We take life from Christ who has made atonement by His blood. But we deeply own we can get it nowhere else. _We do not look for it elsewhere, but we refuse it not from Him._ We know we were dead in trespasses and sins, but we know that we have life in Him, though only in Him. Adam learnt these things in the promise of the woman’s Seed, and in the sword of the cherubim; Noah learnt them or witnessed them in his altar and in this ordinance; these things the whole book of God declares; and eternity will celebrate them. Further, however, still--for in this blessing we find Noah with the sword of justice in his hand. His fellow-man was to be both protected and avenged. Man’s person was sacred; and his life or blood, if shed by either man or beast, would be required. "And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed."⁶ ⁶ It has been justly said by another, that the principle of _government_ was represented in Noah; that Adam had been the representative head of _creation_, and that Noah is the same now of _government_. And I doubt not, that after the judicial scattering from Babel, the nations became associations in which God still recognized the sword of justice and the seat of government, which therefore are still to be exercised, and ought still to be religiously owned and reverenced. Who does not instinctively approve of this? All that we feel judges the fitness of thus treating the person of man as sacred. While every other moving thing that lived was submitted to the use of man, his fellow-man was to be sacred in his eyes. We instinctively approve this. But this scripture accounts for this instinct. The reason lies here--"in the image of God made He man." There is a dignity in man that is entirely his own. He is the natural head of creation. Man is the possessor and governor, and not part of the conveyed inheritance, or of the delegated dominion. He is the object and not the subject of the divine grant. The instinctive verdict of our own hearts is thus divinely accounted for.