Part 2

The third great change was, that water filled the deep hollows of the earth, while the hills rose up dry above them, with rivers and streams running down their slopes into the deep seas below. God did not leave the land bare and stony: He clothed it with green fresh plants and herbs, with leaves and flowers, and trees to give us their fruit and wood, and filled even the sea with plants that can live under water.

THE EARTH GLADDENED BY THE SUN.

Next, God caused the rays of the sun to gladden the earth, and let it see the moon lighted up by the sun, as well as the stars far beyond our firmament. We count the months by the changes in the moon; and our earth's journey around the sun marks our years and seasons. We all rejoice in a bright sunny day, though the sun is too bright and glorious for us to bear to gaze at him; and how lovely the moon looks, either as a young crescent, or a beautiful full moon!

The waters began to be full of live things, that swam, or crept, or flew: fishes, and birds, and insects. By that time this world was nearly as we see it, and a beautiful home for us to live in. Then God made the four-footed beasts--sheep and cows, horses, dogs, cats, elephants, lions--all that we use or admire; and, last of all, when He had made this earth a happy, healthy place, He planted the Garden of Eden, and put in it the first man and woman, the best of all that He had made; for though their bodies were of dust, like those of the beasts, yet their souls came from the Breath of God. They could think, speak, pray, and heed what is unseen as well as what is seen.

There are many many lessons to be learnt from this wonderful story. Let us try to take home one of them. Let us ask our Father that the ground below, the light above, the sky and sea, the sun and moon, the trees and flowers, the birds and beasts, and His holy day of rest, may remind us that they came from Him, and that we may be very thankful to Him for having given us such good things.

QUESTIONS.

1. Who made the world? 2. Which Commandment tells you about God's making the world? 3. What is there in the sky that God made? 4. What is there on the earth? 5. What do you see around you that He made? 6. Can we make birds, or beasts, or flowers? 7. Or could we make them live? 8. Who makes them and us live? 9. Where does all our food come from? 10. Who gave us corn? 11. What must we ask God to do for us? 12. What must we thank Him for? 13. Do not you think it would be pleasant to whisper to yourself, when you see a pretty flower, or a beautiful sky, or when the sun shines bright and warm, "Thank God for being so good to me"?

SECOND READING.

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."--_Genesis 2:7._

IN the Bible God tells us that He made the world, and everything in it: land and water, and grass, flowers and trees, insects, birds and beasts, and last of all He made the first man and woman. The man was made by God out of the dust of the ground, and then God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and gave him a living soul. And the woman was made by God out of the man's side. They were called Adam and Eve, and they were to be the first father and mother of everyone who was to be born into the world.

The good God gave them a beautiful home. It was a garden, with a clear river of water flowing through it, and all kinds of delicious fruit-trees and beautiful flowers growing in it. Nothing could hurt or vex them there. They did not know what pain was, they were never tired, and all they had to do was to dress the garden and to keep it. They had no faults, and never did wrong; and God Himself came near to talk with them.

That was the way they lived, always good and always happy, whilst they obeyed what God had told them. In the midst of the garden grew two trees: one was the Tree of Life, and the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. God told them that if they ate the fruit of this Tree of Knowledge they would die. We do not know what those trees were like, but sometime or other I hope we shall see the Tree of Life, for it is growing in heaven, close by the river that flows by the Throne of God; and when we see it, and taste of its fruit, we shall live for ever, and be happier than Adam and Eve were. We shall never be as happy as they were while we are living in this world; but if we will try to obey God, and live holy lives, He will take us to heaven, and that will be still better than the Garden of Eden.

QUESTIONS.

1. What did God make? 2. Whom did he make? 3. What was the man made of? 4. What was the woman made of? 5. What did God breathe into them? 6. What did He give them? 7. Why were they better than the beasts? 8. What was the man's name? 9. What was the woman's name? 10. Of whom were they the father and mother? 11. Where did they live? 12. What had they to do there? 13. What grew there? 14. What were the two chief trees that grew there? 15. Which were they not to touch? 16. Where is the Tree of Life now? 17. When do we hope to see it? 18. What is a still happier place than the Garden of Eden?

THIRD READING.

"Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."--_Job 38:11._

WHAT glorious and wonderful things God has made! Did you ever see the sea? There it is--a great vast space, all water, looking green near us, but blue further off--always heaving up and down. The waves rise, and then ripple along, and burst with a white edge of bubbles of foam.

A great space that had been left dry gets covered up with water again, and where you were walking just now is quite deep water. What is this called? The tide. Well, what will the tide do in proper time? Will it come rolling in over the beach, and cover up the land? No; presently each will turn. Each wave will be a little less high than the last, till it will have gone back again and left the beach uncovered as before. Why does the tide do this? It is because God so wonderfully contrived this earth and sea, that the waters should rise and go back. He made the sand the bound of the sea, and said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." So, you know, we sing in the Psalm every Sunday--

"The sea is His, and He made it: His hands prepared the dry land."

QUESTIONS.

1. What curious thing does the sea do every day? 2. What do you call the coming in and going back of the sea? 3. Why does the tide always stop in its proper place? 4. What did God make the bound of the sea? 5. What did he say to it? 6. What verse praises God for making the sea?

Second Sunday.

_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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Third Sunday.

_THE RAINBOW._

FIRST READING.

"I do set my Bow in the Cloud."--_Genesis 9:13._

THE sin that came into the world when Eve listened to the tempter had grown as men multiplied and made each other worse. The wicked people had been drowned in the Flood, and Noah, his sons and their wives, had alone been saved in the Ark. After a whole year of being shut up there, watching the earth, first drowned and then coming out of the water, they had just come out on the fresh green earth, with all the animals saved with them, when God spoke to them.

Then God made a promise to Noah. It was that no flood of water shall ever drown all the world again, but spring, summer, autumn, and winter, day and night, will go on to the end of the world, when it shall be burnt up by fire, not drowned by water.

That Noah, and all of his after him, might feel sure that God in His mercy will go on preserving us, and giving us days and nights, seed-time and harvest, He gave us something to look at as a sign of His promise. He so ordered the rays of light, that when they shine upon drops of water in the air they cause beautiful colors, making part of a circle, so as to form a bow. So when the sun shines on a cloud, as it rains, the fair bright rainbow is seen, as a pledge to us of God's merciful care and love to us.

There is a rainbow round about the Throne of God in Heaven; and the lovely rainbows that we see when the sun shines out, and the showers drift away, are to put us in mind that we are safe under His care, in right of His promise to Noah and his three sons, of whom the whole earth was peopled. We are the children of his son Japhet, and all that was then said to him belongs to us also. We should recollect it, and put our trust in Him, and be thankful when we see the beautiful soft arch that the Hands of the Almighty have bended, looking out of the midst of the dark watery clouds.

QUESTIONS.

1. What beautiful sight do we sometimes see after a shower? 2. What is a rainbow like? 3. Who put the rainbow in the cloud? 4. Who was the man to whom God showed the rainbow? 5. What promise did God make Noah? 6. What had God just done to the wicked people? 7. Whom had he saved? 8. What did he say should always go on? 9. What did God put in the sky to show that he will not send another Flood? 10. What are we to think of when we see a rainbow? 11. Who takes care of us? 12. Where is there a rainbow in Heaven above?

SECOND READING.

"In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."--_Genesis 12:3._

WHEN Noah's grandchildren and great-grandchildren came to be more and more, and the world was being filled with people again, they still were not all good, and the longer time went on the worse they grew.

At last God called to a very good man, whose name was Abram, and told him that if he would come away from his home to a land God would show him, then God would bless him and lead him, and by-and-by give the land to his children, and that their children after them should be more in number than the grains of sand on the sea-shore, or than the stars in the sky: and that in his seed--that was, in a Son of his--all the nations of the earth should be blessed.

It was strange to hear all this about Abram's children, for he was growing old, and he and his wife Sarai had no children at all. But he believed in God. He knew that God is Almighty, and can do whatever He will; so he only did just as God told him, and went away from his home, where God told him. He was obliged to take all his cattle with him--quantities of cows, and goats, and sheep, and camels; and he had many servants to drive them.

