old man; not to mention
also the hoary Preacher's own century of exortations: with how great
moral force all this living warning would be calculated to act upon the
world of wickedness and doom! Here was the great ante-diluvian
potentate, Noah, a patriarch of ages, wealthy beyond our
calculations--(for how else without a needless succession of miracles
could he have built and stocked the ark?)--a man of enormous substance,
good report, and exalted station, here was he for a hundred and twenty
years engaged among crowds of unbelieving workmen, in constructing a
most extravagant ship, which, forsooth, filled with samples of all this
world's stores, was to sail with our only good family in search of a
better. Moreover, Noah here declares that our dear old mother-earth is
to be destroyed for her iniquities by rain and sea: and he exhorts us by
a solid evidence of his own faith at least, if by nothing else, to
repent, and turn to him, whom Abel, Seth, and Enoch, as well as this
good Noah, represent as our Maker. Would not such sneers and taunts be
probable: would they not amply vindicate the coming judgment? Was not
the "long-suffering of God" likely to have thus been tried "while the
ark was preparing?" and when the catastrophe should come, had not that
evil generation been duly warned against it? On the whole, it would have
been Reason's guess that Noah should be saved as he was; that the ark
should have been as we read of it in Genesis; and that the very
immensity of its construction should have served for a preaching to
mankind. As to any idea that the ark is an unreasonable (some have even
said ridiculous) incident to the deluge, it seems to me to have
furnished a clear case of antecedent probability.

Lastly: Noah's fall was very likely to have happened: not merely in the
theological view of the matter, as an illustration of the truth that no
human being can stand fast in righteousness: but from the just
consideration that he imported with him the seeds of an impure state of
society, the remembered luxuries of that old world. For instance, among
the plants of earth which Noah would have preserved for future insertion
in the soil, he could not have well forgotten the generous, treacherous
Vine. That to a righteous man, little used to all unhallowed sources of
exhilaration, this should have been a stepping-stone to a defalcation
from God, was likely. It was probable in itself, and shows the honesty
as well as the verisi