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spake to his conscience, brought home his sin to him, and presently made him to be his own tormentor. And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground: and now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me this day from the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me." Only behold by the distraction of Cain's mind what the torment of the reprobate is "my punishment is greater than I can bear." What an awful foreboding of wrath to come does that exclamation contain? Who can tell the dreadful calculations of multiplied vengeance which harrowed up his mind?

Behold, thou hast driven me this day from the earth, and from thy face I shall be hid." Here was wrath upon wrath: he felt that blood guiltiness stamped him an outcast from the society of men; he felt that he could not any longer locate with his father's household, but must hide himself from his own kindred-"And from thy face shall I be hid;" he felt that no longer could he meet with his kindred to worship God, therefore fled from his presence, that is, as I conjecture, from before the visible presence of the cherubim which kept the way of the tree of life; because, from the all-seeing eye of God he knew he could

not be hid. Therefore it is most probable that Adani and his family offered the sacrifices, and worshipped God, before the cherubim, or flaming sword, at the entrance to the way of the tree of life; and that is it, as I conjecture, which Cain alluded to when he exclaimed," and from thy face shall I be hid❞—and from that visible token of Jehovah Elohim's presence he fled, to be a “fugigitive and a vagabond in the earth."-" And it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. Wrath to come still, a constant

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dread of his fellow-creatures.

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And the Lord said unto him, Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him seven-fold.”

Thus shewing, that however vile our fellowcreatures may be in the sight of God, and however heavy the visible judgment of God may be upon them, yet we have no right to augment their misery; but, while we pity them, take warning from their awful example.

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And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should slay him." If any one asks what that mark was, I answer, the same as was set upon the reprobate Jews, who, in opposition to the light of conscience, did maliciously and devilishly persecute and crucify Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord of life and glory and now behold them, like Cain, driven forth as vagabonds, and being made a proverb, a by-word, a hissing, and a curse, in all the lands whithersoever they are driven. And, although such a mark is put upon them, yet are they not destroyed; still are they, by the mighty power of God, preserved as a nation, although they have been robbed, peeled, and slaughtered, by the cruel and sanguinary despots of

the earth, who have by bloody edicts tried to extirpate them therefrom; yet still they do exist, in spite of all their hellish malice, a living testimony of the mighty power of God, who, by the mouth of his prophet Moses, declared that such should be their doom, if they rejected (Christ) the great Prophet, whom he would at the appointed time raise up to be their Teacher and Redeemer, and who has promised that when they return again to him, that he will gather them together again from out of all the nations into which they are scattered, when he will take the cup of wrath and trembling out of their hands, and give the dregs of it to those wicked nations to drink, who hath so cruelly persecuted them. Such was the mark, as I conceive, which was put upon Cain. “A fugitive and a vagabond," he went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden-which signifies the land of trembling.

Only picture him to our minds, wandering from his father's family circle; sojourning in a lonely desert, with his guilty conscience always tormenting him, and the guilt of his brother's blood constantly haunting him. Well was it called the land of trembling. No hotter hell can a man be plunged into, than to be given up to himself, to be tormented with a violated conscience.

What a solemn warning is the history of Cain to such as trifle with sin, and resist the admonitions of the Holy Spirit; they forget that sin is a real spiritual disease, which follows the same law as physical diseases; for, as physical disease, if not checked, is certain to place the body beyond all remedy by cure, so sin, in like manner, leaves the soul

sooner or later in the same predicament; and if once a man be given up of God to his own ways, so soon does he become a reprobate, having lost all power to return to God by repentance. This it appears was Cain's condition; as, instead of repenting of his sin, he only murmured at the severity of his sentence. But what his final condition was, belongs not to me, or any other man to decide, but must leave him where the word of God has left him; yet certain it is, that if he died in a state of rebellion against God, no interest could he have in the everlasting covenant which he despised; and from the scriptures we cannot find that the spirit of repentance was ever given him, as they record nothing more concerning him, but his temporal condition, concerning which I shall write a few words, merely to answer a quibble which infidels raise against what follows in the chapter, concerning him, from the seventeenth verse, And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bare Enoch. The opponents of scripture generally quote the text wrongly, thus, And Cain went into the land of Nod, and took unto himself a wife :" but the text does not read so; although, upon their interpolation of it, they ask, where did he get his wife from? if Adam's family was the only one upon the earth, how do you account for Cain going into the land of Nod to find a wife? But it is plain to be seen, that it is an erroneous inference drawn from a false position. Therefore, to the question, Where did Cain get his wife? I answer, there being but one family upon the earth at that time, namely, Adam's, there was no other way for mankind to multiply and replenish the earth, than by their

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intermarriage together; and as Cain and Abel were at full manhood when Cain slew his brother, Adam must have been the father of a large progeny, although we have not any record of their But we find when Seth was born, who was the next son after Abel, Adam was an hundred and thirty years old. Therefore Cain must have took his wife with him, which must have been one of his sisters. "And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city cafter his son, Enoch.” The name T Chenoch is from the root chun, favour; therefore it is not improbable that Cain, when he saw that a son was born unto him, looked upon the fact as an act of God's favour, so he built a city. and called it after the name of his son. And if the question be asked, How could he and his son build a city? I answer, it is not recorded what length of time elapsed between the birth of his son Enoch, and the commencement of the work, neither is the magnitude of the city described; so that he might have waited until grand-children were born untó him, to help in the work, or, what is called a city, might be a few huts well barricaded by a strong fence, forming a kind of citadel-a work which the labour of one or two strong men might accomplish in a year or two. Thus much concerning those questions.

And, now, in summing up the history of Cain, it appears that his posterity were a wicked race; for it is recorded in the nineteenth verse, that Lamech, the fourth from Enoch, was the first who brake the law of wedlock, by taking unto himself two wives; and in the twenty-fourth verse follow