Were I to read the opening of this fine scripture, and just expose my heart to the simpler earliest impression of what I get there, it is this thought which would engage my mind; and yet with all ease we can account for this strange and wondrous revolution. In chapter i. God was alone, producing the fruit of His own handiwork, in wisdom, goodness, and skill; and then all was good and desirable. On the return of every evening and morning the divine delights lingered over what the divine hand was working out, and behold all was very good; and the seventh day was sanctified for the celebration of this rest and enjoyment. But now, it is not God’s hand presenting a perfect work to God’s thoughts and affections, but it is man, the apostate artificer, spreading out a wide scene of corruption and violence for the grief and repentings of the divine mind. The secret of the change lies there. Man has been at work; man has been fashioning and furnishing the scene, and not the living, blessed God. The earth is therefore filled with violence; giants there are, mighty men, men of renown; and the imaginations of that heart which was now making "this present evil world" are only evil, and that continually. Here lies the secret. The change was complete because of the new potter that had been at the wheel; the change could not be less. The song of the morning stars, the shout of the sons of God, had no echo in the scene of creation now; man was now abroad--not as a part of the work, but as a reprobate workman. It is just this which gives character to the opening of chapter vi. And there is no relief for all this in the creature--the best sample and portion it could offer is itself defiled. The sons of God themselves are dragged into the mire--their will, their desire, their taste, are supreme with them. The daughters of Moab have seduced to fornication; and the Nazarites, who were purer than snow and whiter than milk, whose polishing was of sapphire, are become blacker than a coal. The witness against them is, "he also is flesh." If Adam was seduced by the subtilest of enemies, and followed the sight of his eye and the desire of his heart, the sons of God are now seduced by an enemy equally successful. He works, it is true, from within rather than without--"he also is flesh"--but the sight of the eye and the desire of the heart are again followed. Wives are taken of all "whom they choose;" other lords are listened to, for God is not in all their thoughts, and then it matters not whether it be the promise of the serpent, or the fairness of the daughters of men. Gen. iii. 4, 5.