I intend, my friends, according as God shall help me, to preach to
you, between this time and Christmas, a few sermons on some of the
saints and worthies of the Old Testament; and I will begin this day
with Noah.

Now you must bear in mind that the histories of these ancient men
were, as St. Paul says, written for our example. If these men in
old times had been different from us, they would not be examples to
us; but they were like us--men of like passions, says St. James, as
ourselves; they had each of them in them a corrupt NATURE, which was
continually ready to drag them down, and make beasts of them, and
make them slaves to their own lusts--slaves to eating and drinking,
and covetousness, and cowardice, and laziness, and love for the
things which they could see and handle--just such a nature, in
short, as we have. And they had also a spirit in each of them which
was longing to be free, and strong, and holy, and wise--such a
spirit as we have. And to them, just as to us, God was revealing
himself; God was saying to their consciences, as He does to ours,
'This is right, that is wrong; do this, and be free and clear-
hearted; do that, and be dark and discontented, and afraid of thy
own thoughts.' And they too, like us, had to live by faith, by
continual belief that they owed a DUTY to the great God whom they
could not see, by continual belief that He loved them, and was
guiding and leading them through every thing which happened, good or
ill.

This is faith in God, by which alone we, or any man, can live
worthily,--by which these old heroes lived. We read, in the twelfth
chapter of Hebrews, that it was by faith these elders obtained a
good report; and the whole history of the Old-Testament saints is