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. We, too, have an ark, a New Testament Ark. God, Himself, as the divine architect and artificer, has built it; He devised the plans, He selected the material, and employs the Noahs in its construction; daily do we see before our eyes its towers and walls, hear regularly and pleadingly the bells sending out the invitation: "Come thou into the ark." You know what this ark is,--it's the Holy Christian Church, that divine structure which by Him has been finished these 1900 years. There, in the midst of a world of sin and depravity, upon which God has pronounced His righteous judgments as clearly as upon the race of antediluvians, it stands,--the great, the capacious Gospel Ark, a refuge of safety; come whatever Jehovah may commission upon our guilty world, it is certain to ride safely above the tumultuous tempest and bring us gallantly to the celestial mountain, the Ararat of Heaven.