Thirdly, we find in Noah's family the divine authority of government expressly established; for in the protection thrown over human life the power to take it away in case of grievous crime is also given. Authority to take life away belongs of right to the giver of life alone. He here bestows the vicarious exercise of it upon that family which was likewise the first State, and the fountain-head of actual human society. "At the hand of every man, and of his brother, will I require the life of man: whosoever shall shed man's blood, his blood shall be shed, for man was made to the image of God. But increase you, and multiply, and go upon the earth, and fill it." We have then the charter here of human society;[8] the delegation to it of supreme power by the Head of all power, to be vicariously exercised henceforward over the whole race as it went out, conquered, and replenished the earth; the sacredness of man's life declared, in virtue of that divine image according to which he alone of all creatures upon the earth was made, yet power over that life for the punishment of crime committed to man himself in the government established by God. An absolute dominion over all beasts was given at the same time to man; first for himself, in virtue of his distinction from the beast, in virtue of the divine image resting upon him, a delegation of divine power was set up in the midst of him, the supreme exercise of which is the power of life and death. Civil government therefore was no less created by God than marriage, and sacrifice, with the religious offices belonging to it. Like them it was ratified afresh in the race at this its second starting-point. But, fourthly, it was as Father and Head of the race that the first act of Noah leaving the ark was to offer sacrifice; he offered it for himself and for all his children. With him, as offering in a public act the homage of his race, the great covenant of which we have been speaking was made. Besides the divine things bound together in the institution of sacrifice—the accord of four acts, adoration, thanksgiving, prayer, and expiation, which express man's knowledge of his condition of God's sovereignty, and of his own last end, as well as the dedication of his will to God—great temporal promises, such as the dominion over all other creatures, and the filling the earth with his race, promises which belong to man as one family and one race, were made to Noah in this solemn covenant ratified in sacrifice. The common hopes of the whole community for the present life and the future also were jointly represented in it. It is, in fact, the alliance of the civil government with religion, of which we see here the solemn ratification. Noah the Father, the King, and the Priest, sacrifices for all, where all have a common hope, a common belief, a common knowledge, a life not only as individual men, but as a family, as a race, as a society.