But it happened in those days, as it has too frequently happened with the sinful and rebellious ever since, that the people believed not the threatenings denounced against them; whether they doubted the power of God to inflict so extraordinary a punishment; or whether they built their hopes upon the vain expectation of His mercy; or whether the wickedness of their hearts and lives led them entirely to cast off the belief of God and His word, and to plunge unheeding into the gratifications and pollutions of vice; whatever were the operating motive, “they would not turn and seek after God.” Yet these infatuated people were not lost for want of further instruction and admonition. God mercifully thinks of His creatures, though they are forgetful of Him. He had raised unto them preachers of righteousness; and sent His Holy Spirit to work upon their consciences, to convert them from the delusions of evil, to teach them the knowledge of His ways, and persuade them to desist from their work of self-destruction. But there is a day, to nations as well as to individuals, beyond which the goodness and patience of God will no longer forbear: “My spirit,” says He, in the chapter before us, “shall not always strive with man.” It had been working in the human heart, ever since the fall; inspiring His servants to point out the way of salvation; and struggling with the wayward inclinations, the perverse opposition of His creatures; to mortify the power of sin, and lead them to recover the favour and happiness, which their first parents by transgression had lost. But it shall not _always_ strive; and the approaching termination of their trial was thus graciously declared to this “disobedient and gainsaying people.” God spake thus by the mouth of Noah: “The days of man (the time which I will allow, to see if ‘haply he will repent and seek after Me,’) shall be a hundred and twenty years.” {43a} All this period was to elapse between the denunciation of the divine vengeance and its execution; and to this St. Peter alludes, when speaking of “the long-suffering of God, that waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing;” {43b} while Noah himself, the great “preacher of righteousness,” warned all around him of the certainty and the terror of this impending calamity. All entreaties, however, and warnings, and threatenings; all present mercies and past experiences, were vain. They despised the faith and rejected the preaching of the patriarch, and ridiculed his preparation of the ark; but they could not “make the word of God of none effect;” His judgment overtook them in the midst of their rebellious career; the flood came at the appointed time; desolation was spread over the face of the earth; and all its inhabitants, with the exception of one family, were indiscriminately involved in the wide-wasting ruin.