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Sometimes God seems to create a colossal figure in the moral world for after ages to gaze at and pattern by, as the sculptor chisels a statue of heroic size for some high niche in temple or civic hall, that those below may be inspired by its beauty and its grand proportions. Or, as God Himself has sculptured the Old Man of the Mountain on the naked cliff, high up in the air, for the traveller far down in the notch to gaze at, so he sometimes creates a man, sublime in his moral proportions, for all the ages to study — a character not for a generation, but for all the centuries. Yet, if we carefully study such a character, we shall find that, though the dimensions are heroic, they are not out of proportion. Each feature is true to common life, just as the "Guardian of the Notch" is no grotesque caricature of a man, but a faithful image. Such a colossal figure of the ages is Noah. And yet, as we carefully study this Scripture likeness, we shall find that his leading traits of character are common traits and imitable traits.

1. In the first place, we find that he was moved to the great work of his life — the building of the ark, at the command of God — by the same motive that leads many men to turn to God today. He was "moved by fear," says the apostle. There was nothing derogatory in this either to the power of God's love or the human heart. If the storm is coming, it is the part of wisdom, not of cowardly fear, to prepare for it.

2. In the second place, if Noah was moved, aroused by fear, he was actuated by a sublime faith. When he began to build the ark the flood was one hundred and twenty years in the future. How dim and distant is any event removed from us by the space of six-score years!

3. Again, we are impressed with the fact that Noah's difficulties and obstacles must have been very much the same in essence as those of the modern Christian. He was in the minority, as the Christian is today, only it was a far more hopeless and overwhelming minority. He was engaged in a most unpopular cause. The earnest Christian does not find that his best work obtains the plaudits of the world. Noah was not, so far as we know, openly persecuted and hindered in his work any more than is the Christian of the nineteenth century; but doubtless all the artillery of sarcasm and ridicule was trained upon him, just as the modern Christian, when he conscientiously does anything out of the ordinary course, anything that attracts attention, the utility of which the world does not understand, finds that the same weapons are in use today. And yet we do not know that the work was interrupted, or that its completion was delayed a week by the fun and raillery which were doubtless heaped upon the project.

4. Another imitable trait in the character of this grand antediluvian was his obedience, strict and implicit. "Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he." Witness his ready obedience and minute performance of every command of God in the slow construction of the ark. Obedience was the same thing five thousand years ago that it is today.

(F. E. Clark.)

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KJV: Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

WEB: Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch.