The last paragraph of this chapter presents a humiliating spectacle. The lord of creation fails to govern himself: "And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent." What a condition for Noah, the only righteous man, the preacher of righteousness, to be found in! Alas! what is man? Look at him where you will, and you see only failure. In Eden, he fails; in the restored earth, he fails; in Canaan, he fails; in the Church, he fails; in the presence of millennial bliss and glory, he fails. He fails everywhere, and in all things: there is no good thing in him. Let his advantages be ever so great, his privileges ever so vast, his position ever so desirable, he can only exhibit failure and sin. We must, however, look at Noah in two ways, namely, as _a type_, and as _a man_; and while the type is full of beauty and meaning, the man is full of sin and folly; yet the Holy Ghost has written these words, "Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generation; and Noah walked with God." Divine grace had covered all his sins, and clothed his person with a spotless robe of righteousness. Though Noah exposed his nakedness, God did not see it, for he looked not at him in the weakness of his own condition, but in the full power of divine and everlasting righteousness. Hence we may see how entirely astray--how totally alienated from God and his thoughts--Ham was in the course he adopted; he evidently knew nothing of the blessedness of the man whose iniquity is forgiven and his sin covered. On the contrary, Shem and Japheth exhibit in their conduct a fine specimen of the divine method of dealing with human nakedness; wherefore they inherit a blessing, whereas Ham inherits a curse. FOOTNOTES: [11] We should ever bear in mind, that "the wisdom which is from above is _first pure_, then peaceable." (James iii. 17.) The wisdom which is from beneath would put "peaceable" first, and, therefore, it can never be pure. [12] It is impossible to over-estimate the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, as seen in the way in which he treats the ordinance of baptism, in the above remarkable passage. We know the evil use which has been made of baptism; we know the false place it has gotten in the thoughts of many; we know how that the efficacy, which belongs only to the blood of Christ, has been attributed to the water of baptism; we know how the regenerating grace of the Holy Ghost has been transferred to water baptism; and, with the knowledge of all this, we cannot but be struck with the way in which the Spirit of God guards the subject, by stating, that it is not the mere washing away of the filth of the flesh, as by water, "but the answer of a good conscience toward God," which "answer" we get, not by baptism, how important soever it may be, as an ordinance of the kingdom, but "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ," "who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification."