cal
reason is assigned for this Strange result, nor perhaps was there any
present to the mind of the writer, who probably had witnessed unhappy
marriages in his own family, and was anxious to warn his readers,
however vaguely, against allowing their daughters to be inveigled into
matrimonial bonds with pious sniffling fellows, who professed themselves
peculiarly the children of their Father in heaven. However, the
narrative is clear as to the fact itself: men had all gone irrecoverably
astray, and God had repented that he ever made them. In such a case
an earthly human father would naturally have attempted to improve his
family; but the Almighty Father either was too indifferent to do so, or
was too well aware of the impossibility of reforming his own wretched
offspring; and therefore he determined to drown them all at one fell
swoop, just as cat-loving old ladies dispose of a too numerous and
embarrassing feline progeny. Bethinking him, however, God resolved to
save alive one family to perpetuate the race: he was willing to give his
creatures another chance, and then, if they persisted in going the wrong
way, it would still be easy to drown the lot of them again, and that
without any reservation. He had also resolved at first to destroy every
living thing from off the face of the earth; but he afterwards decided
to spare from destruction two of every species of unclean beasts, male
and female, and fourteen, male and female, of all clean beasts and of
all fowls of the air and of every creeping thing. Noah, his wife, his
three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives (eight persons in
all), were the only human beings to be preserved from the terrible fate
of drowning.

Noah was commanded by God to build an ark for the reception-of the
precious living freight, the dimensions of which were to be, in English
measure, 550 _feet long_, 93 _feet wide_, _and 55 feet deep_. Into this
floating box they all got; the flood then came and covered the earth,
and all besides were drowned.

Now this is a very strange, a very startling story; it seems more like
a chapter from the "Arabian Nights" or the "Adventures of Baron
Munchausen" than from the sacred Scriptures of any Religion. Carnal
reason prompts us to ask many questions about it.

1. How did Noah contrive to bring these beasts, birds, and insects all
together in one spot? The task seems superhuman. Some species could be
found only in very remote places--the kangaroo only