CHAPTER XVII.

The First Death.

FEW facts in history are more instructive and melancholy, than that the first death which ever took place in the world was by the hand of a MURDERER. What an humbling and fearful view must have forced itself on the mind of our first parents of the consequences of their apostasy! How strong the proof of that melancholy transformation of character from the image of God in which they were first created, to a close resemblance to him "who was a murderer from the beginning!" What demonstration of the moral depravity of the race, that the first-born should be so utterly destitute of true holiness, so insensible to the influence of motives that were virtuous, and so alive to those that were sinful and malignant! From the distance at which we look upon this deed of blood, we are ready to ask, How was it possible? Can the human heart be the subject of such great and awful depravity? What a

dreadful act was this; how indicative of a stupefied conscience and a hardened heart; and how expressive of revenge and slaughter, thus to stain his hands with a brother's blood! What a complication of evil passions must have found access to the bosom of that guilty and miserable man, and what utter extinction of his hopes, when, with breathless anxiety and boding terror, he heard the one agonizing shriek, and then looked upon that silent corpse! Never, probably, were passions known to human being more terrible than those which agitated his bosom. Whether he had been led on, step by step, or by his hatred of God and his jealousy of his more accepted brother, had plunged suddenly into this fearful crime, we do not know. But the deed was done which left nothing but remorse and anguish ; which has made his name accursed; which drove him from the midst of all the warm and kindly feelings of home, and made him an outcast and a vagabond in the earth. It was not a stranger that he had slain; nor was it an enemy. There were no secular collisions between them; for there was room enough in the world for both, and they might have been mutually serviceable to one another.

No; the earth was not broad enough for them both. Though God's creature, and one who had as good a right to live as himself, he rose up against

him and slew him.

he had once loved.

There lay the brother whom
He had broken and trampled

on the nearest and dearest ties; he had murdered one who "hung on the same breast, dimmed the eyes that looked on him in infancy, frozen the warm heart that was cradled in the same womb with his." Yes; there he lay that youthful and manly form motionless; that smile once so cheerful, passed away in the ghastliness of death. And now the murderer stood alone in the field. God's eye was upon him. Conscience was no longer hushed to silence. He had done his work, and the voice of his brother's blood cried to heaven from the ground.

"Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." It is not enough to say with Paul, "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." The apostate mind of man is capable of all evil. It is a homely, but true remark of a quaint, but strong and sensible writer, "The spawn of original sin contains all sin in it: as a spawn is enough to consume all, if fuelled: as the mud, after the overflowing of the Nile, produceth all monsters; and the leprosy spreads all over, if let alone." We are tempted to say, as we think of Cain, O, if this is man's nature, would that I had never been born! Yet is this man's nature; the source must be judged of by the bitter

We

streams which flow from it. God himself has declared, "He that hateth his brother is a murderer." Every man is a murderer by nature; he would prove himself a murderer, but for the preventing grace of the Most High; and but for that grace, his existence would prove a curse. I know it is a wise dispensation, because it was directed by God's wisdom, but it is a mysterious dispensation, that God suffered this first murderer to live. are told that God "set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." Whether he did this, in order to send him into the world, thus with the halter round his neck, and this brand of infamy upon his forehead, and render his life a burden; or whether, in that early age of the world, he would try the effect of his long suffering, we are unable to determine. One thing is obvious from the narrative, that the voice of nature, the voice of reason, the voice of conscience, the voice of humanity cried aloud for the fitting penalty of his crime, and demanded blood for blood; else would it never have been written, "lest any finding him, should kill him." If the forbearance to execute this penalty was to show what the effect of the divine long-suffering would be, most abundantly was it evinced in the revenge and bloodshed, and the scenes of carnage and havoc, and gigantic crime which made God repent that he had made man on the earth, con

strained him to destroy the world by a flood, and subsequently extorted from him that great and universal law, "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

But we say no more of the first murderer; he has gone to his own place. It is of the murdered one that we propose to speak. It is not a poetical, nor rhetorical view of this first death that most interests us. It is a more serious and practical view, and one which interests us as dying men. The names of Cain and Abel live in the New Testament history, and are fraught with instruction. We have already adverted to some of the lovely and heaven-imparted traits of the renovated and sanctified character of this murdered man; we dwell now upon his death-the first death on the annals of time. In its proximate cause, it was a fearful death; but that the world might see and admire the power of God's recovering grace in contrast with the terrible effects of man's apostasy, it was a peaceful and happy death, and as such speaks to every subsequent age of the world.

The question has been long and warmly discussed, Whether the doctrine of a future state was revealed to the patriarchal age. Among the many proofs that the great Jewish lawgiver taught this truth, none is more conclusive than the death of Abel. The New Testament has most distinctly revealed to us, that this first instance of mortal