Children educated in the cities had their evil tendencies exaggerated. The philosophical teaching of the age blotted out all faith; and when Noah, a teacher of righteousness, raised his voice against the popular education, and proclaimed his message of faith, even the little children scoffed at him. So polluted were the cities that Enoch chose to spend much time in retired places, where he could commune with God, and where he would be in touch with nature. At times he entered the cities, proclaiming to the inhabitants the truth given to him by God. Some listened, and occasionally small companies sought him in his places of retirement, to listen to his words of warning. But the influence of early training, the pressure brought to bear by society, and the philosophy of the schools, exerted a power too strong to resist, and they turned from the pleadings of conscience to the old life. [Sidenote: Antediluvian science teaching was contrary to God’s word] As Noah told of the coming flood, and as he and his sons continued to build the ark, men and children derided. “Water from heaven! Ah, Noah, you may talk of your spiritual insight, but who ever heard of water coming out of the sky? The thing is an impossibility; it is contrary to all reason, to all scientific truth, and to all earth’s experience. You may think such things were revealed to you; but since the days of our father Adam, no such thing ever happened.” Such statements seemed true. Generation after generation had looked into a sky undarkened by storm-clouds. Night after night dew watered the growing plants. Why should they believe otherwise? They could see no _reason_ for it. To those antediluvians, the possibility of a flood seemed as absurd as does its recital as a matter of history to the modern higher critic. It was out of harmony with men’s senses, hence an impossibility. The student in the nineteenth century finds in the earth’s crust great beds of coal, or the remains of monsters which once lived upon the face of the earth, and he accounts for these by saying that “_time is long_.” In the words of Dana, “If time from the commencement of the Silurian age included _forty-eight millions of years_, which _some geologists would pronounce much too low_ an estimate, the Paleozoic part, according to the above ratio, would comprise thirty-six millions, the Mesozoic nine millions, and the Cenozoic three millions.” Modern text-books are filled with these and related ideas of evolution, which account for the effects of the flood by gradual changes consuming millions of years. [Sidenote: An education of sight and not faith]