the sin of
Cain was jealousy, pride, resentment, and despair. The punishment of Cain
was expulsion from his father's house, the further curse of the land for
_him_, and the hatred of the human family. He relinquished his occupation,
became a wanderer, and gained a precarious support, while his descendants
invented arts and built cities.

(M19) Eve bear another son--Seth, among whose descendants the worship of
God was preserved for a long time; but the descendants of Seth
intermarried finally with the descendants of Cain, from whom sprung a race
of lawless men, so that the earth was filled with violence. The material
civilization which the descendants of Cain introduced did not preserve
them from moral degeneracy. So great was the increasing wickedness, with
the growth of the race, that "it repented the Lord that he had made man,"
and he resolved to destroy the whole race, with the exception of one
religious family, and change the whole surface of the earth by a mighty
flood, which should involve in destruction all animals and fowls of the
air--all the antediluvian works of man.

(M20) It is of no consequence to inquire whether the Deluge was universal
or partial--whether it covered the whole earth or the existing habitations
of men. All were destroyed by it, except Noah, and his wife, and his three
sons, with their wives. The authenticity of the fact rests with Moses, and
with him we are willing to leave it.

(M21) This dreadful catastrophe took place in the 600th year of Noah's
life, and 2349 years before Christ, when world was 1655 years old,
according to Usshur, but much older according to Hale and other
authorities--when more time had elapsed than from the Deluge to the reign
of Solomon. And hence there were more people destroyed, in all
probability, than existed on the earth in the time of Solomon. And as men
lived longer in those primeval times than subsequently, and were larger
and stronger, "for there were giants in those days," and early invented
tents, the harp, the organ, and were artificers in brass and iron, and
built cities--as they were full of inventions as well as imaginations, it
is not unreasonable to infer, though we can not know with certainty, that
the antediluvian world was more splendid and luxurious than the world in
the time of Solomon and Homer--the era of the Pyramids of Egypt.

(M22) The art of building was certainly then carried to considerable
perfection, for the ark, which Noah built,