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Noe did as he was told; and by the end of the seventh day all were safe within the ark, as God had commanded him. The rain fell, and the waters prevailed over the earth beyond measure, and all flesh was destroyed that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, cattle, beasts, all creeping things, and all men; and every thing in which was the breath of life on the earth died. Noe alone remained, and they that were with him in the ark. And the water prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.

This was a terrible end to the blindness and the crimes of the people who suffered this sudden judgment. But they had had several warnings to which they might have listened, only they would not; and at length it became TOO LATE.

The Deluge is a figure of the last general Day of Judgment, when Jesus Christ will sit to judge the world. And the saving of Noe and his sons in the ark is a figure of the Sacrament of Baptism (1 St. Peter iii. 21).

The Second Era of the World.

FROM THE DELUGE TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM (THE FIRST HOUR OF THE VINEYARD). (DATES UNCERTAIN. B.C. 2524 TO B.C. 2107.)

§ 9. Noe saved from the Flood. God's Covenant with him. Noe foretells the Birth of the Messias in the Family of Sem.

'And God remembered Noe and all the living creatures and all the cattle which were with him in the ark, and brought a wind on the earth, and the waters were abated. The fountains also of the deep and the floodgates of heaven were shut up, and the rain was restrained; and the ark rested in the seventh month, in the seventh day of the month, upon the mountains of Armenia. And after that forty days were passed, Noe opening the window of the ark which he had made, sent forth a raven, which went forth and did not return till the waters were dried up upon the earth. He sent forth also a dove after him, to see if the waters had now ceased upon the face of the earth. But she not finding where her foot might rest, returned to him into the ark, for the waters were upon the whole earth; and he put forth his hand and caught her and brought her into the ark. And having waited yet seven other days, he again sent forth the dove out of the ark. And she came to him in the evening, carrying a bough of an olive-tree with green leaves in her mouth. Noe therefore understood that the waters had gone from the earth.'

Noe, at God's command, now went out of the ark and built an altar to the Lord, on which he offered a sacrifice of all the clean animals that had been taken into the ark. And God promised never more to destroy every living thing upon the earth as He had done, saying: 'Henceforward seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, shall no more cease.'

God also blessed Noe and his sons, and said to them: Increase and multiply and fill the earth; let the fear and dread of you be upon all the beasts, and upon everything that moveth upon the earth.' He gave

THE SACRIFICE OF NOE AFTER THE DELUGE.

them also the law: 'Whoever shall shed man's blood, his blood also shall be shed; for man was made in the image of God.'

God also said: 'I will establish My covenant with you, and all flesh shall be no more destroyed with the waters of a flood, neither shall there be from henceforth a flood to waste the earth.' And God said: "This is the sign of the covenant which I give between Me and you, and to every living soul that is with you, clouds, and it shall

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for perpetual generations. I will set My bow in the be the sign of a covenant between Me and between the earth. And when I shall cover the sky with clouds, My bow shall appear in the clouds: and I will remember My covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh and there shall no more be the waters of a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it, and shall remember the everlasting covenant that was made between God and every living soul of all flesh which is upon the earth.'

Noe now began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and towards the close of his life he uttered a very remarkable prophecy respecting his three sons. God had promised the future Messias to Eve after her disobedience; but it was not as yet known to any one from which of the three sons of Noe the future Redeemer was to be born. Noe, filled with the Spirit of God, declared this, saying: 'Blessed be the Lord God of Sem.' He blessed Japheth also, and said: 'May God enlarge Japheth, and may He dwell in the tents of Sem; eastern figura

tive language signifying that the children of Japheth were to be blessed in listening to the heavenly doctrine which was to come into the world through the family of Sem. As Cham had been guilty of a great act of impiety to his father, he was cursed in the person of his son Chanaan. 'Cursed be Chanaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren ;' a prophecy fulfilled to this day in the general slavery of the African race, descended from Cham.

§ 10. The Building of the Tower of Babel, and the Confusion of Languages in the World. The Rise and Growth of the sin of Idolatry.

Up to this time, all the families of whom Noe was the forefather spoke but one language: and this one language was the only one known upon earth. As time went on, the people began to move forward from Mount Ararat, and a number of families settled in a plain in the land of Sennaar, and dwelt in it. And each one said to his neighbour, Come, let us make bricks, and bake them with fire. And they said, Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top of which may reach to heaven, and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of Adam were building. And He said: Behold, it is one people, and they have all one tongue: and they have begun to do this, neither will they leave off from their designs till they accomplish them in deed; come, therefore, let Us go down, and there confound their tongue, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. And the name thereof was called Babel, because there the language of the whole earth was confounded; and from thence the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all countries.'

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BIRS NIMROUD, BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN THE SITE OF THE TOWER OF BABEL.

