"Come thou and all thy house into the ark," reads the command of God. We immediately perceive with what account of ancient history that connects. The people of the Old World, the antediluvians, as they are generally called, had become so corrupt in morals and life that God determined their destruction and said: "The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence," yet, to show His desire to save them, He appointed His servant Noah to preach righteousness to them, and directed him to build an ark as an evidence that He was minded to carry out His purpose, and as a means of safety for Noah. Few, however, none, in fact, except Noah and his immediate family, eight souls in all, took the warning to heart. Many a one of that perverse generation, we may surmise, even assisted in the construction of the ark, and the patriarchal minister would exhort them to forsake their sins and worship God, only to be sneered at for his credulity and ridiculed for his nonsensical eccentricity of building such a boathouse.
But the hundred and twenty years given for probation expired, and Noah receives directions to embark. "Come thou," is the command, "into the ark." Just one week is allowed to bring into the ark all his family, and the birds and beasts to be preserved, and then--what an unusual sound it must have been--the door was shut, not by Noah's, or any human hand, but by the hand of Jehovah; for it is written: "And the Lord shut him in," and now, amid the war of heaven's artillery and the shaking of the earth, the fountains of the deep burst open, and the windows of the skies break loose, and the greatest and most terrible calamity Revelation records is on. Imagination cannot portray the scenes that must have then been enacted,--how, forgetful of everything but self-preservation, they fled towards the singular building, which but a little before they had insolently defied; how, perhaps laboring in their distraction to scramble up its huge sides, the angry tide of waters keeps them down, and with a cry of despair they dash into the watery abyss; how some, climbing up to the loftiest pinnacle and summit of the mountains, in the hope that perhaps at the end the door may be opened to receive a few more, they see the wondrous ship dashing along, gallant and safe, and hear that gurgling sound, the death requiem of their race, rising higher and higher. Oh! who can describe the anguish, the woe, the cursing of self. But it was now too late, and yet, whose fault was it? Provision had been made, probation time had been granted them; there was none to blame but themselves. God's warnings are not empty sounds, His institutions not for ridicule and rejection. And now, more generally, for the application.