CHAPTER XXXI.

THE BLESSINGS OF THE TRIBES 415

I.

_THE CREATION._

GENESIS i. and ii.

If any one is in search of accurate information regarding the age of

this earth, or its relation to the sun, moon, and stars, or regarding

the order in which plants and animals have appeared upon it, he is

referred to recent text-books in astronomy, geology, and palaeontology.

No one for a moment dreams of referring a serious student of these

subjects to the Bible as a source of information. It is not the object

of the writers of Scripture to impart physical instruction or to enlarge

the bounds of scientific knowledge. But if any one wishes to know what

connection the world has with God, if he seeks to trace back all that

now is to the very fountain-head of life, if he desires to discover some

unifying principle, some illuminating purpose in the history of this

earth, then we confidently refer him to these and the subsequent

chapters of Scripture as his safest, and indeed his only, guide to the

information he seeks. Every writing must be judged by the object the

writer has in view. If the object of the writer of these chapters was to

convey physical information, then certainly it is imperfectly fulfilled.

But if his object was to give an intelligible account of God's relation

to the world and to man, then it must be owned that he has been

successful in the highest degree.

It is therefore unreasonable to allow our reverence for this writing to

be lessened because it does not anticipate the discoveries of physical

science; or to repudiate its authority in its own department of truth

because it does not give us information which it formed no part of the

writer's object to give. As well might we deny to Shakespeare a masterly

knowledge of human life, because his dramas are blotted by historical

anachronisms. That the compiler of this book of Genesis did not aim at

scientific accuracy in speaking of physical details is obvious, not

merely from the general scope and purpose of the Biblical writers, but

especially from this, that in these first two chapters of his book he

lays side by side two accounts of man's creation which no ingenuity can

reconcile. These two accounts, glaringly incompatible in details, but

absolutely harmonious in their leading ideas, at once warn the reader

that the writer's aim is rather to convey certain ideas regarding man's

spiritual history and his connection with God, than to describe the

process of creation. He does describe the process of creation, but he

describes it only for the sake of the ideas regarding man's relation to

God and God's relation to the world which he can thereby convey. Indeed

what we mean by scientific knowledge was not in all the thoughts of the

people for whom this book was written. The subject of creation, of the

beginning of man upon earth, was not approached from that side at all;

and if we are to understand what is here written we must burst the

trammels of our own modes of thought and read these chapters not as a

chronological, astronomical, geological, biological statement, but as a

moral or spiritual conception.

It will, however, be said, and with much appearance of justice, that

although the first object of the writer was not to convey scientific

information, yet he might have been expected to be accurate in the

information he did advance regarding the physical universe. This is an

enormous assumption to make on _a priori_ grounds, but it is an

assumption worth seriously considering because it brings into view a

real and important difficulty which every reader of Genesis must face.

It brings into view the twofold character of this account of creation.

On the one hand it is irreconcilable with the teachings of science. On

the other hand it is in striking contrast to the other cosmogonies which

have been handed down from pre-scientific ages. These are the two patent

features of this record of creation and both require to be accounted

for. Either feature alone would be easily accounted for; but the two

co-existing in the same document are more baffling. We have to account

at once for a want of perfect coincidence with the teachings of science,

and for a singular freedom from those errors which disfigure all other

primitive accounts of the creation of the world. The one feature of the

document is as patent as the other and presses equally for explanation.

Now many persons cut the knot by simply denying that both these features

exist. There is no disagreement with science, they say. I speak for many

careful enquirers when I say that this cannot serve as a solution of the

difficulty. I think it is to be freely admitted that, from whatever

cause and however justifiably, the account of creation here given is not

in strict and detailed accordance with the teaching of science. All

attempts to force its statements into such accord are futile and

mischievous. They are futile because they do not convince independent

enquirers, but only those who are unduly anxious to be convinced. And

they are mischievous because they unduly prolong the strife between

Scripture and science, putting the question on a false issue. And above

all, they are to be condemned because they do violence to Scripture,

foster a style of interpretation by which the text is forced to say

whatever the interpreter desires, and prevent us from recognising the

real nature of these sacred writings. The Bible needs no defence such as

false constructions of its language bring to its aid. They are its worst

friends who distort its words that they may yield a meaning more in

accordance with scientific truth. If, for example, the word 'day' in

these chapters, does not mean a period of twenty-four hours, the

interpretation of Scripture is hopeless. Indeed if we are to bring these

chapters into any comparison at all with science, we find at once

various discrepancies. Of a creation of sun, moon, and stars, subsequent

to the creation of this earth, science can have but one thing to say. Of

the existence of fruit trees prior to the existence of the sun, science

knows nothing. But for a candid and unsophisticated reader without a

special theory to maintain, details are needless.

Accepting this chapter then as it stands, and believing that only by

looking at the Bible as it actually is can we hope to understand God's

method of revealing Himself, we at once perceive that ignorance of some

departments of truth does not disqualify a man for knowing and imparting

truth about God. In order to be a medium of revelation a man does not

need to be in advance of his age in secular learning. Intimate

communion with God, a spirit trained to discern spiritual things, a

perfect understanding of and zeal for God's purpose, these are qualities

quite independent of a knowledge of the discoveries of science. The

enlightenment which enables men to apprehend God and spiritual truth,

has no necessary connection with scientific attainments. David's

confidence in God and his declarations of His faithfulness are none the

less valuable, because he was ignorant of a very great deal which every

school-boy now knows. Had inspired men introduced into their writings

information which anticipated the discoveries of science, their state of

mind would be inconceivable, and revelation would be a source of

confusion. God's methods are harmonious with one another, and as He has

given men natural faculties to acquire scientific knowledge and

historical information, He did not stultify this gift by imparting such

knowledge in a miraculous and unintelligible manner. There is no

evidence that inspired men were in advance of their age in the knowledge

of physical facts and laws. And plainly, had they been supernaturally

instructed in physical knowledge they would so far have been

unintelligible to those to whom they spoke. Had the writer of this book

mingled with his teaching regarding God, an explicit and exact account

of how this world came into existence--had he spoken of millions of

years instead of speaking of days--in all probability he would have been

discredited, and what he had to say about God would have been rejected

along with his premature science. But speaking from the point of view of

his contemporaries, and accepting the current ideas regarding the

formation of the world, he attached to these the views regarding God's

connection with the world which are most necessary to be believed. What

he had learned of God's unity and creative power and connection with

man, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he imparts to his

contemporaries through the vehicle of an account of creation they could

all understand. It is not in his knowledge of physical facts that he is

elevated above his contemporaries, but in his knowledge of God's

connection with all physical facts. No doubt, on the other hand, his

knowledge of God reacts upon the entire contents of his mind and saves

him from presenting such accounts of creation as have been common among

polytheists. He presents an account purified by his conception of what

was worthy of the supreme God he worshipped. His idea of God has given

dignity and simplicity to all he says about creation, and there is an

elevation and majesty about the whole conception, which we recognise as

the reflex of his conception of God.

Here then instead of anything to discompose us or to excite unbelief, we

recognise one great law or principle on which God proceeds in making

Himself known to men. This has been called the Law of Accommodation. It

is the law which requires that the condition and capacity of those to

whom the revelation is made must be considered. If you wish to instruct

a child, you must speak in language the child can understand. If you

wish to elevate a savage, you must do it by degrees, accommodating

yourself to his condition, and winking at much ignorance while you

instil elementary knowledge. You must found all you teach on what is

already understood by your pupil, and through that you must convey

further knowledge and train his faculties to higher capacity. So was it

with God's revelation. The Jews were children who had to be trained

with what Paul somewhat contemptuously calls "weak and beggarly

elements," the A B C of morals and religion. Not even in morals could

the absolute truth be enforced. Accommodation had to be practised even

here. Polygamy was allowed as a concession to their immature stage of

development: and practices in war and in domestic law were permitted or

enjoined which were inconsistent with absolute morality. Indeed the

whole Jewish system was an adaptation to an immature state. The dwelling

of God in the Temple as a man in his house, the propitiating of God with

sacrifice as of an Eastern king with gifts; this was a teaching by

picture, a teaching which had as much resemblance to the truth and as

much mixture of truth as they were able then to receive. No doubt this

teaching did actually mislead them in some of their ideas; but it kept

them on the whole in a right attitude towards God, and prepared them for

growing up to a fuller discernment of the truth.

Much more was this law observed in regard to such matters as are dealt

with in these chapters. It was impossible that in their ignorance of the

rudiments of scientific knowledge, the early Hebrews should understand

an absolutely accurate account of how the world came into being; and if

they could have understood it, it would have been useless, dissevered as

it must have been from the steps of knowledge by which men have since

arrived at it. Children ask us questions in answer to which we do not

tell them the exact full truth, because we know they cannot possibly

understand it. All that we can do is to give them some provisional

answer which conveys to them some information they can understand, and

which keeps them in a right state of mind, although this information

often seems absurd enough when compared with the actual facts and truth

of the matter. And if some solemn pedant accused us of supplying the

child with false information, we would simply tell him he knew nothing

about children. Accurate information on these matters will infallibly

come to the child when he grows up; what is wanted meanwhile is to give

him information which will help to form his conduct without gravely

misleading him as to facts. Similarly, if any one tells me he cannot

accept these chapters as inspired by God, because they do not convey

scientifically accurate information regarding this earth, I can only say

that he has yet to learn the first principles of revelation, and that he

misunderstands the conditions on which all instruction must be given.

My belief then is, that in these chapters we have the ideas regarding

the origin of the world and of man which were naturally attainable in

the country where they were first composed, but with those important

modifications which a monotheistic belief necessarily suggested. So far

as merely physical knowledge went, there is probably little here that

was new to the contemporaries of the writer; but this already familiar

knowledge was used by him as the vehicle for conveying his faith in the

unity, love and wisdom of God the creator. He laid a firm foundation for

the history of God's relation to man. This was his object, and this he

accomplished. The Bible is the book to which we turn for information

regarding the history of God's revelation of Himself, and of His will

towards men; and in these chapters we have the suitable introduction to

this history. No changes in our knowledge of physical truth can at all

affect the teaching of these chapters. What they teach regarding the

relation of man to God is independent of the physical details in which

this teaching is embodied, and can as easily be attached to the most

modern statement of the physical origin of the world and of man.

