comes of itself;
nothing comes of itself, but all comes straight and immediately from
the one Living Lord God?

A man may say, But the flood must have been caused by clouds and
rain; and there must have been some special natural cause for their
falling at that place and that time?

What of that?

Or that the fountains of the great deep must have been broken up by
natural earthquakes, such as break up the crust of the earth now.
What of that?

Or that the rainbow must have been caused by the sun's rays shining
through rain-drops at a certain angle, as all rainbows are now.
What of that? Very probably it was: but if not, What of that?
What we ought to know, and what we ought to care for is, what the
Bible tells us without a doubt, that however they came, God sent
them. However they were made, God made them. Their manner, their
place, their time was appointed exactly by God for a MORAL purpose.
To do something for the immortal souls of men; to punish sinners; to
preserve the righteous; to teach Noah and his children after him a
moral lesson, concerning righteousness and sin; concerning the wrath
of God against sin; concerning God, that he governs the world and
all in it, and does not leave the world, or mankind, to go on of
themselves and by themselves.

You see, I trust, what a message this was, and is, and ever will be
for men; what a message and good news it must have been especially
for the heathen of old time.

For what would the heathen, what actually did the heathen think
about such sights as a flood, or a rainbow?

They thought of course that some one sent the flood. Common sense
taught them that.

But what kind of person must he be, thought they, who sent the
flood? Surely a very dark, terrible, angry God, who was easily and
suddenly provoked to drown their cattle and flood their lands.

But the rainbow, so bright and gay, the sign of coming fine weather,
could not belong to the same God who made the flood. What the
fancies of the heathen about the rainbow were matters little to us:
but they fancied, at least, that it belonged to some cheerful,
bright and kind God. And so with other things. Whatever was
bright, and beautiful, and wholesome in the world, like the rainbow,
belonged to kind gods; whatever was dark, ugly, and destroying, like
the flood, belonged to angry gods.

Therefore those of the heathen who were religious never felt
themselves safe. They were always afraid of having offe