poor lot. Noah got beastly drunk after the waters
subsided, and one of his three sons brought a curse on all his
offspring. What then must we think of the rest?

Tuch excellently explains the mythological significance of the story
of Cain and Abel and Seth. "There lies," he says, "in this myth the
perfectly correct reminiscence, that in the East _ancient_ nations
lived, under whom in very early times culture and civilisation extended,
but at the same time the assertion, that these could not prejudice the
renown of the Western-Asiatics, since the prerogatives, which their
descent from the first-born would secure to them, were done away through
God's Curse, which lighted on their ancestor, Cain. Thus the East is
cut off from the following history, and the thread fastened on, which
carries us on in Genesis, right across through the nations, to the only
chosen people of Israel." The entire history of the world before the
Flood is dismissed in five chapters, and that from the Flood to Abraham
in two more. After that the mighty antique civilisations are never
noticed except so far as they affect the history of the Jews. The ages
of the Patriarchs also dwindle down from nine centuries in the beginning
to almost the normal longevity in the semi-historical period. Could
anything more conclusively prove the mythical character of the
narrative?

One of the Patriarchs descended from Seth, namely Enoch, which
singularly enough is also the name of Cain's eldest son, never died. We
read that "he was not, for God took him." It is about time that the
Lord took the whole lot out of his Word, and gave us a little ancient
_history_ instead. We want a _revised_ Bible in the fullest sense of
the word. The old book needs to be completely rewritten. How thankful
we should all be if the Lord inspired _another_ "Moses" to rectify the
errors and supplement the deficiencies of the first, and to give us
scientific truth instead of fanciful myths about the early history of
our race! But the Lord never inspires anybody to do a useful piece of
work, and our Darwins will therefore have to go on with their slow and
laborious task of making out a history of mankind from the multitudinous
and scattered traces that still survive the decay of time.

LOT'S WIFE.

BIBLE ROMANCES.--12.

By G. W. FOOTE.

Lot and his family were a queer lot. Their history is one of the
strangest in the whole Bible. They dwelt amongst a people whose
debauchery has