What then are the truths taught us in these chapters? The first is that

there has been a creation, that things now existing have not just grown

of themselves, but have been called into being by a presiding

intelligence and an originating will. No attempt to account for the

existence of the world in any other way has been successful. A great

deal has in this generation been added to our knowledge of the

efficiency of material causes to produce what we see around us; but when

we ask what gives harmony to these material causes, and what guides them

to the production of certain ends, and what originally produced them,

the answer must still be, not matter but intelligence and purpose. The

best informed and most penetrating minds of our time affirm this. John

Stuart Mill says: "It must be allowed that in the present state of our

knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of

probability in favour of creation by intelligence." Professor Tyndall

adds his testimony and says: "I have noticed during years of

self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigour that

[the doctrine of material atheism] commends itself to my mind--that in

the hours of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and

disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell and

of which we form a part."

There is indeed a prevalent suspicion, that in presence of the

discoveries made by evolutionists the argument from design is no longer

tenable. Evolution shows us that the correspondence of the structure of

animals, with their modes of life, has been generated by the nature of

the case; and it is concluded that a blind mechanical necessity and not

an intelligent design rules all. But the discovery of the process by

which the presently existing living forms have been evolved, and the

perception that this process is governed by laws which have always been

operating, do not make intelligence and design at all less necessary,

but rather more so. As Professor Huxley himself says: "The teleological

and mechanical views of nature are not necessarily exclusive. The

teleologist can always defy the evolutionist to disprove that the

primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the

phenomena of the universe." Evolution, in short, by disclosing to us the

marvellous power and accuracy of natural law, compels us more

emphatically than ever to refer all law to a supreme, originating

intelligence.

This then is the first lesson of the Bible; that at the root and origin

of all this vast material universe, before whose laws we are crushed as

the moth, there abides a living conscious Spirit, who wills and knows

and fashions all things. The belief of this changes for us the whole

face of nature, and instead of a chill, impersonal world of forces to

which no appeal can be made, and in which matter is supreme, gives us

the home of a Father. If you are yourself but a particle of a huge and

unconscious universe--a particle which, like a flake of foam, or a drop

of rain, or a gnat, or a beetle, lasts its brief space and then yields

up its substance to be moulded into some new creature; if there is no

power that understands you and sympathizes with you and makes provision

for your instincts, your aspirations, your capabilities; if man is

himself the highest intelligence, and if all things are the purposeless

result of physical forces; if, in short, there is no God, no

consciousness at the beginning as at the end of all things, then nothing

can be more melancholy than our position. Our higher desires which seem

to separate us so immeasurably from the brutes, we have, only that they

may be cut down by the keen edge of time, and wither in barren

disappointment; our reason we have, only to enable us to see and measure

the brevity of our span, and so live our little day, not joyously as the

unforeseeing beasts, but shadowed by the hastening gloom of anticipated,

inevitable and everlasting night; our faculty for worshipping and for

striving to serve and to resemble the perfect living One, that faculty

which seems to be the thing of greatest promise and of finest quality in

us, and to which is certainly due the largest part of what is admirable

and profitable in human history, is the most mocking and foolishest of

all our parts. But, God be thanked, He has revealed himself to us; has

given us in the harmonious and progressive movement of all around us,

sufficient indication that, even in the material world, intelligence and

purpose reign; an indication which becomes immensely clearer as we pass

into the world of man; and which, in presence of the person and life of

Christ attains the brightness of a conviction which illuminates all

besides.

The other great truth which this writer teaches is, that man was the

chief work of God, for whose sake all else was brought into being. The

work of creation was not finished till he appeared: all else was

preparatory to this final product. That man is the crown and lord of

this earth is obvious. Man instinctively assumes that all else has been

made for him, and freely acts upon this assumption. But when our eyes

are lifted from this little ball on which we are set and to which we

are confined, and when we scan such other parts of the universe as are

within our ken, a keen sense of littleness oppresses us; our earth is

after all so minute and apparently inconsiderable a point when compared

with the vast suns and planets that stretch system on system into

illimitable space. When we read even the rudiments of what astronomers

have discovered regarding the inconceivable vastness of the universe,

the huge dimensions of the heavenly bodies, and the grand scale on which

everything is framed, we find rising to our lips, and with tenfold

reason, the words of David: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of

Thy fingers; the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; what is

man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest

him?" Is it conceivable that on this scarcely discernible speck in the

vastness of the universe, should be played out the chiefest act in the

history of God? Is it credible that He whose care it is to uphold this

illimitable universe, should be free to think of the wants and woes of

the insignificant creatures who quickly spend their little lives in this

inconsiderable earth?

But reason seems all on the side of Genesis. God must not be considered

as sitting apart in a remote position of general superintendence, but as

present with all that is. And to Him who maintains these systems in

their respective relations and orbits, it can be no burden to relieve

the needs of individuals. To think of ourselves as too insignificant to

be attended to is to derogate from God's true majesty and to

misunderstand His relation to the world. But it is also to misapprehend

the real value of spirit as compared with matter. Man is dear to God

because he is like Him. Vast and glorious as it is, the sun cannot think

God's thoughts; can fulfil but cannot intelligently sympathize with

God's purpose. Man, alone among God's works, can enter into and approve

of God's purpose in the world and can intelligently fulfil it. Without

man the whole material universe would have been dark and unintelligible,

mechanical and apparently without any sufficient purpose. Matter,

however fearfully and wonderfully wrought, is but the platform and

material in which spirit, intelligence and will, may fulfil themselves

and find development. Man is incommensurable with the rest of the

universe. He is of a different kind and by his moral nature is more akin

to God than to His works.

Here the beginning and the end of God's revelation join hands and throw

light on one another. The nature of man was that in which God was at

last to give His crowning revelation, and for that no preparation could

seem extravagant. Fascinating and full of marvel as is the history of

the past which science discloses to us; full as these slow-moving

millions of years are in evidences of the exhaustless wealth of nature,

and mysterious as the delay appears, all that expenditure of resources

is eclipsed and all the delay justified when the whole work is crowned

by the Incarnation, for in it we see that all that slow process was the

preparation of a nature in which God could manifest Himself as a Person

to persons. This is seen to be an end worthy of all that is contained in

the physical history of the world: this gives completeness to the whole

and makes it a unity. No higher, other end need be sought, none could be

conceived. It is this which seems worthy of those tremendous and subtle

forces which have been set at work in the physical world, this which

justifies the long lapse of ages filled with wonders unobserved, and

teeming with ever new life; this above all which justifies these latter

ages in which all physical marvels have been outdone by the tragical

history of man upon earth. Remove the Incarnation and all remains dark,

purposeless, unintelligible: grant the Incarnation, believe that in

Jesus Christ the Supreme manifested Himself personally, and light is

shed upon all that has been and is.

Light is shed on the individual life. Are you living as if you were the

product of blind mechanical laws, and as if there were no object worthy

of your life and of all the force you can throw into your life? Consider

the Incarnation of the Creator, and ask yourself if sufficient object is

not given to you in His call that you be conformed to His image and

become the intelligent executor of His purposes? Is life not worth

having even on these terms? The man that can still sit down and bemoan

himself as if there were no meaning in existence, or lounge languidly

through life as if there were no zest or urgency in living, or try to

satisfy himself with fleshly comforts, has surely need to turn to the

opening page of Revelation and learn that God saw sufficient object in

the life of man, enough to compensate for millions of ages of

preparation. If it is possible that you should share in the character

and destiny of Christ, can a healthy ambition crave anything more or

higher? If the future is to be as momentous in results as the past has

certainly been filled with preparation, have you no caring to share in

these results? Believe that there is a purpose in things; that in

Christ, the revelation of God, you can see what that purpose is, and

that by wholly uniting yourself to Him and allowing yourself to be

penetrated by His Spirit you can participate with Him in the working out

of that purpose.

II.

_THE FALL._

GENESIS iii.

Profound as the teaching of this narrative is, its meaning does not lie

on the surface. Literal interpretation will reach a measure of its

significance, but plainly there is more here than appears in the letter.

When we read that the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the

field which the Lord God had made, and that he tempted the woman, we at

once perceive that it is not with the outer husk of the story we are to

concern ourselves, but with the kernel. The narrative throughout speaks

of nothing but the brute serpent; not a word is said of the devil, not

the slightest hint is given that the machinations of a fallen angel are

signified. The serpent is compared to the other beasts of the field,

showing that it is the brute serpent that is spoken of. The curse is

pronounced on the beast, not on a fallen spirit summoned for the purpose

before the Supreme; and not in terms which could apply to a fallen

spirit, but in terms that are applicable only to the serpent that

crawls. Yet every reader feels that this is not the whole mystery of the

fall of man: moral evil cannot be accounted for by referring it to a

brute source. No one, I suppose, believes that the whole tribe of

serpents crawl as a punishment of an offence committed by one of their

number, or that the whole iniquity and sorrow of the world are due to an

actual serpent. Plainly this is merely a pictorial representation

intended to convey some general impressions and ideas. Vitally important

truths underlie the narrative and are bodied forth by it; but the way to

reach these truths is not to adhere too rigidly to the literal meaning,

but to catch the general impression which it seems fitted to make.

No doubt this opens the door to a great variety of interpretation. No

two men will attach to it precisely the same meaning. One says, the

serpent is a symbol for Satan, but Adam and Eve are historical persons.

