Jehovah learned nothing by experience. He per- sisted in his original mistake. What would we think of a man who finding that a field of wheat was worthless, and that such wheat never could be raised with profit, should burn all of the field with the exception of a few sheaves, which he saved for seed? Why save such seed? Why should God have pre- served Noah, knowing that he was totally corrupt, and that he would again fill the world with infamous 206 people--people incapable of a good action? He must have known at that time, that by preserving Noah, the Canaanites would be produced, that these same Canaanites would have to be murdered, that the babes in the cradles would have to be strangled. Why did he produce them? He knew at that time, that Egypt would result from the salvation of Noah, that the Egyptians would have to be nearly de- stroyed, that he would have to kill their first-born, that he would have to visit even their cattle with disease and hailstones. He knew also that the Egyptians would oppress his chosen people for two hundred and fifteen years, that they would upon the back of toil inflict the lash. Why did he preserve Noah? He should have drowned all, and started with a new pair. He should have warned them against the devil, and he might have succeeded, in that way, in covering the world with gentlemen and ladies, with real men and real women. We know that most of the people now in the world are not Christians. Most who have heard the gospel of Christ have rejected it, and the Presby- terian Church tells us what is to become of all these people. This is the "glad tidings of great joy." Let us see: 207 "All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with "God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made "liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, "and to the pains of hell forever." According to this good Presbyterian doctrine, all that we suffer in this world, is the result of Adam's fall. The babes of to-day suffer for the crime of the first parents. Not only so; but God is angry at us for what Adam did. We are under the wrath of an infinite God, whose brows are corrugated with eternal hatred. Why should God hate us for being what we are and necessarily must have been? A being that God made--the devil--for whose work God is responsible, according to the Bible wrought this woe. God of his own free will must have made the devil. What did he make him for? Was it necessary to have a devil in heaven? God, having infinite power, can of course destroy this devil to-day. Why does he per- mit him to live? Why did he allow him to thwart his plans? Why did he permit him to pollute the inno- cence of Eden? Why does he allow him now to wrest souls by the million from the redeeming hand of Christ? According to the Scriptures, the devil has always 208