At this time of general apostasy, Noah—­and, it would seem, he alone—­was seen righteous before God.  Him, therefore, with his family, the Almighty preserved in the ark, when in his fierce wrath he caused the deluge to sweep away the corrupt inhabitants from the face of the earth they had polluted.  Notwithstanding the wide-spread corruption of the times, it does not appear that either Noah or his sons were polygamists.  Certainly, if any one of them had been such prior to the building of the ark, he was not permitted to bring his harem into it for protection from the fearful storm.  Only “eight persons,” we are informed, were preserved alive; namely, Noah and his wife, with his three sons and their wives.  Then, at what may be termed the second starting-point of the human race, there was again an equal number of men and women upon the earth; clearly pointing out that the design of the Almighty in this matter was the marriage of one man with one woman.  God made no provision for the marriage of either man or woman after the obtaining of a divorce.

It might have been supposed that so fearful a display of the wrath of God would have made a lasting impression upon the descendants of Noah; but as is the case with perverse mankind now, so it was then; the lessons of the past were lost upon them.  No very great period of time elapses till we find the posterity of this good man, Noah, impiously and daringly conceiving the idea of measuring strength with the Almighty by attempting to build a tower so high that it could not possibly be overflowed should a subsequent deluge occur.  The dispersion of mankind, and the consequent division into tribes, or races, was the result of such presumption.  The desperately wicked heart of man began to devise new mischiefs, and revive old ones.  Monogamy, the great conservator of moral purity, was disregarded, and one corruption viler than another followed in rapid succession.  Before the calling of Abraham, mankind, as a whole, appear to have lapsed, if not into absolute heathenism, at least into something very near it.  The knowledge and worship of the true God seems to have been retained only in isolated families, and even there to have been but partially observed, being marred and dishonored by human inventions and substitutions.

That Abraham might be delivered from the pernicious example of his neighbors, and that his mind might be prepared for the reception of the grand manifestations of the Divine character which God designed to impart to him, he was commanded to break off all association with them; and, the more completely to effect this, he was desired to leave his kindred and his country, and become a stranger in a strange land.  Yet somewhat of the contamination of early association seems to have clung both to him and Sarah, as is evidenced in the matter of Hagar.  In something very like doubt of God’s power to fulfill his own promise, Abraham yielded to Sarah’s suggestion, and thus