So was it once more. A flood was to come upon the earth; but now God himself prepared the ark in which the chosen family were to be saved. He laid its foundations in the depths, and built up its wall of rock to the sky. A door also made He for the ark, with lower, second, and third storeys. It was beautiful as strong. Corn, wine, and oil were laid up in store within it. All being ready, God said to his persecuted ones in the early Church, "Come, thou and all thy house, into the ark." He gave them the Bible to be a light to them during the darkness, and shut them in. The flood came. Century after century the waters of Papal superstition continued to prevail upon the earth. At length all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered, and all flesh died, save the little company in the Vaudois ark. CHAPTER V. STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE VAUDOIS CHURCH. Dawn of the Reformation--Waldensian Territory a Portion of Italy--Two-fold Mission of Italy--Origin of the Vaudois--Evidence of Romanist Historians--Evidence of their own Historians--Evidence arising from the Noble Leycon from their Geographical Position--Grandeur of the Vaudois Annals--Their Martyr Age--Their Missionary Efforts--Present Condition--Population--Churches--Schools--Stipends--Students--Social and Moral Superiority--Political and Social Disabilities--The Year 1848 their Exodus--Their Mission--A Sabbath in the Vaudois Sanctuary--Anecdote--Lesson Taught by their History. How often during the long night must the Vaudois have looked from their mountain asylum upon a world engulphed in error, with the mingled wonder and dismay with which we may imagine the antediluvian fathers gazing from the window of their ark upon the bosom of the shoreless flood! What an appalling and mysterious dispensation! The fountains of the great deep had a second time been broken up, and each successive century saw the waters rising. Would Christianity ever re-appear? Or had the Church completed her triumphs, and finished her course? And was time to close upon a world shrouded in darkness, with nought but this feeble beacon burning amid the Alps? Such were the questions which must often have pressed upon the minds of the Vaudois.