source of regret that he had made man on the
earth and it grieved him to his heart. Therefore Jehovah said, I
will destroy from the face of the ground man whom I have created,
for I regret that I have made mankind.

Then Jehovah said to Noah, enter thou and all thy house into the
ark; for thee I have found righteous before me in this generation.

And Noah did according to all that Jehovah commanded him.

Then Jehovah destroyed everything that existed upon the face of the
ground, both man and animals, and creeping things, and birds of the
heavens, so that they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only
was left and they who were with him in the ark.--Gen. 6:5-8; 7:1,
5, 23 (_Hist. Bible_).

And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing with God;
for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that seek after him. By faith Noah, being warned
of God concerning things not seen as yet, moved with godly fear,
prepared an ark to the saving of his house, through which he
condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is
according to faith.--_Heb. 11:6, 7_.

Rare is the man who can look back over his life and not confess, at
least to himself, that the things which have made him most a man
are the very things from which he tried with all his soul to escape.

If we would attain happiness,
We must first attain helpfulness.

But stay! no age was e'er degenerate
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,
For in our likeness still we shape our fate.
--_Lowell_.

I.

THE TWO BIBLICAL ACCOUNTS OF THE FLOOD.

Careful readers of Genesis 6-9 have long recognized certain
difficulties in interpreting the narrative as it now stands. Thus,
for example, in 6:20 Noah is commanded to take into the ark two of
every kind of beast and bird; but in 7:2, 3 he is commanded to take
in seven of all the clean beasts and birds. According to 7:4, 12
the flood came as the result of a forty days' rain; but according
to 7:11 it was because the fountains of the great deep were broken
up and the windows of heaven were opened. Again, according to
7:17, the flood continued on the earth forty days; while according
to 7:24 its duration was a hundred and fifty days.

These fundamental variations and the presence of duplicate versions
of the same incidents point, some writers think, to two originally
distinct accounts of the flood which have been closely woven
together