which shall devour the adversaries of God," Heb. x. 27. The law of God says to every sinner, "What hast thou done?" the self-deluding sinner asks, "What must I suffer?" but the man after God's own heart exclaims, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me," Psalm li. 4, 10. True repentance regards far more the dishonor done to God by sin, than any consequences affecting the sinner. In the family of Cain sin is dreaded only for its punishment; but the sons of God, who discern its true character in the history of the cross and the sepulchre, hate and abhor it for its gross ingratitude and wrong to the best, kindest, and most tender of fathers and friends. They look up to the cross with admiration of His holiness and His love, and down to themselves with loathing of their vileness and treachery to Him.

X. HE WAS A HARDENED AND IMPENITENT SIN

NER TO THE LAST. Up to the period of his great crime and God's remonstrance with him, he had preserved some outward show of religion, but as the same sun which softens wax hardens clay, so the gracious appeal which had been made to his conscience from above, and which, in the case of David and others, wrought so effectually to repentance and reformation, seems to have effected, in the heart of Cain, only more intense hatred of God, and a more reckless disregard of His word and ordinances. We read that he "went out from the presence of the Lord," by which, probably, we are to understand that he now renounced every semblance of submission to the Divine will-separating himself from all the religious services in which the other members of his family statedly engaged, and declaring himself openly to be, what he had hitherto been ashamed to appear, a despiser and hater of God. Mark that, reader, “Cain went out from the presence of the Lord." That presence had always been distasteful to him, but as long as he could delude his fellow-men and hope to delude God, he was content to endure the forms of religious worship; but now that the dark tide of ungodliness within his heart has overflowed and desolated the family hearth, disguise is vain, and he must either

flee in earnest to the blood of the everlasting covenant, or boldly declare war against God. He chooses the latter, and takes his final leave of religion.

Alas! how often have I seen, at the hour of family worship, or during an occasional pastoral visit, the head or some member of the household " go out from the presence of the Lord." As long as the voice of mirth, of political discussion, of business, or even of unkind reflection upon others was heard, the family circle remained entire; but the introduction of the Bible, of prayer, or of religious conversation, was the signal for a move on the part of some of the male members especially. How is this?-God is disrelished more than any other subject of thought or enquiry; and yet it is probable that those who thus exhibit such unequivocal evidences of dislike to Him and His truth, will be found occupying their usual place in His house of worship on the following Lord's-day. Surely there is something here that deserves enquiry. God cannot be loved on Sunday, and hated on Monday. He must be either hated or loved on both days. But He cannot be loved by those to whom His word and services give pain, and sometimes displeasure; therefore, whatever be the motive that induces Sabbath attendance by such parties, it is not love to Him. O! my

reader, if you be one who cannot endure a week-day service, beware of self-delusion on this most intensely critical of all subjects. You must be going in the way of Cain, Jude 2, and the imminent danger is that your hearts are undergoing a hardening process that will fit you for any purpose in which the enemy of souls may employ you. To Abel, we may be assured the presence of the Lord was always delightful, and to Abel's posterity it will be equally so. But Abel was a martyr to the truth as it is in Jesus. Like Paul, he counted all things but loss for the excellency of the "knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord," Phil. iii. 8; and, consequently, a falien world was no place for him. Those who are like him feel it to be so now. The Cains are at present the more numerous, and the dominant party; but would you, reader, accept their advantages, and share the curse which they inherit and the mark in their right hand or in their foreheads, which must render them fugitives and vagabonds from God's presence for ever?

