One of the main features of the working of God’s Common Grace is a ‘muzzling’ of human sinfulness. But, because of this, humankind’s dire need of rescue can be obscured to them. This explains the need for different phases of God’s grace to impress this need upon humans. Citing the shrinking of the human life-span after Noah, Kuyper says “The shrinking of our life span is an increased grace. Old sinners are generally the most dangerous ones, and those who have centuries ahead of them to continue in their evil have every chance that they will break out in even more horrible unrighteousness.”
Kuyper considers the development of the Ark as an example of how far humanity by virtue of God’s grace has technically progressed and notes that he “uses precisely the generation that wanders away from him, and thus cannot serve him in his temple and his sanctuary, to serve him and fulfil his counsel in the material and natural realm” He views the streams of Common and Particular Grace as flowing independently of each other but notes “it strikes us how particular grace joins together with common grace in order to merge completely for a moment in the ark.”