Another says, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a figure,

but the driving out from the garden is real. Another maintains that the

whole is a picture, putting in a visible, intelligible shape certain

vitally important truths regarding the history of our race. So that

every man is left very much to his own judgment, to read the narrative

candidly and in such light from other sources as he has, and let it make

its own impression upon him. This would be a sad result if the object of

the Bible were to bring us all to a rigid uniformity of belief in all

matters; but the object of the Bible is not that, but the far higher

object of furnishing all varieties of men with sufficient light to lead

them to God. And this being so, variety of interpretation in details is

not to be lamented. The very purpose of such representations as are here

given is to suit all stages of mental and spiritual advancement. Let the

child read it and he will learn what will live in his mind and influence

him all his life. Let the devout man who has ranged through all science

and history and philosophy come back to this narrative, and he feels

that he has here the essential truth regarding the beginnings of man's

tragical career upon earth.

We should, in my opinion, be labouring under a misapprehension if we

supposed that none even of the earliest readers of this account saw the

deeper meaning of it. When men who felt the misery of sin and lifted up

their hearts to God for deliverance, read the words addressed to the

serpent, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy

seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his

heel"--is it reasonable to suppose that such men would take these words

in their literal sense, and satisfy themselves with the assurance that

serpents, though dangerous, would be kept under, and would find in the

words no assurance of that very thing they themselves were all their

lifetime striving after, deliverance from the evil thing which lay at

the root of all sin? No doubt some would accept the story in its literal

meaning,--shallow and careless men whose own spiritual experience never

urged them to see any spiritual significance in the words would do so;

but even those who saw least in the story, and put a very shallow

interpretation on its details, could scarcely fail to see its main

teaching.

The reader of this perennially fresh story is first of all struck with

the account given of man's primitive condition. Coming to this narrative

with our minds coloured by the fancies of poets and philosophers, we are

almost startled by the check which the plain and sober statements of

this account give to an unpruned fancy. We have to read the words again

and again to make sure we have not omitted something which gives support

to those glowing descriptions of man's primitive condition. Certainly he

is described as innocent and at peace with God, and in this respect no

terms can exaggerate his happiness. But in other respects the language

of the Bible is surprisingly moderate. Man is represented as living on

fruit, and as going unclothed, and, so far as appears, without any

artificial shelter either from the heat of the sun or the cold of night.

None of the arts were as yet known. All working of metals had yet to be

discovered, so that his tools must have been of the rudest possible

description; and the arts, such as music, which adorn life and make

leisure enjoyable, were also still in the future.

But the most significant elements in man's primitive condition are

represented by the two trees of the garden; by trees, because with

plants alone he had to do. In the centre of the garden stood the tree of

life, the fruit of which bestowed immortality. Man was therefore

naturally mortal, though apparently with a capacity for immortality. How

this capacity would have actually carried man on to immortality had he

not sinned, it is vain to conjecture. The mystical nature of the tree of

life is fully recognised in the New Testament, by our Lord, when He

says: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life,

which is in the midst of the Paradise of God;" and by John, when he

describes the new Jerusalem: "In the midst of the street of it, and on

either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve

manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of

the tree were for the healing of the nations." Both these

representations are intended to convey, in a striking and pictorial

form, the promise of life everlasting.

And as of the tree of life which stands in the Paradise of the future it

is said "Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have

right to the tree of life;" so in Eden man's immortality was suspended

on the condition of obedience. And the trial of man's obedience is

imaged in the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

From the child-like innocence in which man originally was, he was to

pass forward into the condition of moral manhood, which consists not in

mere innocence, but in innocence maintained in presence of temptation.

The savage is innocent of many of the crimes of civilized men because he

has no opportunity to commit them; the child is innocent of some of the

vices of manhood because he has no temptation to them. But this

innocence is the result of circumstance, not of character; and if savage

or child is to become a mature moral being he must be tried by altered

circumstances, by temptation and opportunity. To carry man forward to

this higher stage trial is necessary, and this trial is indicated by the

tree of knowledge. The fruit of this tree is prohibited, to indicate

that it is only in presence of what is forbidden man can be morally

tested, and that it is only by self-command and obedience to law, and

not by the mere following of instincts, that man can attain to moral

maturity. The prohibition is that which makes him recognise a

distinction between good and evil. He is put in a position in which good

is not the only thing he can do; an alternative is present to his mind,

and the choice of good in preference to evil is made possible to him. In

presence of this tree child-like innocence was no longer possible. The

self-determination of manhood was constantly required. Conscience,

hitherto latent, was now evoked and took its place as man's supreme

faculty.

It is in vain to think of exhausting this narrative. We can, at the

most, only remark upon some of the most salient points.

(1) Temptation comes like a serpent; like the most subtile beast of the

field; like that one creature which is said to exert a fascinating

influence on its victims, fastening them with its glittering eye,

stealing upon them by its noiseless, low and unseen approach, perplexing

them by its wide circling folds, seeming to come upon them from all

sides at once, and armed not like the other beasts with one weapon of

offence--horn, or hoof, or teeth--but capable of crushing its victim

with every part of its sinuous length. It lies apparently dead for

months together, but when roused it can, as the naturalist tells us,

"outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle

the athlete, and crush the tiger." How naturally in describing

temptation do we borrow language from the aspect and movements of this

creature. It does not need to hunt down its victims by long continued

pursuit, its victims come and put themselves within its reach. Unseen,

temptation lies by our path, and before we have time to think we are

fascinated and bewildered, its coils rapidly gather round us and its

stroke flashes poison through our blood. Against sin, when once it has

wreathed itself around us, we seem helpless to contend; the very powers

with which we could resist are benumbed or pinned useless to our

side--our foe seems all round us, and to extricate one part is but to

become entangled in another. As the serpent finds its way everywhere,

over every fence or barrier, into every corner and recess, so it is

impossible to keep temptation out of the life; it appears where least we

expect it and when we think ourselves secure.

(2) Temptation succeeds at first by exciting our curiosity. It is a

wise saying that "our great security against sin lies in being shocked

at it. Eve gazed and reflected when she should have fled." The serpent

created an interest, excited her curiosity about this forbidden fruit.

And as this excited curiosity lies near the beginning of sin in the

race, so does it in the individual. I suppose if you trace back the

mystery of iniquity in your own life and seek to track it to its source,

you will find it to have originated in this craving to taste evil. No

man originally meant to become the sinner he has become. He only

intended, like Eve, to taste. It was a voyage of discovery he meant to

make; he did not think to get nipped and frozen up and never more return

from the outer cold and darkness. He wished before finally giving

himself to virtue, to see the real value of the other alternative.

This dangerous craving has many elements in it. There is in it the

instinctive drawing towards what is mysterious. One veiled figure in an

assembly will attract more scrutiny than the most admired beauty. An

appearance in the heavens that no one can account for will nightly draw

more eyes than the most wonderful sunset. To lift veils, to penetrate

disguises, to unravel complicated plots, to solve mysteries, this is

always inviting to the human mind. The tale which used to thrill us in

childhood, of the one locked room, the one forbidden key, bears in it a

truth for men as well as for children. What is hidden must, we conclude,

have some interest for us--else why hide it from us? What is forbidden

must have some important bearing upon us. Else why forbid it? Things

which are indifferent to us are left in our way, obvious, and without

concealment. But as action has been taken regarding the things that are

forbidden, action in view of our relation to them, it is natural to us

to desire to know what these things are and how they affect us.

There is added to this in young persons, a sense of incompleteness. They

wish to be grown up. Few boys wish to be always boys. They long for the

signs of manhood, and seek to possess that knowledge of life and its

ways which they very much identify with manhood. But too commonly they

mistake the path to manhood. They feel as if they had a wider range of

liberty and were more thoroughly men when they transgress the limits

assigned by conscience. They feel as if there were a new and brighter

world outside that which is fenced round by strict morality, and they

tremble with excitement on its borders. It is a fatal delusion. Only by

choosing the good in presence of the evil are true manhood and real

maturity gained. True manliness consists mainly in self control, in a

patient waiting upon nature and God's law and when youth impatiently

breaks through the protecting fence of God's law, and seeks growth by

knowing evil, it misses that very advancement it seeks, and cheats

itself out of the manhood it apes.

(3) Through this craving for an enlarged experience unbelief in God's

goodness finds entrance. In the presence of forbidden pleasure we are

tempted to feel as if God were grudging us enjoyment. The very arguments

of the serpent occur to our mind. No harm will come of our indulging;

the prohibition is needless, unreasonable and unkind; it is not based on

any genuine desire for our welfare. This fence that shuts us out from

knowing good and evil is erected by a timorous asceticism, by a

ridiculous misconception of what truly enlarges human nature; it shuts

us into a poor narrow life. And thus suspicions of God's perfect wisdom

and goodness find entrance; we begin to think we know better than He

what is good for us, and can contrive a richer, happier life than He has

provided for us. Our loyalty to Him is loosened, and already we have

lost hold of His strength and are launched on the current that leads to

sin, misery, and shame. When we find ourselves saying Yes, where God has

said No; when we see desirable things where God has said there is death;

when we allow distrust of Him to rankle in our mind, when we chafe

against the restrictions under which we live and seek liberty by

breaking down the fence instead of by delighting in God, we are on the

highway to all evil.

(4) If we know our own history we cannot be surprised to read that one

taste of evil ruined our first parents. It is so always. The one taste

alters our attitude towards God and conscience and life. It is a

veritable Circe's cup. The actual experience of sin is like the one

taste of alcohol to a reclaimed drunkard, like the first taste of blood

to a young tiger, it calls out the latent devil and creates a new nature

within us. At one brush it wipes out all the peace, and joy, and

self-respect, and boldness of innocence, and numbers us among the

transgressors, among the shame-faced, and self-despising, and hopeless.

It leaves us possessed with unhappy thoughts which lead us away from

what is bright, and honourable, and good, and like the letting out of

water it seems to have tapped a spring of evil within us. It is but one

step, but it is like the step over a precipice or down the shaft of a

mine; it cannot be taken back, it commits to an altogether different

state of things.

