The first ordinance instituted for the cleansing of the earth, was that of immersion in water; it was buried in the liquid element, and all things sinful upon the face of it were washed away. As it came forth from the ocean flood, like the newborn child, it was innocent, it arose to newness of life; it was its second birth from the womb of mighty waters—a new world issuing from the ruins of the old, clothed with all the innocency of its first creation. As man cannot be born again of water, without an administrator, so the earth required an agency independent of itself, to administer this grand cleansing ordinance, and restore it to its infant purity. That administrator was the Redeemer himself.