THE SECOND SCHEME OF REDEMPTION.
The God of Moses, after having tried the expedient of cursing his children,—the cunning workmanship of his hands,—and grieved over the failure for more than a thousand years,—he (the God of Moses) came to the conclusion to try another expedient. He concluded to select a few of the choicest specimens of the genus homo, in order to preserve the race and start anew with some of the best stock or material that could be found. Accordingly, old drunken Noah—the most righteous man that could be found amongst the millions of the inhabit ants of the globe—was chosen to build a schooner, yacht, canoe, or some kind of a vessel, called an arc into which he stowed millions of birds, bipeds, and insects of all species and all sizes, from the ostrich and condor down to fleas, flies, mosquitoes, spiders, and bed-bugs; and millions of animals and reptiles of all kinds and all sizes, from the mammoth and the mastodon down to skunks, lizards, snakes, gophers, and grasshoppers; together with himself and family of eight persons, and food sufficient to last them ten months while in the ark, and several years afterwards, as we must presume was done from the fact that it is declared that the waters destroyed every living thing upon the face of the earth. And it must have required several years to restock it with grass and animals to serve as food for the granivorous, herbivorous, and carnivorous species; and this would make a bulk sufficient to fill forty such vessels, and a weight sufficient to sink the whole British navy. And all this living mass of respiring and perspiring animals were dependent upon one little window twelve inches by fifteen for light and air, and which had to be kept shut most of the time to keep out the rain. If some giraffe or cameleopard had been disposed to monopolize the window by thrusting his head out, we can easily imagine what would have been the fatal consequence to this living, breathing cargo. And then we have to entertain the thought that lions and lambs, wolves and sheep, dogs and skunks, hawks and chickens, owls and doves, cats and mice, men and monkeys, all ate and slept together in immediate juxtaposition like a band of brothers. Perhaps more glorious times never were realized since "the sons of God shouted for joy." But it appears the whole thing turned out to be a failure. The drowning process was no more effectual in producing the desired reformation than the first scheme that had been tried; for, only a few hundred years after the culmination of this world-drowning experiment, Moses' God is represented as crying out in despair, "The imagination of man's heart is evil, and only evil continually." This was certainly a deplorable and disheartening state of things witnessed so soon after it had been presumed that all the bad folks had been drowned; but it appears, that, if all that class had been drowned, there would have been no human beings left. David, therefore, was probably right when he exclaims, "There is none that doeth good, no not one" (Ps. xiv. 3).