both of fowl and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And Noah only remained alive and they that were with him in the ark." It may seem remarkable to some, that it should have required a period of a hundred years or more to construct and complete the ark. But when the magnitude of the work is duly considered, the time will not indeed appear unreasonably long, if we suppose Noah to have been supplied with only ordinary and natural means of carrying on the work. It was much the largest structure ever formed by human hands to float on the waters. By the smallest computation of its dimensions, its length was four hundred and fifty feet, its breadth seventy-five feet, and its height forty-five, giving it a tonnage of upwards of forty thousand tons. A good sized merchant ship may be said to be four or five hundred tons burthen; so that the ark was of the capacity and could bear the burthen of a hundred merchant ships above the middling class. Again, it takes our government, with the national resources at command, years to construct a battle ship of the line. But Noah's ship was as large as a dozen or fifteen ships of the line put together, and yet it was built entirely under his personal supervision and by his individual resources. It is not strange, therefore, that the work should have been protracted to a hundred years. What a subject for the imagination, to follow that lone ark, containing all of life there was on the whole globe, borne away for months upon the boundless expanse of waters, and carried whithersoever the winds of heaven listed. And what a reward for the obedience and long-tried but unshaken faith of Noah. But "God remembered Noah-and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated-and the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat." Original. NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. BY REV. R. S. ST. JOHN. THERE are two principal methods by which the existence, attributes, and government of God, are made known to mankind. One is, the display of his works spread out before us in the material universe. The volume of nature is full of the richest instruc tion, and invites our study and admiration of its lessons, arranged in order, beauty, and grandeur. The other method of Divine revelation to man, is found in that plainer volume, the Holy Bible. Its luminous pages contain truths both simple and incomprehensible. It may be read and understood by the mere child, and the wayfaring man, and it propounds problems which the mind of the infinite God alone can solve. Between these two volumes-Nature and the Bible-there is perfect agreement. They never clash. They abound in mutual illustration and confirmation. For science frequently throws light upon the inspired page, while the Scriptures illuminate science. Indeed natural and revealed religion are but one and the same thing. The latter is only a republication of the former; a new edition with important explanations and additions. An acquaintance with the natural sciences, therefore, does not necessarily tend to infidelity, as many seem to suppose. The study of Nature, rightly prosecuted, leads one to Nature's God. The undevout man of science is only a madman. There are certain principles, however, to be observed by every one engaged in this interesting study. I mention the following: The Book of Nature is not confessedly as plain as the Bible. Of course then, we ought not to expect as clear information from it as from the writings of Moses or Paul. It is probably not as plain now as it was before sin entered into the world. The apostacy of man resulted, not only in a derangement of his own mental and moral faculties, but also in a dreadful disorder of the whole framework of Nature. When the grand fatal act was committed, "Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat |