Those which are found among the ancient people of the Western Continent――the Cherokees, Mexicans and Peruvians――have special interest as proving that, remote as these tribes were from the locality of Noah, they must have had a common origin and must have received this common tradition of the flood from the valley of the Euphrates. CHAPTER IX. FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 1. _The law against murder and its death-penalty._ When the waters of the great deluge had subsided and Noah and his family found themselves once more upon the face of the solid earth――an unpeopled solitude――that which we read in Gen. 9, was beautifully in place:――“_And God blessed Noah and his sons._” So long imprisoned in the ark; so long in the presence of this fearful visitation of a righteous God upon a hopelessly corrupt generation, how naturally must their view of human life take on a somber hue, and how refreshing to be assured that the Great God was still their loving Father! “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,’”――for God would have it filled again with living men. Moreover, though few and feeble, they need not fear the violence of the animal creation, for “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth; ... into your hand are they delivered.” Then by special provision, apparently never made before, God sanctioned the use of animal flesh for human food. Yet lest this sanction should make them dangerously familiar with the shedding of blood, and tend to lesson the sacredness of human life, God solemnly forbade the use of blood for food, and then proceeded to ordain that human blood shed by ferocious animals should be avenged with their life. Then follows special legislation against murder by guilty human hands: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man.”――――That this is precept and not merely prophecy is so apparent that argument in proof might seem almost an insult to the common understanding of mankind. Yet the passage has been wrested in this way from its obvious significance. It should be construed in harmony with the scope of the context. Note therefore, that its close connection with the use of animals for the food of man and with the “requiring” of human blood shed by the violence of beasts compel us to find here precept and not prediction. Still more does the historic place of this precept, standing upon the ruins of the old world and in the presence of the yet unwasted bones of thousands whose wickedness had culminated in such recklessness of human life that “the earth was filled with violence.” In the presence of such gigantic iniquity, grown up under the experiment of pardoning and not punishing the crime of murder and giving unrestrained license to bloody passion, it was pertinent to lay a new and more effectual foundation for maintaining the peace of