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INTRODUCTION

The Drama of the Ages embraces more than four thousand years of time. It brings to view the fact of one continued conflict throughout all the Ages. Two opposing forces have been in fierce combat. The subject of conquest has been the subjection of the human mind and the enslavement of both mind and body.

In protest Omnipotent power has been ever present, sometimes in mighty demonstration.

The conquest which has been waged throughout the centuries reveals two sets of principles which are absolute in opposition the one to the other.

The following pages are for the most part authentic history, the Bible being the basis in which the course of despotic empire from its beginning is briefly set down, but it is at the greatest crises of the world's history that the clash of principles is in the most spectacular manner made manifest.

This is not a history of dry facts and events so much as of human nature, of hearts and souls.

And if it shall prove helpful to someone struggling for the way of true happiness and well being, then the object for which it is written shall have been attained.

CALIFORNIA

THE DRAMA OF THE AGES

CHAPTER I.

NIMROD

It was in the days of Eber that the curtain first rises upon the Drama of the Ages; it was the first of a series of crises in the history of nations.

As yet there were no nations, states, nor empires; the world was an infant; the land of Shinar its cradle-Let not the student of history vainly wonder when the protoplasmic chits began first to wiggle; nor how long it would take them to become intelligent enough to build the Sphinx and the Pyramids; for Egypt had not yet been born; there were no Greeks nor Romans; no foot of man had penetrated the Steppe country; no voice of man had broken the stillness of China, Hindostan or Korea; no eye of man had looked upon Mt. Fuji Yama; no human lips had formed the word America; there were no Indians anywhere; the Islands of the sea awaited the coming of man.

In the days of Eber still lived the fathers of our race; from them have come all the nations and people that are on the earth; the tenth chapter of the book of Genesis gives the origin of nations; and there is no other.

Eber had a son whom he named "Peleg, for in his days was the earth divided"—"And all the earth was of one language and of one speech," and it was the design of God that the people should scatter out and fill the earth; but there were some who said let us build us a city and a tower;-and let us make us a name, lest the people be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.

This was the plan the meaning of which was nothing short of an organized attempt to establish a centralized power,— a one man power making one man absolute monarch of all.

This plan met with a protest in demonstration of the great power of God by which was the origin of languages and of nations. Nimrod was the leader of this conquest for widespread dominion and a one man power. To this movement Eber was an able opponent.

Nimrod taught the people in public and in private that a monarchy is the only safe and natural form of government; but Eber taught that monarchal form of government would spell slavery, degradation, ignorance, squalor, superstition and murder; and that they would hold their liberty and their lands by the slippery tenure of the will of the prince. He said that liberty is the gift of God, and that all are the common children of the Creator; that the earth with all its wealth and beauty is free to all; that the kind of rule proposed by Nimrod is contrary to the divine order, and that should it prevail, their posterity would read the history of the world written in the blood of countless millions.

To Nimrod he said,-Makest thou thyself like the "Most High." Wilt thou ascend above the stars of God?-was it thou that caused the light to shine when darkness was upon

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