Therefore he could stand all the gibes, and gave himself to a course
of life which was sheer folly unless that future was real. Perhaps a
hundred and twenty years passed between the warning and the flood;
and for all that time he held on his way, nor faltered in his faith.
Does our faith realise that which lies before us with anything like
similar clearness? Do we see that future shining through all the
trivial, fleeting present? Does it possess weight and solidity
enough to shape our lives? Noah's creed was much shorter than ours;
but I fear his faith was as much stronger.

5. We may think, finally, of the vindication of his faith. For a
hundred and twenty years the wits laughed, and the 'common-sense'
people wondered, and the patient saint went on hammering and
pitching at his ark. But one morning it began to rain; and by
degrees, somehow, Noah did not seem quite such a fool. The jests
would look rather different when the water was up to the knees of
the jesters; and their sarcasms would stick in their throats as they
drowned. So is it always. So it will be at the last great day. The
men who lived for the future, by faith in Christ, will be found out
to have been the wise men when the future has become the present,
and the present has become the past, and is gone for ever; while
they who had no aims beyond the things of time, which are now sunk
beneath the dreary horizon, will awake too late to the conviction
that they are outside the ark of safety, and that their truest
epitaph is 'Thou fool!'




'CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN'