158 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



was the flood, and I recollect how, by casting every word 

 of the Scriptural record into the alembic of his mind, 

 and melting out of it every possible implication and 

 suggestion, he realized the scene with a vividness and an 

 intensity of effect of which I had not previously dream- 

 ed. ' The Lord shut him in.' This was a very rich 

 nugget from the Scriptural mine. ' Noah did not close 

 the door. There are works which God keeps for Him- 

 self. The burden of them is too heavy for the back of 

 man. To shut the door on a world about to perish 

 would have been too great a responsibility for a son of 

 Adam, the stress of it would have borne too heavily on 

 a human heart. Another moment, and another, and an- 

 other might have been granted by the patriarch, and the 

 door might never have been shut at all. And would he 

 have done the work conclusively, even if he had, in the 

 first instance, closed the door ? Who knows but that, 

 when the waters rose, and he heard the wailing around, 

 and friends whom he loved held towards him their little 

 ones and shrieked to be taken in, he might have relented, 

 and opened, and a rush might have been made, and the 

 ship that carried the life of the world might have been 

 swamped? He dared not open a door which God 

 had shut ; perhaps he could not open it. We never 

 hear that he opened the door even when the earth was 

 drying. God told him when to go. And so it is 

 in the ark of salvation. It is not the Church, it is 

 not the minister, that shuts or opens the door. These 

 do God's bidding : they preach righteousness, they 

 offer salvation, they gather in ; it is God that shuts 

 and that opens the door. And what a sound was 

 that, when, in the listening ominous hush of earth's last 

 evening, God shut the door! There have been sounds 

 as well as sights to make the boldest heart quail and the 



