THE DOVE SENT FORTH FROM THE ARK.
THE FLOOD.
Earth shall be ocean! and no breath,
Save of the winds be on the unbounded wave!
Angels shall tire their wings, but find no spot:
Not even a rock from out the liquid grave
Shall lift its point to save,
Or show the place where strong despair hath died,
After long looking o'er the ocean wide
For the expected ebb which cometh not;
All shall be void, destroyed.
—Byron.
It was many, many years after Adam and Eve were driven out from the Garden of Eden that the flood came.
There were thousands of people in the world now, and they were scattered here and there through the fertile valleys and along the rivers of the country far and wide.
There were rich farms everywhere, and shepherds watched their flocks on the hillsides. There were towns and cities; many of them where people dwelt together and made their laws and appointed their law-givers.
But in all these years the people had been growing more and more away from the simple, honest life that God had first shown Adam and Eve.
They had grown selfish and greedy; they were cruel to each other; they cared nothing for the rights and comforts of the community; and more than all this, they had forsaken the simple faith of their fathers and become worshippers of idols.
There was one good man dwelling among these people, many, many years before, whose name was Enoch. Now, it was not the will of God that Enoch should suffer for the sins of the people; and so, when the flood was about to come upon the earth to destroy them, God came and stood by Enoch and said, "Come with me."
Now there was another good man upon the earth, a great grandson of Enoch's, and a man who had never forgotten God, and who had reared his children always in the simple faith which had been his own.