the other giants perished.
According to another story, Og climbed on the roof of the ark, and
when Noah tried to dislodge him, he swore that he would become the
patriarch's slave. Noah at once clinched the bargain, and food was
passed through a hole for the giant every day.

When we look into them we find the myths of the Bible wonderfully like
the myths of other systems. The Giants are similar to the Titans, and
the union of divine males with human females is similar to the amors of
Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, and Mars with the women of old. In this
matter there is nothing new under the sun. Every fresh myth is only the
recasting of an ancient fable, born of ignorance and imagination.

Let it finally be noted that this old Genesaic story of the angelic
husbands of earthly women gives us a poor idea of the felicity of
heaven. In that unknown region, as Jesus Christ informed his disciples,
there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage; that is, no males, no
females, no courting, no loving, no children, and no homes. Men cease to
be men and women cease to be women. Everybody is of the neuter gender.

Or else all the angels are gentlemen, without a lady amongst them.
Perhaps the latter view is preferable, as it harmonises with the Bible,
in which the angels are always _he's_. In that case heaven would be, to
say the least, rather a dull place. No whispering in the moonlight,
no clasped hands under the throbbing stars. Not even a kiss under the
misletoe. Oh, what must it be to be there! No wonder the sons of God
wandered from their cheerless Paradise, visited this lower world, and
saw the daughters of men that they were fair.

MELCHIZEDEK.

Melchizedek is the most extraordinary person of whom we have any record.
Christ was born and Adam was made, but Melchizedek never began to be
and will never cease to exist. If the Bible were not such an intensely
serious book without a gleam of humor, except of the unconscious
Hibernian kind, we might conclude that Melchizedek was _nobody_, for the
description admirably suits that character. But the Bible does not
play and must not be played with. All its personages are _bona fide_
realities, from the Ancient of Days with white woolly hair on the throne
of heaven to the prophet Jonah who took three days' lodging in the belly
of a whale.

The name Melchizedek means _king_ of justice, being derived from
_melec_, a king, and _tzedec_, justice. When the gentleman bearing this