gainst his gracious will; that his will was from the beginning,
peace on earth, and not floods, and good will to men, and not
destruction; and that in his HEART, in the abyss of his essence, and
of which it is written, that God is Love--in his heart I say, he
said, 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake,
even though the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.
Neither will I again smite everything living, as I have done. While
the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, and
day and night, shall not cease.'

This is the God which the book of Genesis goes on revealing and
unveiling to us more and more--a God in whom men may TRUST.

The heathen could not trust their gods. The Bible tells men of a
God whom they can trust. That is just the difference between the
Bible and all other books in the world. But what a difference!
Difference enough to make us say, Sooner that every other book in
the world were lost, and the Bible preserved, than that we should
lose the Bible, and with the Bible lose faith in God.

And now, my friends, what shall we learn from this?

What shall we learn? Have we not learnt enough already? If we have
learnt something more of who God is; if we have learnt that he is a
God in whom we can trust through joy and sorrow, through light and
darkness, through life and death, have we not learnt enough for
ourselves? Yes, if even those poor and weak words about God which I
have just spoken, could go home into all your hearts, and take root,
and bear fruit there, they would give you a peace of mind, a
comfort, a courage among all the chances and changes of this mortal
life, and a hope for the life to come, such as no other news which
man can tell you will ever give. But there is one special lesson
which we may learn from the history of the flood, of which I may as
well tell you at once. The Bible account of the flood will teach us
how to look at the many terrible accidents, as we foolishly call
them, which happen still upon this earth. There are floods still,
here and there, earthquakes, fires, fearful disasters, like that
great colliery disaster of last year, which bring death, misery and
ruin to thousands. The Bible tells us what to think of them, when
it tells us of the flood.

Do I mean that these disasters come as punishments to the people who
are killed by them? That is exactly what I do not mean. It was
true of the flood. It is true, no