ain on the earth. For more than one
hundred years they all spoke the same language, and as, in course of
time, they journeyed onward, they came to a large plain in the land of
Shinar, near to where Babylon was afterwards built. Here they said
they would remain and build a great city, with a high tower ascending
to heaven.

Now God, when he blessed Noah, had said to him, "Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth;" meaning that the people were to
scatter abroad, so that the world might become inhabited again. But
these men wanted to keep together, and found one great empire, the
centre of which should be the great city with the lofty tower. So they
made bricks and burnt them, and took a kind of pitch for mortar, and
began to build. Some learned men say they took three years in getting
the materials, and were twenty-two years building the tower. It was
very great and high, but it was never finished. The people did
wickedly in building it, and God, who saw all they were doing,
confounded their language, so that one could not understand another.
Thus they left off building the tower, and that is why it is called
Babel. Then God scattered them abroad to re-people the earth.

[Illustration: BUILDING THE TOWER OF BABEL.]

LOT'S FLIGHT FROM SODOM.

In Palestine, the land in which Jesus dwelt when He was upon earth,
there is an inland sea, called the Dead Sea. Its waters are very salt,
and no trees grow upon its shores. Many long years before the birth of
Jesus Christ, two cities stood upon the plain which the waters of the
Dead Sea now cover. These cities were named Sodom and Gomorrah. Their
inhabitants were very wicked, so God destroyed their cities by raining
brimstone and fire upon them.

Before God destroyed these cities, He sent two angels to Lot,
Abraham's nephew, who dwelt in Sodom, commanding him to flee from it,
taking his family with him. The angels hastened him, saying, "Arise,
take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be
consumed in the iniquity of the city." Then the angels took all four
by the hand and led them out, and said to Lot, "Escape for thy life;
look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to
the mountain, lest thou be consumed."

Lot pleaded that he might take refuge in a little city, named Zoar,
not very far distant; and having obtained the angels' permission to do
so, he took his wife and daughters, and hastened away. In our picture
we