We stand aghast at the scene; and as the corpses of gentle children and sweet infants float by, we exclaim, Hath God forgotten to te gracious? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? No; assuredly not. Where, then, is his mercy?

Suddenly, amid the awful gloom, as she drifts over that dead and silent sea, a grating noise is heard. Her keel has grounded on the top of Ararat. The door is opened; and, beneath the sign of the olive branch, her tenants come forth from their baptismal burial, like life from the dead, or like souls which have passed from a state of nature into the light and the liberty of grace, or like the saints when they shall rise at the summons of the trumpet to behold a new heaven and a new earth, and see the sign which these "gray fathers" hailed encircling a head that was crowned with thorns.