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HOW SIN BEGAN AND THE FLOOD CAME.

FIRST READING.

"The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."—Gen. 3:13.

LAST Sunday you heard how God made the world, and put a man and woman to live in it. The man was named Adam; the woman was named Eve. God gave them a beautiful garden to live in, full of trees and flowers; and they had no pain, no trouble, nothing to vex them. Only one thing God told them: there was one tree whose fruit they must not eat. They might eat the fruit of all the other trees, but not of that one. As long as they obeyed, all was well and happy with them; but if they ate it they would die. But a bad spirit came and took the shape of the serpent, and talked to Eve. He told her a wicked lie—he told her that to eat the fruit would make her wise, and would not make her die. And Eve listened, and did eat. And she gave Adam, and he also ate; and so they took the bad spirit for their master instead of the good God. Then God was angry with them, and put them out of the garden, and let them be weak and sickly, and die at last.

It was a sad thing for us. For if they had been good and obeyed God, and not the bad spirit, it would have been easy for us to be good, and we would not have the devil tempting us to do wrong: we would never have known pain or sorrow. But God pitied Adam and Eve; and he promised them that the Seed—that is, the Son—of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, and set them and their children free.

ADAM AND EVE DRIVEN OUT OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN.—Gen. 3:23, 24.

Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, set us free when He died on the cross and rose again; and now we belong to Him, and not to the bad spirit. Only we must try and ask Him to help us not to do what is wrong, as Eve did, or we shall not keep free from the power of the enemy.

QUESTIONS.

1. Who was the first man? 2. Who was the first woman? 3. Where did God put them? 4. What was the one thing they might not do? 5. What was to happen if they ate of that fruit? 6. Who came and spoke to Eve? 7. What shape did the bad spirit take? 8. What did he tell Eve? 9. What did she do? 10. Whom did she make her master? 11. What was done to punish her? 12. What sad things did the bad spirit bring on her? 13. Who came to set us free from the bad spirit?

SECOND READING.

"And behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth."—Gen. 6:17.

THE Lesson this morning told the sad history of how Adam and Eve did the very thing that God forbade; so that He drove them out of the Garden of Eden, and sin and death came into the world.

After that they had children. Some were good, but not so good as Adam and Eve had been at first; and some were bad. And as time went on the bad ones grew worse, and the good ones were tempted, and many of them grew wicked too. And so all the world was getting wicked, and God saw nothing but evil when He looked down on it. And He said that He would destroy these wicked people, and wash away the evil from the earth by a great flood. But there was one good man, whose name was Noah; and God said He would save him.

AFTER THE BANISHMENT FROM EDEN.—Gen. 3:19.

He bade Noah build an Ark. It was to be a great ship, all made of wood, and it took a great many years to build; and all that time people laughed at Noah, for they would not believe that anything was going to happen. Noah made the Ark, and stored it with food. And God sent him a pair of all sorts of animals that were in the world, and he put them into pens in the Ark. Then Noah and his wife, and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives, went into the Ark, and God shut them in.

SACRIFICE OF CAIN AND ABEL.—Gen. 4;4, 5.

Then it began to rain. It rained for forty days and forty nights without stopping, and the rivers came out of their banks, and the sea came upon the land, and the ground was covered up. Even the tops of the highest hills were hidden, and everybody and every creature was drowned—all but Noah and those that were with him. There was the Ark all the time floating quite safe on the water. The storm could not upset it nor the sea get into it, for God took care of it and all that was in it.

The reason Noah was saved was because, first, he tried to be good, and not do like the bad people round him; and next, because he believed what God said to him, and went on making the Ark, even when he saw no danger. If we wish God to save us, then we must take care that we do just what we are told—not what seems pleasant now, but what is really right.

QUESTIONS.

1. Do you know why Adam and Eve were driven out of the happy garden? 2. How did people go on after that? 3. How had sin come into the world? 4. What did God say He must do to the world? 5. Why? 6. Who was to be saved? 7. What was Noah to make? 8. What was the Ark like? 9. What were put in it? 10. Why were two of all creatures put into the Ark? 11. What men and women were in it? 12. What were the names of Noah's sons? 13. What happened when Noah was in the Ark? 14. How long did it rain? 15. What was covered up? 16. What became of all the people? 17. Who were safe? 18. Where was the Ark? 19. Who took care of the Ark? 20. Why was Noah saved?

THIRD READING.

"So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth."—Genesis 7:2.

IT must have been a sad sight for Noah and his wife and their sons, as the rain went on and on, and the water grew deeper and deeper, and everybody and everything was drowned. Then came a time when nothing was to be seen but water. Wherever they looked all was sky and water; but it had done raining, the sky was blue again, the sun shone by day, the stars by night, and they must have been very glad.

And still the water got lower, till the Ark did not float about, but stopped, resting on a peak of a mountain, a very high mountain, and a few bare tops of other hills began to peep out. By-and-by, Noah opened the window of the Ark and let out a raven. He never saw the raven again, for a raven eats dead things, and there

were so many dead bodies floating about that it got plenty of food, and never came back to the Ark that had saved it.

RETURN OF THE DOVE WITH THE OLIVE BRANCH.—Gen. 8:11.

He waited a week, and then he let out a dove. Now doves like trees to sit and nestle in, and they eat grains and seeds; so the poor dove found no place to rest in, and flew back to the Ark; and Noah took her back, and kept her a week, then let her fly again. She flew away but still she came back to the Ark, and this time she brought in her beak a sprig of olive branch.

It was the first green thing that Noah had seen for a year! Noah's children have loved the olive leaf everywhere, and called it the sign of peace and good news ever since.

For now Noah knew that the waters had gone down, and that trees must be able to put forth leaves again. Once more, after another week, he let out the dove, and she did not come back, for she had found a tree where she could make her home, and seeds to eat; and then Noah knew the sad time of the flood—a whole year—was over, and the earth had been washed from all her stains.

QUESTIONS.

1. What was the Flood? 2. What was the Ark? 3. Who was in it? 4. What had Noah with him in the Ark? 5. What became of everyone else? 6. Why? 7. Why was Noah saved? 8. How long did the Flood last? 9. What birds did Noah send out of the Ark? 10. Which came back? 11. Why did not the raven come back? 12. What did the dove bring? 13. What was Noah sure of then? 14. What had the earth been washed from?