afterwards of Seth and of his descendants. For around these two - Cain and Seth -as their representatives,

all the children of Adam would group themselves according to their spiritual tendencies.

Viewed in this light the indications of Scripture, however brief, are quite clear. When we read that "Cain was

a tiller of the ground," and "Abel was a keeper of sheep," we can understand that the choice of their

occupations depended not on accidental circumstances, but quite accorded with their views and character.

Abel chose the pilgrim-life, Cain that of settled possession and enjoyment of earth. The nearer their history

lay to the terrible event which had led to the loss of Paradise, and to the first giving of the promise, the more

significant would this their choice of life appear. Quite in accordance with this, we afterwards find Cain, not

only building a city, but calling it after the name of his own son, to indicate settled proprietorship and

enjoyment of the world as it was. The same tendency rapidly unfolded in his descendants, till in Lamech, the

fifth from Cain, it had already assumed such large proportions that Scripture deems it no longer necessary to

mark its growth. Accordingly the separate record of the Cainites ceases with Lamech and his children, and

there is no further specific mention made of them in Scripture.

Before following more in detail the course of these two races - for, in a spiritual sense, they were quite

distinct - we mark at the very threshold o f Scripture history the introduction of sacrifices. From the time of

Abel onwards, they are uniformly, and with increasing clearness, set before us as the appointed way of

approaching and holding fellowship with God, till, at the close of Scripture history, we have the sacrifice of

our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to which all sacrifices had pointed. And not only so, but as the

dim remembrance of a better state from which man had fallen, and of a hope of deliverance, had been

preserved among all heathen nations, so also had that of the necessity of sacrifices. Even the bloody rites of

savages, nay, the cruel sacrifices of best-beloved children, what were they but a cry of despair in the felt

need of reconciliation to God through sacrifice - the giving up of what was most dear in room and stead of

the offerer? These are the terribly broken pillars of what once had been a temple; the terribly distorted

traditions of truths once Divinely revealed. Blessed be God for the light of His Gospel, which has taught us

"the way, the truth, and the life," even Him who is "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the

world."