"Slush!" said the young fellow. "You 're old. At fifty you have one foot in the grave. That stands to reason. Now be a nice old fellow and write something that will please the Neighborhood Society. Something about standing on the apex of the hill of life, looking down the farther side, and that sort of thing." So Noah did. He aimed to please. He wrote the essay and said he was now fifty and had but a few years to live, and that he did hate to think of so soon having to part from one and all. The paper made a great hit. It was loudly applauded.
And fifty years after that, Noah was still alive.
And fifty years after that, Noah was still alive.
And then another fifty years passed, and Noah was still alive.
And then a hundred years passed, and Noah was still alive.
And two hundred years after that, Noah was still alive and going strong.
And it was n't until one hundred years after that, that Noah made the big hit of his life by gathering his folks and his live stock into the ark. He was six hundred years two months and seventeen days old when the big rain began that was to make him famous. You can read that in Genesis, 7th chapter, 11th verse. That was just five hundred and fifty years two months and seventeen days after the young fellow asked Noah to write how it felt to be an old man of fifty starting on the downward path.
I think we should all take Noah as a model, and keep a young heart and an eager, forward-looking spirit until we are at least six hundred years two months and seventeen days old. Our forty days of glory and greatness and good service may come long after we are fifty—five hundred and fifty years after, for all we know.
I like Noah. He had no surrender in him. Old at fifty? He considered himself a mere baby at fifty! At six hundred he was just getting into his proper stride. He was just ripe to tackle a big job like the flood.
Chapter 9, verse 28: And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.