What were the effects of the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake upon these cities? How far was the development of the modern commission form of city government one of the direct results of the Galveston flood? To what extent is the modern progress in sanitation due to natural calamities? What calamities? Is a great calamity often necessary to arouse the inhabitants of a city or nation to the development of their resources and to the realisation of their highest possibilities? What illustrations can you cite? How do changes in the environment of men affect the moral quality of their acts? How do circumstances affect the kind of act that will be successful? During the Chinese revolution of 1912 in Peking and Nanking, looting leaders of mobs and plundering soldiers when captured were promptly decapitated without trial. Was such an act right? Was it necessary? What conditions would justify such an act in the United States? Would the same act tend equally to preserve the government in both countries? _Subjects for Further Study_. (1) Flood Stories among Primitive Peoples. Worcester, _Genesis_ 361-373; Hastings, _Dict. of Bible_ Vol. II, 18-22; Extra Vol. 181-182; _Encyc. Brit_. (2) The Scientific Basis of the Biblical Account of the Flood. Ryle, _Early Narratives of Gen_. 112-113; Davis, _Gen. and Semitic Traditions_ 130-131; Driver, _Genesis_ 82-83, 99; Sollas, _Age of the Earth_, 316 ff. (3) Compare the treatment accorded their rivals and competitors for power in their various fields by the following persons: Solomon, Caesar Borgia, the late Empress Dowager of China (Tz'u-hsi), Bismarck, the great political leaders of today in Great Britain and the United States and the modern combinations of capital known as trusts. I Kings 1; Machiavelli, _The Prince_; Douglas, _Europe and the Far East_, Ch. 17. Did these different methods under the special circumstances result in the survival of the fittest? The fittest morally? STUDY V THE PIONEER'S INFLUENCE UPON A NATION'S IDEALS. ABRAHAM, THE TRADITIONAL FATHER OF HIS RACE.--Gen. 12:1-8; 13:1-13; 16; 18, 19; 21:7; 22:1-19. _Parallel Readings_. _Hist. Bible_ I, 73-94. _Prin of Pol_., 160-175. Jehovah said to Abraham, Go forth from thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, to the land that I will show thee, that I may make of thee a great nation; and I will surely bless thee, and make thy name great, so that thou shalt be a blessing, I will also bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse, so that all the families of the earth shall ask for themselves a blessing like thine own. So Abraham went forth, as Jehovah had commanded him.--Gen. 12:1-4. (_Hist. Bible_.)