“Host. Look! look! there goes the old fool and his family now, I dare say, into the ark. I remember me now, the old man told us, four days ago, that, in seven days (Gen. 7:4-10), God would cause it to rain sufficient to destroy every living thing from the face of the earth. I shall have a chance to laugh at the old man four days hence. I told him to his face that, after his seven days were ended, he would be ashamed to preach any more, and we should have some quiet then.
“Guest. But do your priests let him preach in their congregations and societies?
“Host. Oh, no! by no means; that is, none that are called respectable, or of the higher class. Why, sir, they held a meeting last night at my banqueting house. After the cloth was removed, and while the wine was circulating freely, old Noah was the subject of the toast. And it would have done you good to have heard their sharp cuts and squibs; it caused a roar of laughter among the guests. See, yonder come some of them now. Let us go in, and enjoy another treat. (They go in.)
“Ah, said I, were these scenes acted before the flood, and will it be so in the end of the world? And will the generation of the righteous not pass off until they behold these things acted over again? So says our blessed Saviour, and so I believe.
“Then shall ‘heaven and earth pass away.’ The righteous will pass off to meet their Lord, and the wicked be consumed to cleanse the world. Then will the prophecy in this chapter be fulfilled, and ‘the word of God will not pass away.’
“Prepare, ye servants of the Most High, to render up your stewardship. Ye scoffers, take warning; cease your revilings, your newspaper squibs, your bombast, your revelings, and your banquetings. And you, my dear reader, prepare! prepare! for lo!—
‘He comes, he comes, the Judge severe;
The seventh trumpet speaks him near.’
“The foregoing will also serve as a specimen of his mode, at times, of addressing an audience. At other times he was very earnest and solemn. In arguing that we must be beyond the end of the 1260 days of Daniel and John, from the fact that the church is not now in the wilderness, he said:—
“‘Can we be mistaken in the fulfillment of this prophecy? Is the church now in the wilderness? And if you should respond, She is, I ask you, When, then, was she out? Not in the apostolic age; for she was not more free then than now. And then, let me inquire, where are your twelve hundred and sixty years? They can have no meaning. O Christian! I beg of you, believe in the word of God; do not, I pray you, discard time, any more than manner. Is it not selfishness in us to discard the set times which God has fixed, and not man? Where is our faith? Why are we so slow of heart to believe? Three times we have witnessed,—yes, in the lifetime of some of us,—the fulfillment of the “time, times, and a half,” in the accomplishment of the “forty-two months,” in the completion of the “twelve-hundred and three-score days,” and yet, O God, we refuse to believe! Shame on that professor who will not open his eyes!