We think, perhaps, that there were no schools then, but that is a mistake. “The training of the youth in those days was after the same order as children are being educated and trained in this age,—to love excitement, to glorify themselves, to follow the imaginations of their own evil hearts.” Their keen minds laid hold of the sciences; they delved into the mysteries of nature. They made wonderful progress in inventions and all material pursuits. But the imaginations of their hearts were only evil continually.
City life unfitted minds for truth
Children educated in the cities had their evil tendencies exaggerated. The philosophical teaching of the age blotted out all faith; and when Noah, a teacher of righteousness, raised his voice against the popular education, and proclaimed his message of faith, even the little children scoffed at him.
So polluted were the cities that Enoch chose to spend much time in retired places, where he could commune with God, and where he would be in touch with nature. At times he entered the cities, proclaiming to the inhabitants the truth given to him by God. Some listened, and occasionally small companies sought him in his places of retirement, to listen to his words of warning. But the influence of early training, the pressure brought to bear by society, and the philosophy of the schools, exerted a power too strong to resist, and they turned from the pleadings of conscience to the old life.
Antediluvian science teaching was contrary to God’s word
As Noah told of the coming flood, and as he and his sons continued to build the ark, men and children derided. “Water from heaven! Ah, Noah, you may talk of your spiritual insight, but who ever heard of water coming out of the sky? The thing is an impossibility; it is contrary to all reason, to all scientific truth, and to all earth’s experience. You may think such things were revealed to you; but since the days of our father Adam, no such thing ever happened.” Such statements seemed true. Generation after generation had looked into a sky undarkened by storm-clouds. Night after night dew watered the growing plants. Why should they believe otherwise? They could see no reason for it. To those antediluvians, the possibility of a flood seemed as absurd as does its recital as a matter of history to the modern higher critic. It was out of harmony with men’s senses, hence an impossibility.
The student in the nineteenth century finds in the earth’s crust great beds of coal, or the remains of monsters which once lived upon the face of the earth, and he accounts for these by saying that “time is long.” In the words of Dana, “If time from the commencement of the Silurian age included forty-eight millions of years, which some geologists would pronounce much too low an estimate, the Paleozoic part, according to the above ratio, would comprise thirty-six millions, the Mesozoic nine millions, and the Cenozoic three millions.” Modern text-books are filled with these and related ideas of evolution, which account for the effects of the flood by gradual changes consuming millions of years.
An education of sight and not faith
The Word of God is again laid aside, and man by his own power of reasoning draws conclusions contrary to the testimony of the Inspired Record. The theory of evolution is thus substantiated in the human mind; and as the antediluvians were, by their scientific research and wisdom, falsely so-called, unfitted to receive the message of the flood, so people to-day, by pursuing a similar course, are unfitting themselves for the message of Christ’s appearance in the clouds of heaven. When will man learn that there are things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, and yet which exist as really as do those few things—few compared with the many in the regions beyond—which fall within our range of vision?
Before the flood, no peal of thunder had ever resounded among the hills, no lightning had ever played through the heavens. You who to-day have read the works of earth’s greatest authors, who have delved into the secrets of science, have you discovered the soul of man? Have you yet found the golden cord of faith? Should the Almighty question you as He did His servant Job, how would you pass the examination? To you would befall the fate of the generation of Noah. Four men built the ark. Such a thing had never been seen before. “How unshapely,” say they. “How absurd to think of water standing over the earth until that will float!” But in the ears of the faithful four whispered the still, small voice of God, and the work went steadily on.