THE DEATH OF ABEL.

UPON the rejection of Cain's sacrifice, and the acceptance of Abel's, the wrath of the vindictive brother broke out into a paroxysm which terminated in a most unnatural and horrible murder. It is supposed that Cain, shortly after God's expostulation with him on the subject of his unjust anger, enticed Abel to a distance from his home, and then having first provoked him to a quarrel, treacherously put him to death. "And Cain talked with Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him *." Here was realised one of the most awful issues of sin. This is the first event of a very afflicting nature mentioned in scripture after the fall, and it was, in truth, a sad evidence to Adam, that "the wages of sin is death." His best beloved son was torn from him by the desperate ferocity of a brother, who was henceforth to bear the mark of God's curse to the end of his days. To Cain the ground refused its supplies. He became a fugitive and a vagabond upon earth, and was shunned as a creature under the ban of omnipotence. The miserable man, after he had heard the divine denunciation, "went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." The time chosen by the artist is after the accomplishment of the murder. Abel is extended on a rocky eminence, and his mother lying beside him, overcome by grief and horror. The head of her dead son rests upon her lap. Adam has fallen on one knee; his eyes are raised to Heaven in a transport of agony, with an expression of silent reproach at the severity of the divine visitation. The scene around is wild and desolate, the perfect antipodes of that paradise in which the first man and woman had once dwelt. At a distance are visible the altars, which had been raised by the brothers for their respective oblations. On Abel's the fire still burns, on Cain's it is extinct, and just above the latter the fiery blast of God's wrath pursues the flying murderer.