and References an offering, a gift to propitiate the Deity and secure Authorities. His favour. Cain and Abel did not merely bring their offerings as expressions of their thankfulness for temporal prosperity; the story clearly indicates that they looked for the Divine acceptance of themselves, in some sense, for the sake of their gift. Cain was angry because he did not by his offering secure the Divine favour. This is the first idea awakened in the soul when made to feel the consciousness of sin, and consequent separateness from God. What can I bring? Will my choicest and best buy pardon and acceptance ? Trying to Will even the fruit of my body avail for the sin of my buy God's favour. soul? Will my suffering, the sacrifice of all I have and all I love, win my acceptance? What a story of failure is the soul's first seeking after God! Trying to find propitiating gifts! Trying to secure the money that shall buy God's wine and milk! Trying to get on a garment that will stand God's searching gaze! No mere gift can win Divine favour. And what does the Divine record concerning Cain and Abel's first effort teach us? Just this,—no mere gift can win God's favour. The Lord looketh to the heart. Abel's lamb was, in itself, no more acceptable than Cain's corn and fruits. Abel's humble, earnest, grateful, trusting heart can receive God's favour; from Cain's formalities, and unloving, untrustful soul, God's favour must be hidden. So in the very first ages of the world is vividly and forcibly illustrated the law which our Lord expressed so plainly: "They that worship the Father must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Not sacrifices, and not meat offerings, not blood of bulls and goats, not References multitudes of offerings, not temples, not prayers, not Authorities. services, not sacraments, not good deeds, not generous giving, not steadfast morality, can ever win God's favour. The Spirit God asks for spirit - worship. God asks Because we are spirits, it is beneath our dignity to offer, or God's dignity to receive, other than spiritworship. spirit. worship. Souls can express themselves through gifts and But one other thing should be noticed in these first endeavours to construct a religion. We see that a really awakened, earnest soul can express itself to God by offerings, by the outward forms and ceremonials offerings. of religion. This is taught us in Abel, whose soul spoke to God by his offering. We ourselves could have told the difference between these two men, if we had watched them preparing and presenting their two offerings. Cain bringing a few grains of corn, and a handful of flowers, plucked carelessly, with the evident feeling, 'Oh, that will do.' Abel's carefully selected. from the best he had, the fattest ones of the firstlings of his flock. Real spirituality of mind does not separate us from outward worship, or from good deeds and charities; it only makes those acts of worship more devout, those good deeds more abundant, and those. charities more noble. God is willing graciously to read our hearts through our offerings. And we cannot doubt that in accepting the offering of Abel, God designed to open and guide the religious instincts of the spiritual man, so that he might at least catch a glimpse of the great and profound truth of atonement, or reconciliation through sacrificed innocence. In Abel's glimpses story are of the "Atonement. " and eferences We can hardly go so far as to say that Abel clearly Authorities. saw the coming sacrifice of Christ: but we may say that he caught a dim and shadowy glimpse of it. The deeper significance of his spotless lamb, his excellent sacrifice, God graciously opened a little to his spiritual apprehension. So God ever has done and will do. The earnest souls shall know of the doctrine. Let our meets the God ever soul cry after the living God, and begin to seek Him, seeking soul. and God will be sure to meet that soul, teach it, and lead it on. God will show it the unworthiness of all merely human, earthly offerings. God will show it the infinite worthiness of His own dear Son, the one offering for sin. God will lead the seeking soul to the "Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world.” See Speak. NOTES ON GENESIS IV. 3-5. Ver. 3. PROCESS OF TIME, lit. END OF DAYS, most probably when harvest was gathered, and the success of the year's labour realized. OFFERING; mincha, the usual word for a present or a gift. Evidently no sacrificial thought entered into Cain's mind. UNTO THE LORD; some think the offering was made at the gate of the Garden of Eden, as the recognised place for the worship of God. But it may be more simple to suppose that Adam had taken the place of priest-father, and the offerings were brought to him for solemn presentation to God. Compare the patriarchal idea in Job. Ver. 4. FIRSTLINGS-FAT; these are important words, as indicating the care, thought, and concern of Abel, in his act. On the acceptance of Abel's sacrifice and the rejection of Cain's, the "Speaker's Commentary" should be consulted. Inglis has a good note from which the following sentences are taken, but we must beware, on this subject, of un- References founded assumptions. "Faith cannot make that right which is wrong, or that obligatory which is not a duty." "Abel's sacrifice was accepted as being in obedience to Divine instructions." and Authorities. Notes from "Until now, the offerings of Adam and his family were similar to those of Abel, but Cain began to question the authority of God, and would no longer present an offering which did not approve itself to his judgment. This is Jude,ver.11. called 'the way of Cain.' It was the first collision between reason and faith-between what men think religion ought to be, and what God Himself has ordained; and it is recorded as such for our instruction. This view explains why Cain was so wroth; his pride of intellect had been rebuked before the simple faith of his brother. He had aimed at being the founder of a purer religion than Abel's, and the Lord rejected him and it. Of reason and faith it has been said, they are like Esau and Jacob-reason is the eldest-born, but faith obtains the blessing." "Whatever view may be taken of the origin of sacrifices, the sanction given to that of Abel, in preference to the offering of Cain, stamped them with Divine authority. And we see on the horizon of the world, in the early morning of its history, an altar placed, with the smoke of an accepted sacrifice ascending to heaven, and proclaiming, 'Without shedding of blood is no redemption.' 'He being dead, yet speaketh.'" Dr. Jamieson, somewhat more comprehensively, says:"Both manifested, by the very act of offering, their faith in the being of God, and in His claims to their reverence and worship; and had the kind of offering been left to themselves, what more natural than that the one should bring of the fruits of the ground,' and that the other should bring of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof.' Inglis on Genesis, pp. 47, 48. Jamieson, in loc. "Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous."-1 John iii. 12. and References IN a previous chapter we have dealt with the offerings Authorities. of the two brothers as the earliest indication of Previous tion of the One considera- diversity of feelings in connection with acts of worship, offerings. and as fixing the primary truth that the Divine acceptance of religious offerings and worship must depend on the spirit of the offerer. A man must give condition of himself in his gift, or the gift will be accounted worthworship. less. Our attention was in that chapter fixed more particularly on Abel, the first man to die, and the first man to enter the heaven of redeemed humanity. acceptable But we must not miss the further teachings of this narrative; those especially which come by the careful study of Cain's character and Cain's crime. That act of his was the first social sin, the |