When they came to a piece of grass and a fresh spring of water, there they would stop. They had no houses--only tents, which were great curtains woven of goat's hair and fastened up with poles, so that they could be set up or taken down, and carried about. All his life Abram lived in a tent, instead of staying at home in a city, and being at his ease.

By-and-by he came to a beautiful country. There were high hills rising up, and green valleys between, full of grass for the sheep and cattle; and the wide sea spread out far away towards the sunset, all blue and glorious. God told him to look at the land, for that was the place which his children should have for their own; but in the meantime Abram had not one bit of it, and was a stranger there; and he had no child either.

But still he was quite sure that God spoke truth; and that somehow, though he did not know how, it would come about that his children should have the land, and that in One all the nations of the earth should be blessed. That was faith.

QUESTIONS.

1. What good man do you hear of to-day? 2. What did God tell Abram to do? 3. What did God promise? 4. Who were to have the land? 5. Why was it strange to hear of his children? 6. But did he believe it would come true? 7. Why did he believe it? 8. How did he show that he believed? 9. Where did he go? 10. What had he with him? 11. What did he live in? 12. What is a tent like? 13. What sort of place did he come to?

THIRD READING.

"Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between thee and me."--_Gen. 13:8._

TWO men were travelling together. They were an uncle and nephew. The uncle's name was Abram, the nephew's was Lot. They had come from home, because God had told Abram to come away from his own home to the land that God would give his children. Abram believed, and did as God bade him; and Lot, the son of his dead brother, went with him. They did not go alone. Each of them had great flocks of cows, and sheep, and camels, and goats, and numbers of servants to take care of them. They would fix their tents, made of camels' hair, in any place where they saw a spring of water and good green grass for their cattle; and there they would stay till all the grass was eaten up, and then take up their tents and move to another place.

PARTING OF ABRAM AND LOT.

Just now they had got to a bare stony place, where the sun shone hotly, and there was not much green; but Abram had built up an altar with the great stones, and prayed there. Abram and Lot loved one another, and were at peace; but when their servants drove out their flocks to get food and water there were apt to be quarrels. If Abram's men found a green grassy valley, they would not let Lot's cattle into it; and if Lot's came to a well, they would not let Abram's flocks drink; and so on. They were always quarrelling and making complaints to their masters.

At last Abram saw that they would make Lot quarrel with him. So he said it would be wiser to part; Lot should go one way and he another--any way there should be no strife. And he even told Lot to choose which way he would go. So Lot looked, and saw to the East a pleasant green valley, with fields of corn and meadows, and a fine river running into a clear lake, and five fine towns on the bank. He liked it better than the bare stony hills where Abram was; and he never thought whether the people were good or not, but he took the first choice, and went to live there. So Abram gave up. He had the right to choose first, but he would not use it. He let his nephew choose. For he hated quarrels, and knew they were wicked; and he knew how to stop them, because he would yield up the best. That is the way to make peace and please God.

QUESTIONS.

1. Who had called Abram? 2. Who went with him? 3. What was Lot to Abram? 4. Why did he go? 5. What had God promised? 6. What had they with them? 7. Who quarrelled? 8. About what did the servants quarrel? 9. Did Abram and Lot quarrel? 10. How did Abram prevent a quarrel? 11. Who was to choose first? 12. Who might have chosen first? 13. Why did not Abram choose first? 14. Ought you to be in haste to take the first choice? 15. What should you try to hinder? 16. And if you keep yourself back, and don't say "It's mine," and "I must," shall you not be likely to keep from quarrels?

Fourth Sunday.

_ABRAHAM AND LOT._

FIRST READING.

"Escape for thy life; look not behind thee."--_Genesis 19:17._

THERE was a beautiful valley, with steep hills shutting it in on all sides, and a clear swift river running through the midst and spreading into a lake. There were fine fields and rich grass, where sheep, cows, and goats could feed, and the shepherds shelter themselves under the palm trees; and on the bank of the river were five cities, with strong walls round them, and full of rich people, who bought and sold and made merry with the good things they possessed. There was one man living among them who was good, and was grieved by the wicked ways of the men round him, who only laughed at him if he tried to tell them of better things. One evening two strangers came into the city where he lived, and he was the only person who would take them in, and shelter them from the wicked people in the street.