(5) The first result of sin is shame. The form in which the knowledge

of good and evil comes to us is the knowing we are naked, the

consciousness that we are stripped of all that made us walk unabashed

before God and men. The promise of the serpent while broken in the

sense is fulfilled to the ear; the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened and

they knew that they were naked. Self-reflection begins, and the first

movement of conscience produces shame. Had they resisted temptation,

conscience would have been born but not in self-condemnation. Like

children they had hitherto been conscious only of what was external to

themselves, but now their consciousness of a power to choose good and

evil is awakened and its first exercise is accompanied with shame. They

feel that in themselves they are faulty, that they are not in

themselves complete; that though created by God, they are not fit for

His eye. The lower animals wear no clothes because they have no

knowledge of good and evil; children feel no need of covering because

as yet self-consciousness is latent, and their conduct is determined

for them; those who are re-made in the image of God and glorified as

Christ is, cannot be thought of as clothed, for in them there is no

sense of sin. But Adam's clothing himself and hiding himself were the

helpless attempts of a guilty conscience to evade the judgment of

truth.

(6) But when Adam found he was no longer fit for God's eye, God provided

a covering which might enable him again to live in His presence without

dismay. Man had exhausted his own ingenuity and resources, and exhausted

them without finding relief to his shame. If his shame was to be

effectually removed, God must do it. And the clothing in coats of skins

indicates the restoration of man, not indeed to pristine innocence, but

to peace with God. Adam felt that God did not wish to banish him

lastingly from His presence, nor to see him always a trembling and

confused penitent. The self-respect and progressiveness, the reverence

for law and order and God, which came in with clothes, and which we

associate with the civilised races, were accepted as tokens that God was

desirous to co-operate with man, to forward and further him in all good.

It is also to be remarked that the clothing which God provided was in

itself different from what man had thought of. Adam took leaves from an

inanimate, unfeeling tree; God deprived an animal of life, that the

shame of His creature might be relieved. This was the last thing Adam

would have thought of doing. To us life is cheap and death familiar, but

Adam recognised death as the punishment of sin. Death was to early man a

sign of God's anger. And he had to learn that sin could be covered not

by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he passed by and that would

grow again next year, but only by pain and blood. Sin cannot be atoned

for by any mechanical action nor without expenditure of feeling.

Suffering must ever follow wrong-doing. From the first sin to the last,

the track of the sinner is marked with blood. Once we have sinned we

cannot regain permanent peace of conscience save through pain, and this

not only pain of our own. The first hint of this was given as soon as

conscience was aroused in man. It was made apparent that sin was a real

and deep evil, and that by no easy and cheap process could the sinner be

restored. The same lesson has been written on millions of consciences

since. Men have found that their sin reaches beyond their own life and

person, that it inflicts injury and involves disturbance and distress,

that it changes utterly our relation to life and to God, and that we

cannot rise above its consequences save by the intervention of God

Himself, by an intervention which tells us of the sorrow He suffers on

our account.

For the chief point is that it is God who relieves man's shame. Until we

are certified that God desires our peace of mind we cannot be at peace.

The cross of Christ is the permanent witness to this desire on God's

part. No one can read what Christ has done for us without feeling sure

that for himself there is a way back to God from all sin--that it is

God's desire that his sin should be covered, his iniquity forgiven. Too

often that which seems of prime importance to God seems of very slight

importance to us. To have our life founded solidly in harmony with the

Supreme, seems often to excite no desire within us. It is about sin we

find man first dealing with God, and until you have satisfied God and

yourself regarding this prime and fundamental matter of your own

transgression and wrong-doing you look in vain for any deep and lasting

growth and satisfaction. Have you no reason to be ashamed before God?

Have you loved Him in any proportion to His worthiness to be loved? Have

you cordially and habitually fallen in with His will? Have you zealously

done His work in the world? Have you fallen short of no good He intended

you should do and gave you opportunity to do? Is there no reason for

shame on your part before God? Has His desire to cover sin no

application to you? Can you not understand His meaning when He comes to

you with offers of pardon and acts of oblivion? Surely the candid mind,

the clear-judging conscience can be at no loss to explain God's

solicitous concern for the sinner; and must humbly own that even that

unfathomable Divine emotion which is exhibited in the cross of Christ,

is no exaggerated and theatrical demonstration, but the actual carrying

through of what was really needed for the restoration of the sinner. Do

not live as if the cross of Christ had never been, or as if you had

never sinned and had no connection with it. Strive to learn what it

means; strive to deal fairly with it and fairly with your own

transgressions and with your present actual relation to God and His

will.

III.

_CAIN AND ABEL._

GENESIS iv.

It is not the purpose of this narrator to write the history of the

world. It is not his purpose to write even the history of mankind. His

object is to write the history of redemption. Starting from the broad

fact of man's alienation from God, he means to trace that element in

human history which results in the perfect re-union of God and man. The

key-note has been struck in the promise already given that the seed of

the woman should prevail over the seed of the serpent, that the effects

of man's voluntary dissociation from God should be removed. It is the

fulfilment of this promise which is traced by this writer. He steadily

pursues that one line of history which runs directly towards this

fulfilment; turning aside now and again to pursue, to a greater or less

distance, diverging lines, but always returning to the grand highway on

which the promise travels. His method is first to dispose of collateral

matter and then to proceed with his main theme. As here, he first

disposes of the line of Cain and then returns to Seth through whom the

line of promise is maintained.

The first thing we have to do with outside the garden is death--the

curse of sin speedily manifests itself in its most terrible form. But

the sinner executes it himself. The first death is a murder. As if to

show that all death is a wrong inflicted on us and proceeds not from God

but from sin, it is inflicted by sin and by the hand of man. Man becomes

his own executioner, and takes part with Satan, the murderer from the

beginning. But certainly the first feeling produced by these events must

have been one of bitter disappointment, as if the promise were to be

lost in the curse.

The story of Cain and Abel was to all appearance told in order to point

out that from the very first men have been divided into two great

classes, viewed in connection with God's promise and presence in the

world. Always there have been those who believed in God's love and

waited for it, and those who believed more in their own force and

energy. Always there have been the humble and self-diffident who hoped

in God, and the proud and self-reliant who felt themselves equal to all

the occasions of life. And this story of Cain and Abel and the

succeeding generations does not conceal the fact, that for the purposes

of this world there has been visible an element of weakness in the godly

line, and that it is to the self-reliant and God-defying energy of the

descendants of Cain that we owe much of the external civilisation of the

world. While the descendants of Seth pass away and leave only this

record, that they "walked with God," there are found among Cain's

descendants, builders of cities, inventors of tools and weapons, music

and poetry and the beginnings of culture.

These two opposed lines are in the first instance represented by Cain

and Abel. With each child that comes into the world some fresh hope is

brought; and the name of Cain points to the expectation of his parents

that in him a fresh start would be made. Alas! as the boy grew they saw

how vain such expectation was and how truly their nature had passed into

his, and how no imparted experience of theirs, taught him from without,

could countervail the strong propensities to evil which impelled him

from within. They experienced that bitterest punishment which parents

undergo, when they see their own defects and infirmities and evil

passions repeated in their children and leading them astray as they once

led themselves; when in those who are to perpetuate their name and

remembrance on earth they see evidence that their faults also will be

perpetuated; when in those whom they chiefly love they have a mirror

ceaselessly held up to them forcing them to remember the follies and

sins of their own youth. Certainly in the proud, self-willed, sullen

Cain no redemption was to be found.

Both sons own the necessity of labour. Man is no longer in the primitive

condition, in which he had only to stretch out his hand when hungry, and

satisfy his appetite. There are still some regions of the earth in which

the trees shower fruit, nutritious and easily preserved, on men who shun

labour. Were this the case throughout the world, the whole of life would

be changed. Had we been created self-sufficing or in such conditions as

involved no necessity of toil, nothing would be as it now is. It is the

need of labour that implies occasional starvation and frequent poverty,

and gives occasion to charity. It is the need of labour which involves

commerce and thereby sows the seed of greed, worldliness, ambition,

drudgery. The ultimate physical wants of men, food and clothes, are the

motive of the greater part of all human activity. Trace to their causes

the various industries of men, the wars, the great social movements,

all that constitutes history, and you find that the bulk of all that is

done upon earth is done because men must have food and wish to have it

as good and with as little labour as possible. The broad facts of human

life are in many respects humiliating.

The disposition of men is consequently shown in the occupations they

choose and the idea of life they carry into them. Some, like Abel,

choose peaceful callings that draw out feeling and sympathy; others

prefer pursuits which are stirring and active. Cain chose the tillage of

the ground, partly no doubt from the necessity of the case, but probably

also with the feeling that he could subdue nature to his own purposes

notwithstanding the curse that lay upon it. Do we not all sometimes feel

a desire to take the world as it is, curse and all, and make the most of

it; to face its disease with human skill, its disturbing and destructive

elements with human forethought and courage, its sterility and

stubbornness with human energy and patience? What is stimulating men

still to all discovery and invention, to forewarn seamen of coming

storms, to break a precarious passage for commerce through eternal ice

or through malarious swamps, to make life at all points easier and more

secure? Is it not the energy which opposition excites? We know that it

will be hard work; we expect to have thorns and thistles everywhere, but

let us see whether this may not after all be a thoroughly happy world,

whether we cannot cultivate the curse altogether out of it. This is

indeed the very work God has given man to do--to subdue the earth and

make the desert blossom as the rose. God is with us in this work, and he

who believes in God's purpose and strives to reclaim nature and compel

it to some better products than it naturally yields, is doing God's

work in the world. The misery is that so many do it in the spirit of

Cain, in a spirit of self-confident or sullen alienation from God,

willing to endure all hardship but unable to lay themselves at God's

feet with every capacity for work and every field He has given them to

till for Him and in a spirit of humble love to co-operate with Him. To

this spirit of godless energy, of merely selfish or worldly ambition and

enterprise, the world owes not only much of its poverty and many of its

greatest disasters, but also the greater part of its present advantages

in external civilisation. But from this spirit can never arise the

meekness, the patience, the tenderness, the charity which sweeten the

life of society and are more to be desired than gold; from this spirit

and all its achievements the natural outcome is the proud, vindictive,

self-glorifying war-song of a Lamech.

