SCRIPTURE BIOGRAPHY.

CAIN.

ness,

B. c. 3800.

WE cannot go far in our meditation on the melancholy consequences of the fall of man, before we are struck with the sad reflection, that, as referred to the state of innocence, the moral condition of the best men and of the worst, admits not of any sensible difference. So infinite is the distance between innocence and guilt, within such unassignable degrees of nearcompared with it, lie all the manifold forms of infirmity and sin. It is as if we should compare with their distance from the sun the distance between any two places upon earth- this latter immediately vanishes to a point. We must put the infinite out of the question before we can appreciate distances either in the moral or natural world. Then they become sensible indeed: and, just as between two places, there then appears a long journey of many miles, with many intervening towns, and hills, and waters, and all the interval is filled up to the eye with such

a profusion of detail, as to make us think the distance even greater than it really is; so, too, we now discern between any two moral characters, many others interposed at numberless points of shade and degree, and the difference grows as we proceed in our comparison. But how greatly does such a contemplation of cur condition exalt our notion of the mercy of God. Man's eye of flesh, placed at the sun, would see our earth, with all its included distances, reduced to a mere speck: and his spiritual eye, placed at the distance of perfect innocence, would see all the various characters of mankind under one dark blot. But the pure and perfect eye of God sees not so; in his merciful forgiveness he quits the distance at which our lamentable fall has thrown us, and draws nigh to make distinctions. He has not abandoned us to a condition unworthy of his consideration. He has even vouchsafed his presence among us by express and glorious symbols, and in the fulness of time sent down from heaven His Son, who was made flesh, to dwell among us. Thus have we been assured, in the fullest manner, that he recognizes, even in our wreck of holiness, the distinction of just and unjust.

Amid these reflections we come, in the course of the text of Scripture, to the mention of Cain. In this second man, we see the extent of the sin of the first, and perceive how, when holiness has been once forsaken, the new condition of the creature admits most readily of every sort of guilt. The essential forms are already there, and only await their time and opportunity for appearing in their many and manifold shapes of express delinquency.

Judged

by the gross and superficial notions of human law, the difference between the offences of the first and second man seems immense. But to him, who keeps his eye upon the forfeited state of innocence, they are results of the same obliquity of the degraded mind, they are in close connection. -in immediate consequence. The vanity which springs up in the moment that man draws off his constant view of dependence upon the perfections of God, to the undivided contemplation of himself, this original sin had but a few shoots to make before it produced fruit which has ever been abominable in the eyes of even the worst of mankind. It is peculiarly mortifying to human pride, and, indeed, a wholesome chastisement to any occasional burst of undue confidence in the sanctified heart, to consider that the first murderer was the first man as men now are. He was the first that never knew innocence and perfect bliss, and exemplifies the consequences of this ignorance. The vanity of Adam was humbled in the moment of its conception. His imaginary rise produced his real fall, and the delicious dream of the one was instantly broken by the horrible certainty of the other. But Cain had no glorious and happy past wherewith to compare his present state, and the rebellious pride and vanity with which he came into the world, had no check from such reflections. In him we are to look for the first specimen of the conduct of a son and a brother. How humiliating is the thought. As a son, he presents us with the first example of disobedience to an earthly father, and was the avenging fury of Adam's disobedience to a heavenly Father. Little aware was Eve of the mental pangs which this son should add

to her penal pangs of his birth, when she gave him the name of Cain in token of her gladness in having gotten a man from the Lord. She rejoiced in this earnest of the accomplishment of the promise of the Redeemer from among her seed, and thought not of the dreadful shape which would be assumed in him by the sin, for the redemption of which she was so earnestly looking. But the wayward child would soon fill her mind with oppressive apprehensions, both of the magnitude of her sin and of the unlikelihood of a Redeemer arising from so polluted a source as the seed of this babe. Insupportably painful must it have been to her to witness in him that exhibition of violent temper which appals mothers who never knew her innocence. Day after day, yea, hour after hour, did her sin rebuke her in a bodily shape, set forth in the rebellious spirit of this helpless baby, which, from the very womb, began to kick against the pricks. He would spurn the meat from his mouth as she fed him, would struggle with her against the performance of the kindest office, and would utter cries of discontent the louder, for her attempts to soothe. Amid groans and tears of the deepest humiliation, she fostered this her first-born-this type of what her posterity should be. Alas! to what a race of rebels am I to give birth (she may exclaim), now that I myself have become a rebel! She, henceforward, began to see into the horrible detail of her sin, and more deeply therefore to appreciate the mercy of the redemption provided for herself and her children.

The birth of Abel, with the comfort which it brought her, extended, at the same time, her know