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.
Although God meant to send a flood that should destroy the cities, and
separate the people so that the wickedness of the earth might be
destroyed, still it was not his wish that the race should perish wholly.
And so again God went down to the earth, and said to this good man,
Noah, "Build thou an ark, and into it bring all thy family, and also two
of every kind of bird and beast and animal. For a great flood shall come
upon the earth, and those in the ark only shall be saved."
Noah was a simple hearted man. It was a strange thing for him to be told
to build an ark and place within its shelter his family and two of
every living thing upon the face of the earth.
[Illustration: NOAH BUILDING THE ARK. (_Raphael._)]
He told the people what God had said to him; and he urged them to do
likewise. But the people only laughed at him, and called him a fool.
But Noah doubted not the word of God and set to work at once,--his three
sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth helping him to build an ark, and to gather
together the birds and beasts and animals of the earth.
Every morning the four men set out as soon as the sun had risen, and
kept at their work until darkness fell at night.
At last the ark was finished, and Noah, with his wife, his three sons
and their wives, journeyed to the mountain side. The people in the
valley laughed at them and threw stones at them, but the trustful little
band kept on their way and entered the ark, taking with them, as they
had been told, two of every kind of bird and beast.
Then the clouds began to gather in the south,--great black rolls of
cloud. The wind rose, the clouds scattered over the whole sky; and so
black and thick were they that the light of the sun was shut out. It was
like night.
[Illustration: THE DELUGE.]
Then the rain fell. In great sheets, like rivers, it poured upon the
valleys. The thunders rolled, the lightnings flashed, the rivers
overflowed their banks. The winds howled, and great trees were torn up
by the roots.
For forty days this storm continued--forty days and forty nights. Every
living thing left upon the face of the earth was drowned. But the ark,
with its inmates, was borne up by the waters in safety. At last, one
morning when Noah and his people awoke, they could see that the storm
had ceased; the clouds were separating, and the sun was sending its rays
down through the mist upon the flooded earth below.
Then came the beautiful rainbow, spanning the heavens
in the west, and reflecting its wonderful colors in the great sea below.
[Illustration]