The incompatibility of the two lines and the persecuting spirit of the

godless are set forth by the after history of Cain and Abel. The one

line is represented in Cain, who with all his energy and indomitable

courage, is depicted as of a dark, morose, suspicious, jealous, violent

temper; a man born under the shadow of the fall. Abel is described in

contrast as guileless and sunny, free from harshness and resentment.

What was in Cain was shown by what came out of him, murder. The reason

of the rejection of his offering was his own evil condition of heart.

"If thou doest well, shalt not thou also be accepted;" implying that he

was not accepted because he was not doing well. His offering was a mere

form; he complied with the fashion of the family; but in spirit he was

alienated from God, cherishing thoughts which the rejection of his

offering brings to a head. He may have seen that the younger son won

more of the parents' affection, that his company was more welcome.

Jealousy had been produced, that deep jealousy of the humble and godly

which proud men of the world cannot help betraying and which has so very

often in the world's history produced persecution.

This cannot be considered too weak a motive to carry so enormous a

crime. Even in a highly civilised age we find an English statesman

saying: "Pique is one of the strongest motives in the human mind. Fear

is strong but transient. Interest is more lasting, perhaps, and steady,

but weaker; I will ever back pique against them both. It is the spur the

devil rides the noblest tempers with, and will do more work with them in

a week, than with other poor jades in a twelve-month." And the age of

Cain and Abel was an age in which impulse and action lay close together,

and in which jealousy is notoriously strong. To this motive John

ascribes the act: "Wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were

evil, and his brother's righteous."

We have now learned better how to disguise our feelings; and we are

compelled to control them better; but now and again we meet with a

deep-seated hatred of goodness which might give rise to almost any

crime. Few of us can say that for our own part we have extinguished

within us the spirit that disparages and depreciates and fixes the

charge of hypocrisy or refers good actions to interested motives,

searches out failings and watches for haltings and is glad when a blot

is found. Few are filled with unalloyed grief when the man who has borne

an extraordinary reputation turns out to be just like the rest of us.

Many of us have a true delight in goodness and humble ourselves before

it when we see it, and yet we know also what it is to be exasperated by

the presence of superiority. I have seen a schoolboy interrupt his

brother's prayers, and gird at him for his piety, and strive to draw him

into sin, and do the devil's work with zest and diligence. And where

goodness is manifestly in the minority how constantly does it excite

hatred that pours itself out in sneers and ridicule and ignorant

calumny.

But this narrative significantly refers this early quarrel to religion.

There is no bitterness to compare with that which worldly men who

profess religion, feel towards those who cultivate a spiritual religion.

They can never really grasp the distinction between external worship and

real godliness. They make their offerings, they attend to the rites of

the religion to which they belong and are beside themselves with

indignation if any person or event suggests to them that they might have

saved themselves all their trouble, because these do not at all

constitute religion. They uphold the Church, they admire and praise her

beautiful services, they use strong but meaningless language about

infidelity, and yet when brought in contact with spirituality and

assured that regeneration and penitent humility are required above all

else in the kingdom of God, they betray an utter inability to comprehend

the very rudiments of the Christian religion. Abel has always to go to

the wall because he is always the weaker party, always in the minority.

Spiritual religion, from the very nature of the case, must always be in

the minority; and must be prepared to suffer loss, calumny, and

violence, at the hands of the worldly religious, who have contrived for

themselves a worship that calls for no humiliation before God and no

complete surrender of heart and will to Him. Cain is the type of the

ignorant religious, of the unregenerate man who thinks he merits God's

favour as much as any one else; and Cain's conduct is the type of the

treatment which the Christ-like and intelligent godly are always likely

to receive at such hands.

We never know where we may be led by jealousy and malice. One of the

striking features of this incident is the rapidity with which small sins

generate great ones. When Cain went in the joy of harvest and offered

his first fruits no thought could be further from his mind than murder.

It may have come as suddenly on himself as on the unsuspecting Abel, but

the germ was in him. Great sins are not so sudden as they seem.

Familiarity with evil thought ripens us for evil action; and a moment of

passion, an hour's loss of self-control, a tempting occasion, may hurry

us into irremediable evil. And even though this does not happen,

envious, uncharitable, and malicious thoughts make our offerings as

distasteful as Cain's. He that loveth not his brother knoweth not God.

First be reconciled to thy brother, says our Lord, and then come and

offer thy gift.

Other truths are incidentally taught in this narrative.

(1) The acceptance of the offering depends on the acceptance of the

offerer. God had respect to Abel and his offering--the man first and

then the offering. God looks through the offering to the state of soul

from which it proceeds; or even, as the words would indicate, sees the

soul first and judges and treats the offering according to the inward

disposition. God does not judge of what you are by what you say to Him

or do for Him, but He judges what you say to Him and do for Him by what

you are. "By _faith_" says a New Testament writer, "Abel offered a more

acceptable sacrifice than Cain." He had the faith which enabled him to

believe that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently

seek Him. His attitude towards God was sound; his life was a diligent

seeking to please God; and from all such persons God gladly receives

acknowledgment. When the offering is the true expression of the soul's

gratitude, love, devotedness, then it is acceptable. When it is a merely

external offering, that rather veils than expresses the real feeling;

when it is not vivified and rendered significant by any spiritual act on

the part of the worshipper, it is plainly of no effect.

What is true of all sacrifices is true of the sacrifice of Christ. It

remains invalid and of none effect to those who do not through it yield

themselves to God. Sacrifices were intended to be the embodiment and

expression of a state of feeling towards God, of a submission or

offering of men's selves to God; of a return to that right relation

which ought ever to subsist between creature and Creator. Christ's

sacrifice is valid for us when it is that outward thing which best

expresses our feeling towards God and through which we offer or yield

ourselves to God. His sacrifice is the open door through which God

freely admits all who aim at a consecration and obedience like to His.

It is valid for us when through it we sacrifice ourselves. Whatever His

sacrifice expresses we desire to take and use as the only satisfactory

expression of our own aims and desires. Did Christ perfectly submit to

and fulfil the will of God? So would we. Did He acknowledge the infinite

evil of sin and patiently bear its penalties, still loving the Holy and

Righteous God? So would we endure all chastening, and still resist unto

blood striving against sin.

(2) Again, we here find a very sharp and clear statement of the welcome

truth, that continuance in sin is never a necessity, that God points the

way out of sin, and that from the first He has been on man's side and

has done all that could be done to keep men from sinning. Observe how He

expostulates with Cain. Take note of the plain, explicit fairness of the

words in which He expostulates with him--instance, as it is, of how

absolutely in the right God always is, and how abundantly He can justify

all His dealings with us. God says as it were to Cain; Come now: and let

us reason together. All God wants of any man is to be reasonable; to

look at the facts of the case. "If thou doest well, shalt thou not (as

well as Abel) be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the

door," that is, if thou doest not well, the sin is not Abel's nor any

one's but thine own, and therefore anger at another is not the proper

remedy, but anger at yourself, and repentance.

No language could more forcibly exhibit the unreasonableness of not

meeting God with penitent and humble acknowledgment. God has fully met

our case, and has satisfied all its demands, has set Himself to serve us

and laid Himself out to save us pain and misery, and has so entirely

succeeded in making salvation and blessedness possible to us, that if we

continue in sin we must trample not only upon God's love and our own

reason, but on the very means of salvation. State your case at the

worst, bring forward every reason why your countenance should be fallen

as Cain's and why your face should lower with the gloom of eternal

despair--say that you have as clear evidence as Cain had that your

offerings are displeasing to God, and that while others are accepted you

receive no token from Him,--in answer to all your arguments, these

words addressed to Cain rise up. If not accepted already you have the

means of being so. If you do well to be hardened in sin it is not

because it is necessary, nor because God desires it. If you are to

continue in sin you must put aside His hand. It can only be _sin_ which

causes you either to despair of salvation or keeps you any way separate

from God--there is no other thing worse than sin, and for sin there is

an offering provided. You have not fallen into some lower grade of

beings than that which is designated sinners, and it is sinners that God

in His mercy hems in with this inevitable dilemma He presented to Cain.

If, therefore, you continue at war with God it is not because you must

not do otherwise: if you go forward to any new thought, plan, or action

unpardoned; if acceptance of God's forgiveness and entrance into a state

of reconciliation with Him be not your first action, then you must

thrust aside His counsel, backed though it is with every utterance of

your own reason. Some of us may be this day or this week in as critical

a position as Cain, having as truly as he the making or marring of our

future in our hands, seeing clearly the right course, and all that is

good, humble, penitent and wise in us urging us to follow that course,

but our pride and self-will holding us back. How often do men thus

barter a future of blessing for some mean gratification of temper or

lust or pride; how often by a reckless, almost listless and indifferent

continuance in sin do they let themselves be carried on to a future as

woful as Cain's; how often when God expostulates with them do they make

no answer and take no action, as if there were nothing to be gained by

listening to God--as if it were a matter of no importance what future I

go to--as if in the whole eternity that lies in reserve there were

nothing worth making a choice about--nothing about which it is worth my

while to rouse the whole energy of which I am capable, and to make, by

God's grace, the determination which shall alter my whole future--to

choose for myself and assert myself.

(3) The writer to the Hebrews makes a very striking use of this event.

He borrows from it language in which to magnify the efficacy of Christ's

sacrifice, and affirms that the blood of Christ speaketh better things,

or, as it must rather be rendered, crieth louder than the blood of Abel.

Abel's blood, we see, cried for vengeance, for evil things for Cain,

called God to make inquisition for blood, and so pled as to secure the

banishment of the murderer. The Arabs have a belief that over the grave

of a murdered man his spirit hovers in the form of a bird that cries

"Give me drink, give me drink," and only ceases when the blood of the

murderer is shed. Cain's conscience told him the same thing; there was

no criminal law threatening death to the murderer, but he felt that men

would kill him if they could. He heard the blood of Abel crying from the

earth. The blood of Christ also cries to God, but cries not for

vengeance but for pardon. And as surely as the one cry was heard and

answered in very substantial results; so surely does the other cry call

down from heaven its proper and beneficent effects. It is as if the

earth would not receive and cover the blood of Christ, but ever exposes

it before God and cries to Him to be faithful and just to forgive us our

sins. This blood cries louder than the other. If God could not overlook

the blood of one of His servants, but adjudged to it its proper

consequences, neither is it possible that He should overlook the blood

of His Son and not give to it its proper result.

