good world was spoiled. Outside the garden gate, the earth was thick with briers and brambles.

II

NOAH’S ARK

ND then, what happened? After Adam and Eve had disobeyed God, and had been driven out of the Garden of Eden into the world of briers and brambles, then what happened? “Tell us,” cried the children, “another story of the beginning of the world.” And their fathers and mothers, in answer, told what their grandfathers and grandmothers had told them.

The first disobedience was like the first little flame which is touched to a heap of dry wood. It grew and grew. Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain became a farmer, and Abel became a shepherd. One time they brought each an offering to give to God. Cain brought fruit from his farm, and Abel brought lambs from his flock. But God looked at their hearts, and He was pleased with Abel’s offering, but Cain’s He would not take. And Cain was very angry with God and with his brother. Then one day when the two brothers were in the field together, Cain quarreled with Abel and struck him and killed him.

And God said, “Where is Abel thy brother?”

And Cain said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Thus he sinned both in word and in deed; and God had to send him away into the wild deserts. All this was very terrible for Adam and Eve. Thus while briers and brambles grew in the ground, evil and sorrow grew in the hearts of men.

Now, after many years, the men and women and even the little children were all so bad that there was no way to make them better. The only thing to do was to destroy them, and begin the world all over again. But there was one good family. Noah and his wife, and their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their wives, minded what God told them. So God said to Noah, “I will destroy all these wicked people, but I will save you and yours. I will wash the whole earth clean with a great flood. You must make a boat, and you and your wife, and your sons and their wives must get into it. And you must take all the animals with you, two of every kind, with which to start the world again after the flood is over.”

Noah began, therefore, to build a boat. In the middle of a wide field, he and his sons brought beams and boards together and set to work. The boat was like a box, and it was called the Ark, because that means a box. It had a big door in the side, and all around, near the top, ran a line of windows. And inside all the cracks were filled with pitch, to keep the water out.

Before long, the neighbors came, and said, “What are you doing, Noah?”

And Noah answered, “I am building a boat.”

“But,” said the neighbors, “this is no place for a boat. A boat is of no use without water. Who ever heard of a boat in the middle of a meadow?”

But Noah said, “Here, where we stand, in this dry field, the water shall be as deep as the highest hills are high.” Then Noah told them of the coming flood, and tried to get them to stop their bad ways, that they might live, and not be drowned. But the neighbors only laughed at Noah, and said he must be crazy to build a boat on dry land, and so they went back to their wicked lives. Sometimes, when it rained, they thought of Noah, but the rain cleared away, and they laughed again, and were worse than ever.

At last, the great day came, with clouds and thunder. Early that morning, the animals began to come from near and far, lions and bears, and sheep and oxen, camels and elephants, and cats and dogs, two by two they jumped and crawled and ran and flew into the Ark. When they were all in, Noah and his wife, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth and

THE ARK RESTS ON THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN

their wives went in after them, and the door was shut. And when the door was shut, the rain came.

First, it rained as if a little brook were tumbling down out of the sky, and then the brook changed into a river, and the river into a pond, and the pond into a lake, and the lake into an ocean, and all the air was full of water as the sea is full of waves. The water filled the streets of towns, and crept into the doors of houses, and climbed step after step upstairs, till all the roofs were covered. By and by, nothing was to be seen in all the earth but the Ark floating on the flood. And when Noah looked out of the window of the Ark, the world appeared as it did in the beginning of beginnings, a wide waste of water. And still it rained, and rained.

At last, after days and days, nobody knows how long, the rain ceased, and the sun came out, and the flood began to go down. And one day, there was a grinding noise as if the Ark had touched the ground, and Noah looked, and, behold, the Ark had landed on the top of a mountain, which was like a little island in the deep sea. By and by, Noah sent out a dove, and the dove flew here and there and found no rest for the sole of her foot, and so came back. And again, after a week, Noah sent the dove a second time, and now she brought back a leaf plucked from an olive tree. Thus Noah knew that the water had gone down below the treetops. Once more he sent the dove, and this time she found a place to make a nest.

Then Noah opened the wide door of the Ark, and all the world was green and fresh and shining in the sun. And there on the top of the mountain, which is called Ararat, Noah and his family thanked God for their deliverance, and all the beasts and birds, each in his own way, said Amen. And across the sky was a gleaming rainbow, from one hill to another over the glistening earth. And God said to Noah, “Behold the bow! It is the sign of my promise that I will never again destroy the earth. When the rain falls and men begin to be afraid, then shall the sun shine through the wet clouds, and the bow shall be painted in the sky.” Thus, with the prayers of Noah and with the promise of God, the life of man began anew.

III

THE ADVENTURES OF LOT

NCE upon a time, when the world was still young, there was a lad named Lot. His father and mother were dead, and he lived with his Uncle Abraham and his Aunt Sarah.

In the place where Lot lived, the people believed that the moon was God. They looked up into the sky at night, and saw the shining moon, and it seemed to them the most beautiful and most wonderful sight in the world, and they said their prayers to it. But Abraham knew better than that. He knew that God who made the earth made the moon also. Because Abraham would not go to the moon-church, his neighbors disliked him. So at last he made up his mind to move away. One night, in a dream, he heard the voice of God, and God told him to go. And, the next day, he took Sarah and Lot, and started out to find a better place to live in. Thus Lot got his first look at the wide world.

Abraham and Sarah and Lot rode on the backs of camels, but they had to go very slowly because they took with them all their sheep and cows. So they journeyed and they journeyed till by and by