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"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" Men therefore ought to distinguish between doing and well-doing, even in the worship of God. All that worship do not do well, though the matter of worship be good in itself. Cain's offering you find not blamed, as if it had been of a superstitious complexion; but he came not aright to worship. Why? he came not as one made righteous before.
It was the evening of the day when the landlord had scolded his daughter on Cain's account. Simmen looked very much displeased. Fausch had come just as he was, dirty, and leaning a little forward, as if he had to thrust his great head through a wall.
Hence note, that if tyrants should have their will, even to the destroying of all the remnant of God, their sacrifices and worship would be yet before God as abominable as they were before. "And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel?" O dreadful question! The beginning of Cain's hell, for now God entereth into judgment with him.
Urania asked the name of this last Shepherd: he then made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, which was like Cain's or Christ's. Another Mountain Shepherd, 'the gentlest of the wise, leaned over the deathbed. Adonais has drunk poison. Some 'deaf and viperous murderer' gave him the envenomed draught.
A number of laws passed during that period are of such a nature as to admit of but one explanation, the desire to insult and humiliate the Jew and to brand him by the medieval Cain's mark of persecution.
Nor was Eve the last of those who have brought trouble on themselves and others by the same sin. If the descendants of Seth had not kept bad company and made friends of Cain's wicked race, the flood would never have swept them away. If Samson had not gone into bad company he would never have lost his strength, and have had to grind blindly and miserably at the mill.
I doubt not that Cain's children wept about his deathbed, and that the centurions spake in whispers as they lowered Iscariot from the elder-tree: and in like manner the reproaches which stirred in my brain had no power to move my lips.
But this was not the only cause of Cain's hatred toward Abel. Partly love for a woman brought about the crime. To ensure the propagation of the human race, a girl, destined to be his wife, was born together with each of the sons of Adam. Abel's twin sister was of exquisite beauty, and Cain desired her. Therefore he was constantly brooding over ways and means of ridding himself of his brother.
It was a poor, thirsty, dried-up love, and far from tender; but as his hand touched Cain's, something happened that no one saw; the smith's thick lips trembled for a brief moment, in the midst of his black, woolly beard. It seemed improbable and yet perhaps Fausch had stifled a sigh.
Cain's day ended with him betimes; for after God had rejected him, he lived to beget many children, and build a city, and to do many other things. But alas! all that while he was a fugitive and a vagabond. Nor carried he any thing with him after the day of his rejection was come, but this doleful language in his conscience, "From God's face shall I be hid;" Gen. iv. 10-15.
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