If then you feel in your conscience that you are as guilty as Cain, and

if sins clamour around you which are as dangerous as his, and which cry

out for judgment upon you, accept the assurance that the blood of Christ

has a yet louder cry for mercy. If you had been Abel's murderer, would

you have been justly afraid of God's anger? Be as sure of God's mercy

now. If you had stood over his lifeless body and seen the earth refusing

to cover his blood, if you felt the stain of it crimson on your

conscience and if by night you started from your sleep striving vainly

to wash it from your hands, if by every token you felt yourself exposed

to a just punishment, your fear would be just and reasonable were

nothing else revealed to you. But there is another blood equally

indelible, equally clamorous. In it you have in reality what is

elsewhere pretended in fable, that the blood of the murdered man will

not wash out, but through every cleansing oozes up again a dark stain on

the oaken floor. This blood can really not be washed out, it cannot be

covered up and hid from God's eye, its voice cannot be stifled, and its

cry is all for mercy.

With how different a meaning then comes now to us this question of

God's: "Where is thy brother?" Our Brother also is slain. Him Whom God

sent among us to reverse the curse, to lighten the burden of this life,

to be the loving member of the family on Whom each leans for help and

looks to for counsel and comfort--Him Who was by His goodness to be as

the dayspring from on high in our darkness, we found _too_ good for our

endurance and dealt with as Cain dealt with his more righteous brother.

But He Whom we slew God has raised again to give repentance and

remission of sins, and assures us that His blood cleanseth from all sin.

To every one therefore He repeats this question, "Where is thy brother?"

He repeats it to every one who is living with a conscience stained with

sin; to every one that knows remorse and walks with the hanging head of

shame; to every one whose whole life is saddened by the consciousness

that all is not settled between God and himself; to every one who is

sinning recklessly as if Christ's blood had never been shed for sin; and

to every one who, though seeking to be at peace with God, is troubled

and downcast--to all God says, "Where is thy brother?" tenderly

reminding us of the absolute satisfaction for sin that has been made,

and of the hope towards God we have through the blood of His Son.

IV.

_CAIN'S LINE, AND ENOCH._

GENESIS iv. 12-24.

"My punishment is greater than I can bear," so felt Cain as soon as his

passion had spent itself and the consequences of his wickedness became

apparent--and so feels every one who finds he has now to live in the

presence of the irrevocable deed he has done. It seems too heavy a

penalty to endure for the one hour of passion; and yet as little as Cain

could rouse the dead Abel so little can we revive the past we have

destroyed. Thoughtlessness has set in motion agencies we are powerless

to control; the whole world is changed to us. One can fancy Cain turning

to see if his victim gave no sign of life, striving to reanimate the

dead body, calling the familiar name, but only to see with growing

dismay that the one blow had finished all with which that name was

associated, and that he had made himself a new world. So are we drawn

back and back in thought to that which has for ever changed life to us,

striving to see if there is no possibility of altering the past, but

only to find we might quite as well try to raise the dead. No voice

responds to our cries of grief and dismay and too late repentance. All

life now seems but a reaping of the consequences of the past. We have

put ourselves in every respect at a disadvantage. The earth seems

cursed so that we are hampered in our employments and cannot make as

much of them as we would had we been innocent. We have got out of right

relations to our fellow-men and cannot feel the same to them as we ought

to feel; and the face of God is hid from us, so that now and again as

time after time our hopes are blighted, our life darkened and disturbed

by the obvious results of our own past deeds, we are tempted to cry out

with Cain: "My punishment is greater than I can bear."

Yet Cain's punishment was less than he expected. He was not put to death

as he would have been at any later period of the world's history, but

was banished. And even this punishment was lightened by his having a

token from God, that he would not be put to death by any zealous avenger

of Abel. He would experience the hardships of a man entering unexplored

territory, but to an enterprising spirit this would not be without its

charms. As the fresh beauties of the world's youth were disclosed to him

and by their bright and peaceful friendliness allayed the bitterness of

his spirit, and as the mysteries and dangers of the new regions excited

him and called his thoughts from the past, some of the old delight in

life may have been recovered by him. Probably in many a lonely hour the

recollection of his crime would return and with it all the horrors of a

remorse which would drive rest and peace from his soul, and render him

the most wretched of men. But busied as he was with his new enterprises,

there is little doubt that he would find it, as it is still found, not

impossible to banish such dreary thoughts and live in the measure of

contentment which many enjoy who are as far from God as Cain.

It is not difficult to detect the spirit he carried with him, and the

tone he gave to his line of the race. The facts recorded are few but

significant. He begat a son, he built a city; and he gave to both the

name Enoch, that is "initiation," or "beginning," as if he were saying

in his heart, "What so great harm after all in cutting short one line in

Abel? I can begin another and find a new starting point for the race. I

am driven forth cursed as a vagabond, but a vagabond I will not be; I

will make for myself a settled abode, and I will fence it round with

knife-blade thorns so that no man will be able to assault me."

In this settling of Cain, however, we see not any symptom of his ceasing

to be a vagabond, but the surest evidence that now he was content to be

a fugitive from God and had cut himself off from hope. His heart had

found rest and had found it apart from God. _Here_, in this city he

would make a fresh beginning for himself and for men. Here he abandoned

all clinging memories of former things, of his old home and of the God

there worshipped. He had wisdom enough not to call his city by his own

name, and so invite men to consider his former career or trace back

anything to his old life. He cut it all off from him; his crime, his God

also, all that was in it was to be no more to him and his comrades. He

would make a clean start, and that men might be led to expect a great

future he called his city, Enoch, a Beginning.

But it is one thing to forgive ourselves, another thing to have God's

forgiveness. It is one thing to reconcile ourselves to the curse that

runs through our life, another thing to be reconciled to God and so

defeat the curse. It is sometimes, though by no means always, possible

to escape some of the consequences of sin: we can change our front so as

to lessen the breadth of life that is exposed to them, or we can

accustom and harden ourselves to a very second-rate kind of life. We can

teach ourselves to live without much love in our homes or in our

connections with those outside; we can learn to be satisfied if we can

pay our way and make the time pass and be outwardly like other people;

we can build a little city, and be content to be on no very friendly

terms with any but the select few inside the trench, and actually be

quite satisfied if we can _defend ourselves against_ the rest of men; we

can forget the one commandment, that we should love one another. We can

all find much in the world to comfort, to lull, to soothe sorrowful but

wholesome remembrances; much to aid us in an easy treatment of the

curse; much to shed superficial brightness on a life darkened and

debased by sin, much to hush up the sad echoes that mutter from the dark

mountains of vanity we have left behind us, much that assures us we have

nothing to do but forget our old sins and busily occupy ourselves with

new duties. But no David will say, nor will any man of true spiritual

discernment say, "Blessed is the man whose transgression is

_forgotten_;" but only, "Blessed is the man whose transgression is

forgiven." By all means make a fresh start, a new beginning, but let it

be in your own broken heart, in a spirit humble and contrite, frankly

acknowledging your guilt and finding rest and settlement for your soul

in reconciliation with God.

It is in the family of Lamech the characteristics of Cain's line are

most distinctly seen, and the significance of their tendencies becomes

apparent. As Cain had set himself to cultivate the curse out of the

world, so have his children derived from him the self-reliant hardiness

and hardihood which are resolute to make of this world as bright and

happy a home as may be. They make it their task to subdue the world and

compel it to yield them a life in which they can delight. They are so

far successful that in a few generations they have formed a home in

which all the essentials of civilized life are found--the arts are

cultivated and female society is appreciated.

Of his three sons, Jabal--or "Increase"--was "the father of such as

dwell in tents and of such as have cattle." He had originality enough to

step beyond all traditional habits and to invent a new mode of life.

Hitherto men had been tied to one spot by their fixed habitations, or

found shelter when overtaken by storm in caves or trees. To Jabal the

idea first occurs, I can carry my house about with me and regulate its

movements and not it mine. I need not return every night this long weary

way from the pastures, but may go wherever grass is green and streams

run cool. He and his comrades would thus become aware of the vast

resources of other lands, and would unconsciously lay the foundations

both of commerce and of wars of conquest. For both in ancient and more

modern times the most formidable armies have been those vast moving

shepherd races bred outside the borders of civilization and flooding as

with an irresistible tide the territories of more settled and less hardy

tribes.

Jubal again was, as his name denotes, the reputed father of all such as

handle the harp and the organ, stringed and wind instruments. The stops

of the reed or flute and the divisions of the string being once

discovered, all else necessarily followed. The twanging of a bow-string

in a musical ear was enough to give the suggestion to an observant mind;

the varying notes of the birds; the winds expressing at one time

unbridled fury and at another a breathing benediction, could not fail to

move and stir the susceptible spirit. The spontaneous though untuned

singing of children, that follows no mere melody made by another to

express _his_ joy, but is the instinctive expression of their own joy,

could not but give however meagrely the first rudiments of music. But

here was the man who first made a piece of wood help him; who out of the

commonest material of the physical world found for himself a means of

expressing the most impalpable moods of his spirit. Once the idea was

caught that matter inanimate as well as animate was man's servant and

could do his finest work for him, Jabal and his brother Jubal would make

rapid work between them. If the rude matter of the world could _sing_

for them, what might it not do for them? They would see that there was a

precision in machine-work which man's hand could not rival--a regularity

which no nervous throb could throw out and no feeling interrupt, and yet

at the same time when they found how these rude instruments responded to

every finest shade of feeling, and how all external nature seemed able

to express what was in man, must it not have been the birth of poetry as

well as of music? Jubal in short originates what we now compendiously

describe as the Fine Arts.

