well forgotten the generous, treacherous Vine.  That to a righteous man, little used to all unhallowed sources of exhilaration, this should have been a stepping-stone to a defalcation from God, was likely.  It was probable in itself, and shows the honesty as well as the verisimilitude of Scripture to read, that “Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and was drunken.”  There was nothing here but what, taking all things into consideration, Reason might have previously guessed.  Why then withhold the easier matter of an afterward belief?

BABEL.

This book ought to be read, as mentally it is written, with at the end of every sentence one of those et ceteras, which the genius of a Coke interpreted so keenly of the genius of a Littleton:  for, far more remains on each subject to be said, than in any one has been attempted.

Let us pass on to the story of Babel:  I can conceive nothing more a priori probable than the account we read in Scripture.  Briefly consider the matter.  A multitude of men, possibly the then whole human family, once more a fallen race, emigrate towards the East, and come to a vast plain in the region of Shinar, afterwards Chaldaea.  Fertile, well-watered, apt for every mundane purpose, it yet wanted one great requisite.  The degenerate race “put not their trust in God:”  they did not believe but that the world might some day be again destroyed by water:  and they required a point of refuge in the possible event of a second deluge from the broken bounds of ocean and the windows of the skies.  They had come from the West; more strictly the North-west, a land of mountains, as they deemed them, ready-made refuges:  and their scheme, a probable one enough, was to construct some such mountain artificially, so that its top might reach the clouds, as did the summit of Ararat.  This would serve the twofold purpose of outwitting any further attempt to drown them, and of making for themselves a proud name upon the earth.  So, the Lord God, in his etherealized human form (having taken counsel with His own divine compeers), coming in the guise wherein He was wont to walk with Adam and with Enoch and his other saints of men, “came down and saw the tower:”  truly, He needed not have come, for ubiquity was his, and omniscience; but in the days when God and man were (so to speak) less chronologically divided than as now, and while yet the trial-family was young, it does not seem unlikely that He should.  God then, in his aspect of the Head of all mankind, took notice of that dangerous and unholy combination:  and He made within His Triune Mind the wise resolve to break their bond of union.  Omniscience had herein a view to ulterior consequences benevolent to man, and He knew that it would be a wise thing for the future world, as well as a discriminative check upon the race then living, to confuse the universal language