Tradition says that the prophet Noe gave his children seven commandments, which were the foundation of the notions of right and wrong that are common to all people. From him all the nations carried away with them into their different settlements the belief in the birth of a Messias from the family of Sem, the knowledge of God and of His future day of judgment, as also of the duty of prayer, and of observing the Sabbath with sacrifices. Such was the simple plain religion which Noe, whom St. Paul calls a preacher of justice, taught to his sons; and this would have continued if the nations had preserved what they had learned from Noe. However, unhappily they did not preserve it. Though they were too frightened at the memory of the terrible judgment of the deluge to become infidels like the people before the deluge, they began to wish for objects of worship which they might be able to see, and thus in the end they were led to make images, which after a time came to be worshipped as gods. First, however, they began to worship the sun, moon, and stars, fancying from their beauty and regular movement that they must be gods; next, they took the image which had been set up in honour of some great king or statesman, and began to call it a god. Then they worshipped stones, which had been consecrated to God in particular places, as altars for sacrifice; and lastly, from the custom of embalming the dead, they came to offer sacrifices to deceased members of their own families, and to look upon them as gods. In all these perversions of truth, the devils took beyond doubt a considerable part; for the power of the devils was permitted by Almighty God to be very great before Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy their works.

St. Paul says of the children of Noe, that they fell away to idolatry. 'They corrupted their knowledge of God, changing the glory of the incorruptible God into the images of men, of birds, four-footed beasts, and serpents' (Rom. i. 23). Thus the families of the earth came again to fall into a fresh kind of sin, the worship of idols, as the Book of Wisdom says: 'The worship of wicked idols is the cause of all evils, and their beginning and end' (Wisd. xiv. 27). God now decreed to make choice of an entirely new measure for saving the world from the shame and sin about to be brought in by the worship of idols. He determined from this time to choose a particular nation out of all the nations of the world, and we shall see in what way He gave to this chosen nation holy lawgivers, priests, kings, and prophets, and lastly Jesus Christ, the Divine Redeemer of all the world, who was born in it from the pure and blessed Virgin Mary.

Of this chosen Jewish or Israelite nation, Abraham, a great and holy man, is now to be called to become the patriarch and founder.

The nations of the world suffered a great punishment upon their pride in the confusion of their speech, and in their separation one from another. Jesus Christ has in part removed this punishment; for He has again made all the nations of the earth one religious family in His Church, under the supreme government of the Successor of St. Peter, and as partakers of one and the same Sacrifice of the Altar.

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The Third Era of the World, and the First Era of Jewish History.

(DATES UNCERTAIN. FROM B.C. 2107 TO B.C. 1490.)

N.B. From this point history is divided into Sacred and Profane. Sacred history follows the course of the chosen Israelite nation; Profane history relates what is known respecting all the other people descended from Noe who fell into idolatry.

(First Beginning of the Israelite History.)

§ 11. The CALL OF ABRAHAM to be the founder of the chosen nation of the Israelites or Jews. He is commanded to go into the land of Canaan, there to live separate from all the idolatry and vice into which the nations were rapidly falling. (About 2107 before Christ.)

And the Lord said to Abram (his name was called Abraham at a later period), 'Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, and come into the land which I shall show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation; and I will bless thee, and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be blessed. I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee; and IN THEE shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed.' So Abram went out as the Lord had commanded him, and Lot went with him: Abram was seventy-five years old when he went forth from Haran. And he took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all the substance which they had gathered : and they went out to go into the land of Canaan. And when they were come into it, Abram passed through the country into the place of Sichem, as far as the noble vale; now the Canaanite was at that time in the land.

Brief Outline of the Profane History.

The Four Great Empires-ASSYRIAN, PERSIAN, GREEK, and ROMAN. The Glory of the City of Rome.

In the Valley of the Nile the descendants of Cham formed the rich and powerful kingdom of Egypt, into which the chosen Hebrew people went down to dwell in the time of Jacob, being invited to come by Joseph their brother, who had become Governor. This kingdom did not continue, and Egypt at the time of Jesus Christ was a province of the Roman Empire.

THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE.-The Assyrians were the first to form a vast empire in Asia, subduing by their armies numerous tribes and people. The capital city of this empire was at first Nineveh, and afterwards the seat of empire was changed to the great city of Babylon. This Assyrian Empire invaded the kingdom of Israel, and carried off the ten tribes of Israel, dispersing them over all its cities. Also it next invaded the kingdom of Juda, took Jerusalem, and burnt the Temple of Solomon, carrying the chief of the people into a captivity in Babylon which lasted seventy years.

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.-After this the imperial power passed over to the Medes and Persians. Esther, the Jewish maiden, became one of the Queens of the Empire, and by her intercession, saved her people from a threatened destruction. Under Cyrus, the first Persian Emperor, the captive Jews, led by Nehemias, returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, and rebuilt the Temple.

THE GRECIAN EMPIRE.-The imperial power next passed into the hands of the Greeks, who, under Alexander the Great, conquered the Persians. This em

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