The third brother again may be taken as the originator of the Useful

Arts--though not exclusively--for being the instructor of every

artificer in brass and iron, having something of his brother's genius

for invention and more than his brother's handiness and practical

faculty for embodying his ideas in material forms, he must have promoted

all arts which require tools for their culture.

Thus among these three brothers we find distributed the various kinds of

genius and faculty which ever since have enriched the world. Here in

germ was really all that the world can do. The great lines in which

individual and social activity have since run were then laid down.

This notable family circle was completed by Naamah, the sister of

Tubal-Cain. The strength of female influence began to be felt

contemporaneously with the cultivation of the arts. Very early in the

world's history it was perceived that although debarred from the rougher

activities of life, women have an empire of their own. Men have the

making of civilisation, but women have the making of men. It is they who

form the character of the individual and give its tone to the society in

which they live. It is natural to men to consider the feelings and

tastes of women and to adapt their manners and conversation to them; and

it is for women to exercise worthily the sway they thus possess.

Practically and to a large extent women settle what subjects shall be

spoken of, and in what tone, trifling or serious; and each ought

therefore to recognise her own burden of responsibility, and see to it

that the deference paid to her shall not lower him who pays it, and that

the respect shown to her shall help him who shows it to respect what is

pure and true, charitable, just, and worthy. Let women show that it is

worldly trifling or slanderous malignity or empty tittle-tattle that

delights them, then they act the part of Eve and tempt to sin; let them

show that they prize most highly the mirth that is innocent and the

conversation that is elevating and helpful, and while they win

admiration for themselves they win it also for what is healthy and

purifying. No woman can renounce her influence; helpful or hurtful she

certainly is and must be in proportion as she is pleasing and

attractive.

Thus early did it appear how much of what is admirable and serviceable

clung to human nature apart from any recognition of God. The worldly

life was then what it is now, a life not wholly and obviously polluted

by excess, nor destroyed by violence, but displaying features which

appeal to our sensibilities and provoke applause; a life of manifold

beauty, of great power and resource, of abundant promise. There is

abundant material in the world for beautifying and elevating human life,

and this material may be used and is used by men who acknowledge neither

its origin in God nor the ends He would serve by it. The interests of

men may be advanced and the best work of the world done by three

distinct classes of men--by those who work as God's children in thorough

sympathy with His purposes; by those who do not know God but who are

humble in heart and would sympathise with God's purposes, did they

become acquainted with them; and by those who are proud and self-willed,

positively alienated from God, and who do the world's work for their own

ends. And so far as the external work goes the last-named class of men

may be most efficient. In mental endowment, social and political wisdom,

scientific aptitude, and all that tends to substantial utility, it is

quite possible they may excel the godly, for "not many noble, not many

wise are called." But we have nothing to measure permanent success by,

save conformity with God's will; and we have nothing by which we can

estimate how character will endure and how deeply it is rooted save

conformity with the nature of God. If a man believes in God, in one

Supreme Who rules and orders all things for just, holy and wise ends;

if he is in sympathy with the nature and will of God and finds his

truest satisfaction in forwarding the purposes of God, then you have a

guarantee for this man's continuance in good and for his ultimate

success.

The precarious nature of all godless civilisation and the real tendency

of self-sufficing pride are shown in Lamech.

It is in Lamech the tendency culminates and in him the issue of all this

brilliant but godless life is seen. Therefore though he is the father,

the historian speaks of him _after_ his children. In his one recorded

utterance his character leaps to view definite and complete--a character

of boundless force, self-reliance and godlessness. It is a little

uncertain whether he means that he has actually slain a man, or whether

he is putting a hypothetical case--the character of his speech is the

same whichever view is taken.

"I have slain," he says, or suppose I slay, "a man for wounding me,

A young man for hurting me:

But if Cain shall be avenged seven-fold--then Lamech seventy and

seven-fold."

That is, I take vengeance for myself with those good weapons my son has

forged for me. He has furnished me with a means of defence many times

more effectual than God's avenging of Cain. This is the climax of the

self-sufficiency to which the line of Cain has been tending. Cain

besought God's protection; he needed God for at least one purpose, this

one thread bound him yet to God. Lamech has no need of God for any

purpose; what his sons can make and his own right hand do is enough for

him. This is what comes of finding enough in the world without God--a

boastful, self-sufficient man, dangerous to society, the incarnation of

the pride of life. In the long run separation from God becomes isolation

from man and cruel self-sufficiency.

The line of Seth is followed from father to son, for the sake of showing

that the promise of a seed which should be victorious over evil was

being fulfilled. Apparently it is also meant that during this uneventful

period long ages elapsed. Nothing can be told of these old world people

but that they lived and died, leaving behind them heirs to transmit the

promise.

Only once is the monotony broken; but this in so striking a manner as to

rescue us from the idea that the historian is mechanically copying a

barren list of names. For in the seventh generation, contemporaneous

with the culmination of Cain's line in the family of Lamech, we come

upon the simple but anything but mechanical statement: "Enoch walked

with God and he was not; for God took him." The phrase is full of

meaning. Enoch walked with God because he was His friend and liked His

company, because he was going in the same direction as God, and had no

desire for anything but what lay in God's path. We walk with God when He

is in all our thoughts; not because we consciously think of Him at all

times, but because He is naturally suggested to us by all we think of;

as when any person or plan or idea has become important to us, no matter

what we think of, our thought is always found recurring to this

favourite object, so with the godly man everything has a connection with

God and must be ruled by that connection. When some change in his

circumstances is thought of, he has first of all to determine how the

proposed change will affect his connection with God--will his conscience

be equally clear, will he be able to live on the same friendly terms

with God and so forth. When he falls into sin he cannot rest till he

has resumed his place at God's side and walks again with Him. This is

the general nature of walking with God; it is a persistent endeavour to

hold all our life open to God's inspection and in conformity to His

will; a readiness to give up what we find does cause any

misunderstanding between us and God; a feeling of loneliness if we have

not some satisfaction in our efforts at holding fellowship with God, a

cold and desolate feeling when we are conscious of doing something that

displeases Him. This walking with God necessarily tells on the whole

life and character. As you instinctively avoid subjects which you know

will jar upon the feelings of your friend, as you naturally endeavour to

suit yourself to your company, so when the consciousness of God's

presence begins to have some weight with you, you are found

instinctively endeavouring to please Him, repressing the thoughts you

know He disapproves, and endeavouring to educate such dispositions as

reflect His own nature.

It is easy then to understand how we may practically walk with God--it

is to open to Him all our purposes and hopes, to seek His judgment on

our scheme of life and idea of happiness--it is to be on thoroughly

friendly terms with God. Why then do any not walk with God? Because they

seek what is wrong. You would walk with Him if the same idea of good

possessed you as possesses Him; if you were as ready as He to make no

deflexion from the straight path. Is not the very crown of life depicted

in the testimony given to Enoch, that "he pleased God"? Cannot you take

your way through life with a resolute and joyous spirit if you are

conscious that you please Him Who judges not by appearances, not by your

manners, but by your real state, by your actual character and the

eternal promise it bears? Things were not made easy to Enoch. In evil

days, with much to mislead him, with everything to oppose him, he had by

faith and diligent seeking, as the Epistle to the Hebrews says, to

cleave to the path on which God walked, often left in darkness, often

thrown off the track, often listening but unable to hear the footfall of

God or to hear his own name called upon, receiving no sign but still

diligently seeking the God he knew would lead him only to good. Be it

yours to give such diligence. Do not accept it as a thing fixed that you

are to be one of the graceless and ungodly, always feeble, always

vacillating, always without a character, always in doubt about your

state, and whether life might not be some other and better thing to you.

"Enoch was not, for God took him." Suddenly his place on earth was empty

and men drew their own conclusions. He had been known as the Friend of

God, where could he be but in God's dwelling-place? No sickness had

slowly worn him to the grave, no mark of decay had been visible in his

unabated vigour. His departure was a favour conferred and as such men

recognised it. "God has taken him," they said, and their thoughts

followed upward, and essayed to conceive the finished bliss of the man

whom God has taken away where blessing may be more fully conferred. His

age corresponded to our thirty-three, the age when the world has usually

got fair hold of a man, when a man has found his place in life and means

to live and see good days. The awkward, unfamiliar ways of youth that

keep him outside of much of life are past, and the satiety of age is not

yet reached; a man has begun to learn there is something he can do, and

has not yet learned how little. It is an age at which it is most

painful to relinquish life, but it was at this age God took him away,

and men knew it was in kindness. Others had begun to gather round him,

and depend upon him, hopes were resting in him, great things were

expected of him, life was strong in him. But let life dress itself in

its most attractive guise, let it shine on a man with its most

fascinating smile, let him be happy at home and the pleasing centre of a

pleasing circle of friends, let him be in that bright summer of life

when a man begins to fear he is too prosperous and happy, and yet there

is for man a better thing than all this, a thing so immeasurably and

independently superior to it that all this may be taken away and yet the

man be far more blessed. If God would confer His highest favours, He

must take a man out of all this and bring him closer to Himself.

V.

_THE FLOOD._

GENESIS v.-ix.

The first great event which indelibly impressed itself on the memory of

the primeval world was the Flood. There is every reason to believe that

this catastrophe was co-extensive with the human population of the

world. In every branch of the human family traditions of the event are

found. These traditions need not be recited, though some of them bear a

remarkable likeness to the Biblical story, while others are very

beautiful in their construction, and significant in individual points.

Local floods happening at various times in different countries could not

have given birth to the minute coincidences found in these traditions,

such as the sending out of the birds, and the number of persons saved.

But we have as yet no material for calculating how far human population

had spread from the original centre. It might apparently be argued that

it could not have spread to the sea-coast, or that at any rate no ships

had as yet been built large enough to weather a severe storm; for a

thoroughly nautical population could have had little difficulty in

surviving such a catastrophe as is here described. But all that can be

affirmed is that there is no evidence that the waters extended beyond

the inhabited part of the earth; and from certain details of the

narrative, this part of the earth may be identified as the great plain

of the Euphrates and Tigris.

