and Eve in such circumstances, even if Satan was still alive and malignant! It may have seemed a mistake to have left him and his fellow angels in possession of the first heaven, and so able to visit the earth, lest the desire to regain his lost territory should enter his heart. Better surely to have incapacitated him and his hosts from doing any more damage, and to have given to Adam and Eve a fair chance of enjoying their lovely earth without interruption! Such doubts must have seemed justified, when Satan actually did enter Eden, and succeeded a second time in apparently wrecking the plan of God! Once again it looked as if evil had triumphed, and found the Almighty powerless to defend His own Creation, or bring His own designs to a successful conclusion.

So the mystery deepened and deepened, as murder ceased to be a crime (Genesis 4:8) and became an exploit (Genesis 4:23, 24) and wicked angels took on human bodies and produced cruel giants, and so the whole earth was, in spite of the divine warning, again filled with violence (Genesis 6:1-13), in which peace and happiness were impossible; until once again God was forced to drown the works of His own hands, rather than allow such misery to continue! Out of all the inhabitants of the earth only a single family could be saved to re-people a ruined world! (Genesis 7).

Yet as the years slipped by, and men again grew in number, it became apparent that not even the stupendous tragedy of Noah's Flood was enough to change their hearts and guarantee success. In the person of Ham sin stepped out of the Ark, as well as his father's virtue: the old story began to be repeated as Nimrod raised his cruel empire, and men banded themselves together to defy the Creator, and live their own ungodly lives as seemed best to themselves. So the end of the Noahic Age saw the scattering of humanity by