August 19

2.

HOW did Noah build his Ark?

We may fairly assume that he built it openly, avowedly, without any subterfuges or pretences whatsoever.

For instance. We do not suppose that he kept the Ark looking like a house, or like a land carriage, as long as possible; ingeniously erecting and maintaining scaffolding around the navigable base, but leaving door and windows full in view. Or that when the substructure could no longer be hidden, he opened an artificial creek to suggest that he had ways and means of utilizing his ark.

No. We may well believe that as he had faith enough to build his ark, so also he had faith enough not to tone it down, or color it, or gloss it over by any tinge of imposture.

Now we Christians all of us are (or ought to be) building arks "to the saving of" our souls.

How many of us are building them in unabashed openness and honesty? neither parading our religion, nor keeping it under lock and key: neither falling on our knees to seem devout (as Bishop Jeremy Taylor puts it), not starting off them to seem indevout (often the keener temptation), if we hear some one coming.