Cain pronounced his own doom when he complained of the stigma which God put upon him; "I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth;" but God had passed this sentence upon him already and he now only echoed His words, v. 12. However successfully Satan had deceived him before his crime was committed, he deceives him no longer,-he and God are now agreed as to its effects. How impressive is this fact! There are two occasions on which the evil one abandons his task: 1. When he finds himself hopelessly defeated, as in the case of Jesus in the wildernes, Mat. iv. 11, and also when God's children resist him steadfast in the faith, James iv. 7, 1 Peter v. 9; and 2. When he has effected his object, and having got his victims completely into his power, has no further motive for deluding them. This latter was the case with Adam and Eve, and it was the case now with Cain-it is the case likewise with all his dupes to the present hour. God's truth is made to appear falsehood until the soul of the sinner is steeped in wrath and ruin, and then conscience is loosed from its restraint that it may pronounce judgement and provoke despair! Reader, there will be few self-deceivers at the bar of judgement -there will be none at all in hell; God will then, at least, be justified, for all shall know that "it is well with the righteous," and equally "ill with the wicked," Is. iii. 10, 11, but this is what He, by His ministers, is declaring continually now, see Ezek. xxxiii. 7, &c., and what he has proclaimed in language the most thrilling and sign ficant from every wound and in every groan of the sinless, yet suffering Jesus; but who believes the report? all shall do so by and bye-all endowed with the spirit of heavenly wisdom do so now, and they are saved by faith.

LECTURE IV.

CAIN.

THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF THE NATURAL MAN.

"And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, 1 know not: am I my brother's keeper?"-Gen. iv. 9.

As the future majestic oak of the forest-trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit-is contained in the acorn that drops unheeded from the parent tree, so a world of disorganized intelligences, born to self-created trouble, disorder, and decay, was seminally included in the first-born of the guilty pair who forfeited God's likeness, and produced a living image of their fallen selves to test the reality and the extent of the debasement to which they had sunk.

We might, at the outset, expect that to godless hearts, no possible boon, even from the hands of God Himself, could afford satisfaction, and that from them. could emanate no grateful response. We, therefore, should not be surprised to learn that Cain disappointed the hopes of his parents, and that, having brought nothing into the world acceptable to God, he gained nothing that would improve his condition in that respect from the exercise of parental feeling. Although Eve said, "I have gotten a man from the Lord," we have reason to fear that she did not love him in the Lord, neither did she or her husband train him for the honor and service of his Creator.

In treating the social character of Cain, we must advert successively to the history of his birth, his training, his manhood, and the progress which he made toward that fearful abyss of crime and defiance of God, in which he was ultimately engulfed.

I. As regards HIS BIRTH, we notice

1. God's gracious bestowment of a son upon the guilty pair to reunite and comfort them in their exile state-to employ and gratify those parental feelings which He Himself had implanted-and to test their faithfulness to Him in the exercise of a solemn trust committed to their keeping.

It is

2. Eve's language was that of satisfaction. capable of being so rendered as to imply that she thought Cain was the promised Seed of the woman, who was to bruise the serpent's head. At all events, she does not appear to have apprehended in her offspring the fatal effects of that spiritual poison which had been infused into her own nature, and which she had transmitted to him.

3. His parents called him Cain, that is, a possession," as indicating the property which they had in him. This would appear to signify that they regarded God's bestowment exclusively in reference to their own feelings and objects, not to God and His demands upon their parental faithfulness. The effect of this naturally would be that their selfish and weak affections, not the duty which they owed to God, would regulate the culture which they bestowed on their child. Their wishes, not His, would be the standard of his moral rectitude, and to be to them all that their fond partiality suggested, would be their only demand.

4. The infirmity of judgement which Cain's parents betrayed in his case, would appear to be further developed in their treatment of his younger brother Abel. As far as we may decide by the name given to him, which signifies "vanity," they set him much below their first-born, esteeming him less worthy of their regard, and of less importance to their happiness. This blind partiality for an infant who could establish no claim to it, proved how unfitted they were for the responsibilities which rested upon them, and how almost inevitable were the consequences which appeared in the future destinies of their children.

What a large measure of heavenly wisdom, it may here be observed, is required by those who are called to exercise parental duties. To their offspring they stand in the place of God, whose representatives to their children they are, and for whom they are em