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unborn world; and now thou shalt see some of the fruits of it in thine own family! Thou hast never before witnessed a human death: go, see the first victim of the king of terrors in the mangled corpse of Abel thy son!-Poor Abel! Shall we pity him? In one view we must, but in others he is an object of envy. He was the first of the noble army of martyrs, the first of human kind who entered the abodes of the blessed, and the first instance of death being subservient to Christ. When the serpent had drawn man into sin, and exposed him to its threatened penalty, he seemed to have obtained the power of death: and had man been left under the ruins of the fall, he would have been continually walking through the earth, arm in arm, as it were, with the monster, the one taking the bodies and the other the souls of men. But the Woman's Seed is destined to overcome him. By death he destroyed him who had the power of death, and delivered them who must otherwise through fear of death, have been all their life-time subject to bondage. Heb. ii. 14, 15.

DISCOURSE VIII.

CAIN'S PUNIShment and pOSTERITY.

Gen, iv. 9-24.

VER. 9. We have seen the tragical end of righteous Abel; but what becomes of the murderer? Probably he had hid the dead body of his brother, to elude detection: hut God will find him out. Jehovah said to Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? What a cutting question! The words thy brother would remind him of the tender ties of flesh and blood which he had broken; and if he had any feeling of conscience left in him, must pierce him to the quick. But Oh, how black, how hardened is the state of his mind! Mark his answer. First, the falsehood of it I know not. We feel astonished that a man can dare to lie in the presence of his Maker: yet how many lies are uttered before him by formalists and hypocrites! Secondly, The insolence of it-Am I my brother's keeper? This man had no fear of God before his eyes and where this is wanting, regard to man will be wanting also. Even natural affection will be swallowed up in selfishness. Supposing he had not known where his brother was, it did not follow that he had no interest in his preservation: but he did know, and instead of being his keeper, had been his murderer!

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Ver. 10. And he said, What hast thou done? Ah, what indeed! This was the question put to Eve and sooner or later it will be put to every sinner, and conscience must answer to it too! But Cain refuses to speak: be it so; there needs no confession to substantiate his guilt. His brother's blood had already done this! Blood has a voice that will speak; yea, and that will cry to heaven from the ground for vengeance on him who sheds it; and a brother's blood especially. What a scene will open to view at the last judg

ment, when the earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain! And if such was the cry of Abel's blood, what must have been that of the blood which was shed on Calvary? We should have thought that blood must have called for vengeance seven-fold; and in one view it did so : but in another it speaks better things than that of Abel.

Ver. 11, 12. But let us notice the doom of Cain. He was cursed from the earth; it should in future refuse to yield him its wonted fruits, and he should be a fugitive and a vagabond in it. Three things are here observable: (1.) By the sovereign will of the Lord of All, his life was spared. Afterwards a positive law was made by the same authority, that whosoever should shed man's blood, by man should his blood be shed. But at present, for reasons of state in the breast of the King of kings, the murderer shall be reprieved.* (2.) The curse which attached to his life, like that of our first parents, is confined to the present state. There is no reason in the world to suppose that the punishment of such a crime would actually be so, any more than others, nor others any more than this; but a future life was at that time sparingly revealed, and almost every thing concealed under the veil of temporal good and evil. (3.) It contains a special addition to that which was denounced on Adam. The earth was cursed to him; but Cain was cursed from the earth. It had been his brother's friend, by affording a kind of sanctuary for his blood which he had pursued; but to him it should be an enemy, not only refusing its wonted fruits, but even a place whereon to rest his foot, or in which to hide his guilty head!

Ver. 13, 14. This tremendous sentence draws forth an answer from the murderer. There is a great change since he spoke last, but not for the better. All the difference is, instead of his high tone of insolence, we perceive him sinking into the last stage of depravity, sullen desperation. Behold here a finished picture of impenitent misery. What a contrast to the fifty-first Psalm.

* If he had died by the hand of man, it must have been either by an act of private revenge, which would have increased bloodshed; or Adam himself must have been the executioner of his son, from which trial of " quenching the coal that was left," God might graciously exempt him.

There the evil dwelt upon and pathetically lamented is sin; but here it is only punishment. See how he expatiates upon it. ... Driven from the face of the earth. . . . deprived of God's fa. vour and blessing, and in a sort, of the means of hope (ver. 16,) a wanderer and an outcast from men to all which his fears add, 'Wherever I am, by night or by day, my life will be in perpetual danger! Truly it was a terrible doom, a kind of hell apon earth. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!

Ver. 15. From the last part of what his fears forboded, however, God was pleased to exempt him; yet not in mercy, but in judg ment. He shall not die, but live, a monument of divine justice. If he had died, his example might soon have been forgotten: but mankind shall see and fear. Slay them not, lest my people forget : scatter them by thy power, and bring them down, O Lord! God is not obliged to send a sinner to the place of the damned, in order to punish him: he can call his name Magor-missabib, and render him a terror to himself and all about him.* What the mark was which was set upon Cain, we know not, nor does it behove us to inquire: whatever it was, it amounted to a safe passage through the world, so far as respected a punishment from man for his pressent crime.

Ver. 16. And now, having obtained a reprieve, he retires in the true spirit of a reprobate, and tries to forget his misery. It shocked him at first to be driven out from God's face, by which perhaps he meant from all connexion with the people and worship of God, from the means of grace, and so from the hope of mercy; but in a little time the sensation subsides, and he resolves to enjoy the present world as well as he can. He goes out from the pressence of the Lord, takes a final leave of God and his worship and his people, and cares no more about them. If this be the meaning of the words, (and I know of no other so probable,) it wears a very favourable appearance with respect to the state of things in Adam's family. It shows that the worship of God was there carried on, and that God was with them. Indeed, if it were not car

* Jer. xx. 3, 4.

VOL. V.

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