discern right from wrong--to listen to and to obey the voice of God
within him; THAT word of God of which it is said, "the word is nigh
thee, in thy heart, and in thy mind," before he can hear God's word
from without; else he will only explain away miracles, and call
visions and apparitions sick men's dreams.

But there was something yet more wonderful and divine in Noah's
faith,--I mean his patience. He knew that a flood was to come--he
set to work in faith to build his ark--and that ark was in building
for one hundred and twenty years,--one hundred and twenty years! It
seems at first past all belief. For all that time he built; and all
the while the world went on just as usual; and, before he had
finished, old men had died, and children grown into years; and great
cities had sprung up perhaps where there was not a cottage before;
and trees which were but a yard high when that ark was begun had
grown into mighty forest-timber; and men had multiplied and spread,
and yet Noah built and built on stedfastly, believing that what God
had said would surely one day or other come to pass. For one
hundred and twenty years he saw the world go on as usual, and yet he
never forgot that it was a doomed world. He endured the laughter
and mockery of all his neighbours, and every fresh child who was
born grew up to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toiling
for a hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they thought it; and
yet Noah never lost faith, and he never lost LOVE either--for all
those years, we read, he preached righteousness to the very men who
mocked him, and preached in vain--one hundred and twenty years he
warned those sinners of God's wrath, of righteousness and judgment
to come, and no man listened to him! That, I believe, must have
been, after all, the hardest of all his trials.