The flood at last came, and the Shechinah disappeared from the earth; but the remembrance of its supernal glory was preserved in the family of Noah. There was nothing, however, in nature with which it could be compared, for beauty and for dazzling brightness, but the _Sun_ itself, or a _Flaming Fire_ most terrible to the beholders. Such, indeed, have always been the terms of comparison used by those whom God hath favoured with the heavenly vision; and such, no doubt, was the description of the appearance of the Edenic Cherubim, given by the sons of the great Antediluvian to their posterity. In the appearance of Jehovah to Abraham, the divine presence was accompanied by a _flame_, a smoking furnace, and lamps of _fire_, Gen. xv. 17; to Moses in Horeb, by a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, Exodus iii. 2; and to Israel, in the wilderness, by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of _fire_ by night, xiii. 21; at Sinai, by thunders and lightnings, devouring _fire_, and smoke as the smoke of a furnace, xix. 16, and xxiv. 17; and at the setting up of the tabernacle of the congregation, by cloud and _fire_, and the _glory_ of the Lord, the Insessor of the Cherubim, lx. 34. At the destruction of the priests of Baal, God answered Elijah[43] by _fire_, 1 Kings, xviii. 38; at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple, the _glory_ of the Lord appeared with cloud and _fire_, 2 Chronicles vii. 1; and, in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the glory of Christ, and spake of Him; then was the house filled with smoke, and His _glory_ filled the temple and the whole earth; and then was that glorious _Trisagium_ pronounced by the Seraphim, in the hearing of the prophet, and afterwards repeated by the four Living Creatures in that of the beloved disciple, which establishes for ever in the mind of the believer, His eternal power and Godhead, Isaiah vi. 1–4; John xii. 41; and Rev. iv. 8.