HE FUTURE.
DISCOURSE XIV.

PURPOSE OF THE FLOOD--THE ABRAHAMIC CURRENT--RENDING MOUNT OLIVET--FORMER
EARTHQUAKES--BOUNDARIES OF PALESTINE--DAN AND GAD TO GUARD THE
"GATES"--GAD THE SCOTCHMAN--THE FUTURE JERUSALEM--THE DEAD SEA AND
MEDITERRANEAN TO BE JOINED--MISTAKE OF SPIRITUALISING EVERYTHING.

"And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which
is before Jerusalem on the East: and the Mount of Olives shall cleave
in the midst thereof toward the East and toward the West, and there
shall be a very great valley; and half the mountain shall remove
toward the North, and half of it toward the South."--Zech. xiv. 4.

Some four thousand years ago the earth was washed with the regenerating
waters of a terrible flood. Millions were suddenly cut off, with their
handiwork and antediluvian civilisation. The swelling floods subsided,
and the God-avenging waters retired to their appointed place. The earth
again stood forth in virgin strength, lonely, bare, and citiless, but
with a potency and promise inviting and grand. Across these swelling
floods one craft had been safely borne; in it was stored the seed-stock
of a new world of man and beast. The destruction had been complete and
terrible. If we credit Dr. Gurney and others who have written on this
subject, the population far exceeded the inhabitants of to-day. But
whether they did or did not, we know that many must have perished, and
civilisation must have been hurled back to a primitive beginning. No
doubt the present seas and oceans cover over the ruins of that age.
Eliphaz, the Temanite, when addressing Job, said: "Hast thou marked the
old way, which wicked men have trodden, which were cut down out of time?
_whose foundation was overflown with a flood_?" Now is it not reasonable
to suppose that in this and every other great change in nature God has a
purpose--a design agreeable with His own exalted character? He is too
wise to err, and too good to be unkind. The flood came for the same
reason that He only gave Adam one wife. And what was that reason? It
was that He might fill the world with a godly seed. "And did not He make
one? Yet had He the residue of the Spirit. And wherefore one? That He
might seek a godly seed" (Mal. ii. 15). The same Spirit which made one
Eve could have made twenty, for the residue of the Spirit was with Him.
It was in the interest of morality and godliness that the flood came.

When this de