CHAPTER VI.

Argument from Scripture connected with the argument from expediency.-Wisdom and necessity of this ordinance.-Commonness of the spirit of Cain in human

society.

WE are now to consider the wisdom and necessity of this ordinance. So far as facts in past ages can teach us, we take this to have been clearly demonstrated in the experience of the world before the flood, so that it was not consistent with the wisdom and goodness of God to repeat the experiment made with the progeny of the first murderer. The lenity that characterized the divine dealings with Cain in the Old World would have been misplaced if continued in the New. In order to prevent society from running the same race of wickedness, a different order of things was necessary; a different period of life, a different code of laws, a different set of

institutions. We cannot indeed tell with absolute certainty what might have been the result, if God had not set up the barrier of this enactment, but it is probable that there would have been less and less regard to the sacredness of human life, and men's passions would have increased with indulgence, till it would have become a customary thing, for the gratification of malice, to take life with very little provocation. Men would have stabbed and killed one another, in a sudden fit of anger, or for the execution of some cherished spite, with as much freedom and commonness as they would kill a noxious animal. "Am I my brother's keeper? Who shall call me to account?" It is to be remembered that the very first crime on record after the fall is that of murder, and not only so, but the murder of one's own brother; and as we have no reason to believe that Cain, as a specimen of humanity, was any worse than his descendants, and on the contrary are assured by divine authority that the spirit of murder

dwells in the heart of every man that loveth not his brother according to the gospel, it is probable that murder was frightfully common in the antediluvian world; it is probable that it would have been quite as common in the world after the deluge, if God had not set this barrier against it. No man can tell how much of its peace and security society owes to this very ordinance, how much of the fearfulness that now invests the crime of murder, and of the horror with which all men regard it, has been thrown around it by God's annexing to it this awful penalty. Those who desire the abrogation of this law, and reason against it because of its severity, can have little conception of the state in which society would now have been existing, if from the beginning of the world there had been no such divine enactment.

Neither can it be told how greatly the absence or the abrogation of this law would have weakened the force of all other penalties, each lower penalty suffer

ing in its degree, and all together being shorn of that awful power, which invests the functions of Law, when the dread alternative of life, or death, the power of the sword, in the language of the apostle, stands ministering to its judgments.

The brief, dark, stern account of the first murder is terrible in its warnings and its lessons. It shows four things;-the fatuity and sullen insensibility of the murderer; the intolerable deadliness of his crime;—the certainty of its discovery and punishment;—and the nativeness of the spirit of murder. The fatuity of this guilt is one of its peculiar characteristics; a man under the influence of a guilty conscience loses his common sense, and becomes mad, blind, foolish. Murder betrays itself sometimes by its insane anxiety for concealment. The manner of Cain's answer might have made it evident to any person that he was the murderer. In all probability he had been hiding Abel's body. This would naturally be his first step after killing him. He would hastily dig a pit

in the ground, or at least drag the corpse of his murdered brother into the woods, and cover it with leaves and branches; and as he did not think of the interposition of God in the discovery and punishment of his crime, he might have expected to keep it concealed from every creature. He had a ready falsehood for his father and mother, if they had inquired after their murdered son. And the same falsehood was just as ready for God. "And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother's keeper?" And yet the murderer could scarcely have had time to wash the stains of his brother's blood from his own hands, and to cleanse his raiment. There he stood before God, pale and trembling, with hell in his soul, the first murderer and the first liar!

"And God said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. Thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand."