The Chinese and Hindoo traditions also point back to the beginning of the history of the human race as a time of happiness and perfection. In those early ages man lived a long life, and so the early worship of the one God could be handed down from age to age with scarce a chance of change. Thus we are brought down to the time of the Deluge. While there was a general tendency to evil on the part of all the descendants of Adam, God preserved some pure characters, such as Enoch and Noah, who kept the truth from utterly perishing from off the earth. On account of the increasing wickedness of mankind, God sent the Deluge, which destroyed all the race, Noah and his family alone excepted. This we learn not only from the Bible, but from Chinese, Hindoo, Egyptian, Greek and Mexican traditions. Soon after this deluge, the descendants of Noah multiplied greatly, and on account of their wicked attempt to build the tower of Babel, God confused their language. Thus the great dispersion of nations was brought about, through their inability to communicate with each other by means of speech. They separated inevitably from each other. THE DISPERSION OF NATIONS. Somewhere to the north of Persia, in the land of Khiva, was probably the second cradle of the race. This land is now the central meeting place of empires; here, Russia from the north, England, through India, from the south, and the European powers from the west are coming together. This was the point of departure whence the nations started for their future homes. From the three sons of Noah came the nations by whom the whole earth was overspread. Let us keep in mind that Noah’s worship of God was pure, that he preserved the true faith in Jehovah, that he handed this to his sons, and that the degeneration into the worship of many gods and idols took place later in history. The religion of the world was still _one_. Not that all men accepted it, for many wickedly rebelled against it, but the knowledge of the true God was too fresh in their minds for them to set up other gods for themselves. Not only this, but while they were all together, each new generation received instruction from those who did worship God in the right way. _It was only when they were scattered and left solely to their recollections of these teachings; that their religions began gradually to differ from that which they had known when together._ Then, also, the peoples began to differ from each other; then those who went to the cold north or warmer south, to the isles of the sea or to inland hills and valleys, gradually changed their habits of life and worship according to their surroundings. From the mountains of Armenia, where Noah landed from the ark, the streams of population poured forth to all parts of the world; north-west to Europe, west to Asia Minor, south-west to Egypt and Africa, south to Arabia, south-east to Persia and India, and east to China. Of course, this was not the work of a day.