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 death and many hardships, and were to be banished from God for ever. Nevertheless, God had compassion on them, and promised them a Saviour, who should reconcile them again to Him, and make them partakers of eternal happiness in Heaven, provided they did penance (Gen. iii. 15).

3. Cain and Abel, sons of our first parents, offered sacrifice to Almighty God. God was pleased with that of the virtuous Abel, but not with that of the wicked Cain. Cain, being exceedingly angry at the preference given to his brother, killed him; and in punishment for this crime he was cursed by God, and became a vagabond upon earth.

4. The descendants of Cain were wicked, like their father, and gradually seduced even the good; insomuch that, in process of time, all men turned away from God and sank deeper and deeper into sin and vice. God then resolved to destroy the degenerate race of Adam by a universal deluge. The rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, and the waters rose fifteen cubits, or twenty-seven feet and a half, above the highest mountains. All living creatures on the face of the earth perished in the flood, except the pious Noe, with his family, and the animals that were with him in the ark, which he had built by the command of God. In thanksgiving for this escape, Noe erected an altar and offered a burnt sacrifice to the Lord, who, in return, blessed him and his sons, and promised him that 'there should no more be waters of a flood, to destroy all flesh' ( Gen. ix. 15).