How the Message was Received.
For one hundred- and twenty years God strove with those antediluvians. He never smites without warning, and they had their warning. Every time Noah drove a nail into the ark it was a warning to them. Every sound of the hammer echoed, “I believe in God.” If they had repented and cried as they did at Nineveh, I believe God would have heard their cry and spared them. But there was no cry for mercy. I have no doubt that they ridiculed the idea that God was going to destroy the world. I have no doubt that there were atheists who said there was not any God anyhow. I got hold of one of them some time ago. I said,
“How do you account for the formation of the world?”
“Oh! force and matter work together, and by chance, the world was created.”
I said, “It is a singular thing that your tongue isn’t on the top of your head if force and matter just threw it together in that manner.”
If I should take out my watch and say that force and matter worked together, and out came the watch, you would say I was a lunatic of the first order. Wouldn’t you? And yet they say that this old world was made by chance! “It threw itself together!”
I met a man in Scotland, and he took the ground that there was no God. I asked him,
“How do you account for creation, for all these rocks?” (They have a great many rocks in Scotland.)
“Why!” he said, “any schoolboy could account for that.”
“Well, how was the first rock made?”
“Out of sand.”
“How was the first sand made?”
“Out of rock.”
You see he had it all arranged so nicely. Sand and rock, rock and sand. I have no doubt that Noah had these men to contend with.
Then there was a class called agnostics, and there are a good many of their grandchildren alive today. Then there was another class who said they believed there was a God; they couldn’t make themselves believe that the world happened by chance, but God was too merciful to punish sin. He was so full of compassion and love that He couldn’t punish sin. The drunkard, the harlot, the gambler, the murderer, the thief, and the libertine would all share alike with the saints in the end. Supposing the governor of your state was so tender-hearted that he could not bear to have a man suffer, could not bear to see a man put in jail, and he should go and set all the prisoners free. How long would he be governor? You would have him out of office before the sunset. These very men that talk about God’s mercy, would be the first to raise a cry against a governor who would not have a man put in prison when he had done wrong.
Then another class took the ground that God could not destroy the world anyway. They might have a great flood which would rise up to the meadowlands and lowlands, but all it would be necessary to do would be to go up on the hills and mountains. That would be a hundred times better than Noah’s ark. Or if it should come to that, they could build rafts, which would be a good deal better than that ark. They had never seen such an ugly-looking thing. It was about five hundred feet long, about eighty feet wide, and fifty feet high. It had three stories and only one small window.
And then, I suppose there was a large class who took the ground that Noah must be wrong because he was in such a minority. That is a great argument now, you know. Noah was greatly in the minority. But he went on working.
If they had saloons then, and I don’t doubt but that they had, for we read that there was “violence in the land,” and wherever you have alcohol you have violence. We read also that Noah planted a vineyard and fell into the sin of intemperance. He was a righteous man, and if he did that, what must the others have done? Well, if they had saloons, no doubt they sang ribald songs about Noah and his ark, and if they had theaters, they likely acted it out, and mothers took their children to see it.
And if they had the press in those days, every now and then there would appear a skit about “Noah and his folly.” Reporters would come and interview him, and if they had an Associated Press, every few days a dispatch would be sent out telling how the work on the ark was progressing.
And perhaps they had excursions and offered as an inducement that people could go through the ark. And if Noah happened to be around, they would nudge each other and say:
“That’s Noah. Don’t you think there is a strange look in his eye?”
As a Scotchman would say, they thought him a little daft. Thank God a man can afford to be mad. A mad man thinks everyone else is mad but himself A drunkard does not call himself mad when he is drinking up all his means. Those men who stand and deal out death and damnation to men are not called mad, but a man is called mad when he gets into the ark and is saved for time and eternity. And I expect if the word crank was in use, they would call Noah “an old crank.”
And so all manner of sport was made of Noah and his ark. And the businessmen went on buying and selling, while Noah went on preaching and toiling. They perhaps had some astronomers, and they were gazing up at the stars, and saying, “Don’t you be concerned. There is no sign of a coming storm in the heavens. We are very wise men, and if there was a storm coming, we should read it in the heavens.” And they had geologists digging away, and they said, “There is no sign in the earth.” Even the carpenters who helped build the ark might have made fun of him, but they were like lots of people in the present day, who will help build a church, and perhaps give money for its support, but will never enter it themselves.
Well, things went on as usual. Little lambs skipped on the hillsides each spring. Men sought after wealth, and if they had leased, I expect they ran for longer periods than ours do. We think ninety-nine years is a long time, but I don’t doubt that theirs ran for nine hundred and ninety-nine years. And when they came to sign a lease, they would say with a twinkle in their eyes:
“Why, this old Noah says the world is coming to an end in one hundred and twenty years, and it’s twenty years since he started the story. But I guess I will sign the lease and risk it.”
Someone has said that Noah must have been deaf, or he could not have stood the jeers and sneers of his countrymen. But if he was deaf to the voice of men, he heard the voice of God when He told him to build the ark.
I can imagine one hundred years have rolled away, and the work on the ark ceases. Men say, “What has he stopped working for?” He has gone on a preaching tour, to tell the people of the coming storm—that God is going to sweep every man from the face of the earth unless he is in the ark. But he cannot get a man to believe him except for his own family. Some of the old men have passed away, and they died saying: “Noah is wrong.” Poor Noah! He must have had a hard time of it. I don’t think I should have had the grace to work for one hundred and twenty years without a convert. But he just toiled on, believing the word of God.
And now the hundred and twenty years are up. In the spring of the year, Noah did not plant anything, for he knew the flood was coming, and the people say: “Every year before he has planted, but this year he thinks the world is going to be destroyed, and he hasn’t planted anything.”
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