Some of the expressions used in the narrative might indeed lead us to

suppose that the writer understood the catastrophe to have extended over

the whole globe; but expressions of similar largeness elsewhere occur in

passages where their meaning must be restricted. Probably the most

convincing evidence of the limited extent of the Flood is furnished by

the animals of Australia. The animals that abound in that island are

different from those found in other parts of the world, but are similar

to the species which are found fossilized in the island itself, and

which therefore must have inhabited these same regions long anterior to

the Flood. If then the Flood extended to Australia and destroyed all

animal life there, what are we compelled to suppose as the order of

events? We must suppose that the creatures, visited by some presentiment

of what was to happen many months after, selected specimens of their

number, and that these specimens by some unknown and quite inconceivable

means crossed thousands of miles of sea, found their way through all

kinds of perils from unaccustomed climate, food, and beasts of prey;

singled out Noah by some inscrutable instinct, and surrendered

themselves to his keeping. And after the year in the ark expired, they

turned their faces homewards, leaving behind them no progeny, again

preserving themselves intact, and transporting themselves by some

unknown means to their island home. This, if the Deluge was universal,

must have been going on with thousands of animals from all parts of the

globe; and not only were these animals a stupendous miracle in

themselves, but wherever they went they were the occasion of miracle in

others, all the beasts of prey refraining from their natural food. The

fact is, the thing will not bear stating.

But it is not the physical but the moral aspects of the Flood with which

we have here to do. And, first, this narrator explains its cause. He

ascribes it to the abnormal wickedness of the antediluvians. To describe

the demoralised condition of society before the Flood, the strongest

language is used. "God saw that the wickedness of man was great,"

monstrous in acts of violence, and in habitual courses and established

usages. "Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil

continually,"--there was no mixture of good, no relentings, no

repentances, no visitings of compunction, no hesitations and debatings.

It was a world of men fierce and energetic, violent and lawless, in

perpetual war and turmoil; in which if a man sought to live a righteous

life, he had to conceive it of his own mind and to follow it out unaided

and without the countenance of any.

This abnormal wickedness again is accounted for by the abnormal

marriages from which the leaders of these ages sprang. Everything seemed

abnormal, huge, inhuman. As there are laid bare to the eye of the

geologist in those archaic times vast forms bearing a likeness to forms

we are now familiar with, but of gigantic proportions and wallowing in

dim, mist-covered regions; so to the eye of the historian there loom

through the obscurity colossal forms perpetrating deeds of more than

human savagery, and strength, and daring; heroes that seem formed in a

different mould from common men.

However we interpret the narrative, its significance for us is plain.

There is nothing prudish in the Bible. It speaks with a manly frankness

of the beauty of women and its ensnaring power. The Mosaic law was

stringent against intermarriage with idolatresses, and still in the New

Testament something more than an echo of the old denunciation of such

marriages is heard. Those who were most concerned about preserving a

pure morality and a high tone in society were keenly alive to the

dangers that threatened from this quarter. It is a permanent danger to

character because it is to a permanent element in human nature that the

temptation appeals. To many in every generation, perhaps to the

majority, this is the most dangerous form in which worldliness presents

itself; and to resist this the most painful test of principle. With

natures keenly sensitive to beauty and superficial attractiveness, some

are called upon to make their choice between a conscientious cleaving to

God and an attachment to that which in the form is perfect but at heart

is defective, depraved, godless. Where there is great outward attraction

a man fights against the growing sense of inward uncongeniality, and

persuades himself he is too scrupulous and uncharitable, or that he is a

bad reader of character. There may be an undercurrent of warning; he may

be sensible that his whole nature is not satisfied and it may seem to

him ominous that what is best within him does not flourish in his new

attachment, but rather what is inferior, if not what is worst. But all

such omens and warnings are disregarded and stifled by some such silly

thought as that consideration and calculation are out of place in such

matters. And what is the result? The result is the same as it ever was.

Instead of the ungodly rising to the level of the godly, he sinks to

hers. The worldly style, the amusements, the fashions once distasteful

to him, but allowed for her sake, become familiar, and at last wholly

displace the old and godly ways, the arrangements that left room for

acknowledging God in the family; and there is one household less as a

point of resistance to the incursion of an ungodly tone in society, one

deserter more added to the already too crowded ranks of the ungodly, and

the life-time if not the eternity of one soul embittered. Not without a

consideration of the temptations that do actually lead men astray did

the law enjoin: "Thou shalt not make a covenant with the inhabitants of

the land, nor take of their daughters unto thy sons."

It seems like a truism to say that a greater amount of unhappiness has

been produced by mismanagement, folly, and wickedness in the relation

subsisting between men and women than by any other cause. God has given

us the capacity of love to regulate this relation and be our safe guide

in all matters connected with it. But frequently, from one cause or

another, the government and direction of this relation are taken out of

the hands of love and put into the thoroughly incompetent hands of

convenience, or fancy, or selfish lust. A marriage contracted from any

such motive is sure to bring unhappiness of a long-continued, wearing

and often heart-breaking kind. Such a marriage is often the form in

which retribution comes for youthful selfishness and youthful

licentiousness. You cannot cheat nature. Just in so far as you allow

yourself to be ruled in youth by a selfish love of pleasure, in so far

do you incapacitate yourself for love. You sacrifice what is genuine and

satisfying, because provided by nature, to what is spurious,

unsatisfying, and shameful. You cannot afterwards, unless by a long and

bitter discipline, restore the capacity of warm and pure love in your

heart. Every indulgence in which true love is absent is another blow

given to the faculty of love within you--you make yourself in that

capacity decrepit, paralyzed, dead. You have lost, you have killed the

faculty that should be your guide in all these matters, and so you are

at last precipitated without this guidance into a marriage formed from

some other motive, formed therefore against nature, and in which you are

the everlasting victim of nature's relentless justice. Remember that you

cannot have both things, a youth of loveless pleasure and a loving

marriage--you must make your choice. For as surely as genuine love kills

all evil desire; so surely does evil desire kill the very capacity of

love, and blind utterly its wretched victim to the qualities that ought

to excite love.

The language used of God in relation to this universal corruption

strikes every one as remarkable. "It repented the Lord that He had made

man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." This is what is

usually termed anthropomorphism, _i.e._ the presenting of God in terms

applicable only to man; it is an instance of the same mode of speaking

as is used when we speak of God's hand or eye or heart. These

expressions are not absolutely true, but they are useful and convey to

us a meaning which could scarcely otherwise be expressed. Some persons

think that the use of these expressions proves that in early times God

was thought of as wearing a body and as being very like ourselves in His

inward nature. And even in our day we have been ridiculed for speaking

of God as a magnified man. Now in the first place the use of such

expressions does not prove that even the earliest worshippers of God

believed Him to have eyes and hands and a body. _We_ freely use the same

expressions though we have no such belief. We use them because our

language is formed for human uses and on a human level, and we have no

capacity to frame a better. And in the second place, though not

absolutely true they do help us towards the truth. We are told that it

degrades God to think of Him as hearing prayer and accepting praise;

nay, that to think of Him as a Person at all, is to degrade Him. We

ought to think of Him as the Absolutely Unknowable. But which degrades

God most, and which exalts Him most? If we find that it is impossible to

worship an absolutely unknowable, if we find that practically such an

idea is a mere nonentity to us, and that we cannot in point of fact pay

any homage or show any consideration to such an empty abstraction, is

not this really to lower God? And if we find that when we think of Him

as a Person, and ascribe to Him all human virtue in an infinite degree,

we can rejoice in Him and worship Him with true adoration, is not this

to exalt Him? While we call Him our Father we know that this title is

inadequate, while we speak of God as planning and decreeing we know that

we are merely making shift to express what is inexpressible by us--we

know that our thoughts of Him are never adequate and that to think of

Him at all is to lower Him, is to think of Him inadequately; but when

the practical alternative is such as it is, we find we do well to think

of Him with the highest personal attributes we can conceive. For to

refuse to ascribe such attributes to Him because this is degrading Him,

is to empty our minds of any idea of Him which can stimulate either to

worship or to duty. If by ridding our minds of all anthropomorphic ideas

and refusing to think of God as feeling, thinking, acting as men do, we

could thereby get to a really higher conception of Him, a conception

which would practically make us worship Him more devotedly and serve

Him more faithfully, then by all means let us do so. But if the result

of refusing to think of Him as in many ways like ourselves, is that we

cease to think of Him at all or only as a dead impersonal force, then

this certainly is not to reach a higher but a lower conception of Him.

And until we see our way to some truly higher conception than that which

we have of a Personal God, we had better be content with it.

In short, we do well to be humble, and considering that we know very

little about existence of any kind, and least of all about God's, and

that our God has been presented to us in human form, we do well to

accept Christ as our God, to worship, love, and serve Him, finding Him

sufficient for all our wants of this life, and leaving it to other times

to get the solution of anything that is not made plain to us in Him.

This is one boon that the science and philosophy of our day have

unintentionally conferred upon us. They have laboured to make us feel

how remote and inaccessible God is, how little we can know Him, how

truly He is past finding out; they have laboured to make us feel how

intangible and invisible and incomprehensible God is, but the result of

this is that we turn with all the stronger longing to Him who is the

Image of the Invisible God, and on whom a voice has fallen from the

excellent glory, "This is My beloved Son, hear Him."

The Flood itself we need not attempt to describe. It has been remarked

that though the narrative is vivid and forcible, it is entirely wanting

in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would

have occupied the largest space. "We see nothing of the death-struggle;

we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the

frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in

terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of

the one righteous man, who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction

which he could not avert." The Chaldean tradition which is the most

closely allied to the Biblical account is not so reticent. Tears are

shed in heaven over the catastrophe, and even consternation affected its

inhabitants, while within the ark itself the Chaldean Noah says, "When

the storm came to an end and the terrible water-spout ceased, I opened

the window and the light smote upon my face. I looked at the sea

attentively observing, and the whole of humanity had returned to mud,

like seaweed the corpses floated. I was seized with sadness; I sat down

and wept and my tears fell upon my face."