his head out, we can easily imagine what would have been the fatal consequence to this living, breathing cargo. And then we have to entertain the thought that lions and lambs, wolves and sheep, dogs and skunks, hawks and chickens, owls and doves, cats and mice, men and monkeys, all ate and slept together in immediate juxtaposition like a band of brothers. Perhaps more glorious times never were realized since "the sons of God shouted for joy." But it appears the whole thing turned out to be a failure. The drowning process was no more effectual in producing the desired reformation than the first scheme that had been tried; for, only a few hundred years after the culmination of this world-drowning experiment, Moses' God is represented as crying out in despair, "The imagination of man's heart is evil, and only evil continually." This was certainly a deplorable and disheartening state of things witnessed so soon after it had been presumed that all the bad folks had been drowned; but it appears, that, if all that class had been drowned, there would have been no human beings left. David, therefore, was probably right when he exclaims, "There is none that doeth good, no not one" (Ps. xiv. 3). THE THIRD AND LAST PLAN OF SALVATION. The atonement was the third and last resort. The third experiment in any case generally ends the siege whether successful or unsuccessful. After a few thousand years more had elapsed of grief, anger, and disappointment in the practical history of Moses' God, he ventured to try one more experiment in the effort to get his people in the right track,--not so much, however, to get them in the right way, as to have his own wrath appeased. In this way he sanctions the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the hand of man,--that of murder. God the "Father," in order to cancel the sins of his disobedient and rebellious children, and mitigate his own wrath, is represented as proposing to have his "only-begotten son" killed,--at least, as consenting to the act. This looks like "doing evil that good may come of it;" which is a very objectionable principle of moral ethics, according to Paul. How the commission of the greatest of all sins can do any thing towards reforming other sins, or how the punishment of an innocent being can do any thing towards atoning for the sins of the guilty, presents us with a moral problem, shocking both to our common sense and common reason. If the Father's anger could not be appeased or his vengeance satisfied without the perpetration of a horrible murder, and the knowledge that some victim had died a slow and agonizing death, we are forced to the conclusion that he is a cruel and revengeful God, and that his passions overrule his love of justice and his paternal regard for his son. But it appears that this last experiment, whether right or wrong, was attended with as complete a failure as the two preceding ones; and yet it assumes to be the best that "Infinite Wisdom" could devise. And the resources