a toilsome existence; he apprehends the revenge of those to whom the memory of his innocent brother is dearer than his own disgraceful existence; he clings to life with all the tenacity of a worldling; and, in utter despondency, he cries: "my punishment is too great to be borne." God relented, therefore, from the rigor of the avenging of blood, gave him a sign, which assured him that nobody should attack his life, and threatened a severe punishment against those who would lay hand on Cain. We may ask, with some degree of surprise, why God granted this uncommon indulgence to a murderer, who had insidiously killed his own brother? Did not God Himself give the distinct precept: "He who sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed"? Why was it necessary to take such anxious precautions to save a life forfeited according to human and Divine rights? We hesitate to speak with decision where the text is entirely silent. But we may venture the supposition, that if Cain's blood was to be "shed by man," it would also have been by the hand of a brother, for no other men existed; the firstborn of Adam's strength, and the pride of his mother, would have perished by a cold law of retaliation; the avenging of the crime would, in the result, have been as horrible as the crime itself; and the human family, just called into being, would have perpetrated self-destruction in its first generations. It was thus necessary that God should Himself exercise the duty of punishment, and dispense a chastisement commensurate with the unnatural and fatal offence. A long, laborious life in exile, with the fear of sanguinary retribution perpetually impending, was deemed equivalent to death; and the lamentations of Cain, when he heard the verdict of his flight, prove the bitterness of his pangs. And this is the other side of a profound Biblical idea which we have above pointed out. As

the early death of Abel was no curse, so was the long life of Cain no blessing. He was permitted to protract an existence, veiled by the gloom of the past, and uncheered by any hope of the future. No earthly boon, not even long life, the greatest of all, is, in itself, either a pledge of happiness, or a mark of the Divine favour. The great questions which are discussed in the book of Job are, in their deepest essence, practically embodied in the history of the first brothers. Jehovah does not, like the Persian Ormuzd, guarantee all temporal blessings also; these are shadows without substance; they are, in a great measure, left to the prudence and personal exertion of man. It was impossible, that, among the Hebrews, the priests could obtain that power which, for instance, the Lamaic faith permits them, not only of deciding the spiritual welfare of the people, but of distributing the goods of this world. The external prosperity of man is not, as among the Hindoos, considered as the reward of the virtue displayed in some fancied previous state of existence; nor are his sufferings deemed the punishments for crimes there performed; the rich and happy are regarded without envy, and the poor and wretched without contempt; pride is excluded in the one, and self-respect is upheld in the other. This earth is the sphere of action allotted to man; but the designs of God reach beyond the limits of time into the abyss of eternity.

The chief punishment of Cain was his expulsion from the land of his birth; if the words of God (vers. 10-12) left any doubt in this respect, it would be removed by the unequivocal reply of Cain, who lays a powerful stress upon the roaming and outcast life to which he is condemned; and if any other thought occupied him besides, it was the fear with which the enormity of his crime overwhelmed him, or the just apprehensions inspired by the consciousness of a moral order ruling

the affairs of the world, and swaying as the nemesis of iniquity; a consciousness inextinguishable even in the breast of the most degenerate criminal. But with no word did he allude to the sterility of the soil which he would have to cultivate in his new abodes. Not the earth, in general, will cease to give to Cain its strength, but only that part of it which "had opened its mouth to receive the blood of his brother"; the regions "in the east of the Eden," to which he was banished, are by no means remarkable for barrenness; the eastern part of Asia contains, on the contrary, some of the most blooming and most fertile tracts of the habitable globe. This circumstance is of great importance in the just estimation of the punishment decreed against Cain. He suffered, in reality, nothing but the curse of Adam, though in a more intense degree. He was, like him, expelled from the dwelling-place of his earlier years, and he became, like him, from that day liable to death; for the father became mortal by his disobedience; and the son lived after his crime in constant fear of the avenger of blood.

Thus the curse of Cain contains no new element; the anger of God had exhausted itself in the punishment of the first parents; but the endless variety of crimes is attended by tortures of conscience of endless degrees and forms. The soil, and the occupations of agriculture, were already so heavily laden with the Divine malediction, that they were scarcely capable of a severer execration. Cain continued, but did not then commence the struggle with the hardships and difficulties of the earth. This toil forms, therefore, no part in the despondency of his complaint.

The estrangement of Cain's heart from God was the cause of his exile; he had thereby forfeited His benevolence and His grace; he was obliged "to hide himself before His face"; guilt produced shame; God would not any longer "lift up His

countenance upon him," because He could not smile with delight upon the merciless sinner. This is the true sense of the words, "from Thy face shall I hide inyself"; they do not imply the almost heathen idea, that the presence of God is bound to a certain spot, which He has chosen for His residence, or the sphere of His activity; that He remained in the abode of Adam and his wife, but was not in the land of Cain's exile. It would, indeed, be a superfluous task to prove that the doctrine of the omnipresence of God is one of the great fundamental Biblical truths; such phrases as, "he fled before God" (Jon. i. 3, 10), express merely the desperate intention of escaping the decree, or avoiding a commission, of God; and the concluding words of our passage: "Cain went out from the presence of the Lord," are strictly parallel with the passage in Job: "And Satan went out from the presence of God" (i. 12; ii. 7); they signify that Cain's interview with God was finished; and that he prepared himself to emigrate from the abode of his youth. It is more than surprising, it is almost incredible, that many modern critics ascribe to God that narrow limitation of His presence; it is nothing less than a total destruction of Biblical theology to enclose God, the Ruler of the universe, whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens do not contain, in a circumscribed place, which He changes whenever His favoured people change their abodes. The heathens invented different deities for the different elements. These modern notions would degrade the God of the Bible to a local deity, without even the dignity of a permanent attribute!

God gave a sign to Cain, continues our text, lest he should be killed by any one who found him. We do not know, nor is it important to enquire, in what that sign consisted. But it is evident, that it was necessarily of a permanent character, visible not only momentarily to Cain

alone, but during his life-time to all other men; for, thus only would it have the effect of preventing his assassination by a future avenger of blood. An evanescent sign or miracle was not sufficient; this would, on the one hand, have afforded to Cain no material safety; and might, on the other hand, furnish to other murderers a welcome opportunity of cunningly evading the punishment merited at human hands. Such transitory signs were appropriately given where merely belief in some future or unexpected event was to be enforced. Moses was assured of his future success before Pharaoh by the miracles of the rod and the leprous hand. Hezekiah was convinced of his deliverance from the enemy by the retrogressive movement of the sun-dial; and sometimes even the promise of a future sign sufficed for an event which was to occur in a still later period. But, in our case, not merely belief, and a sense of security on the part of Cain, were the end of the Divine sign; this was but one of the purposes which it was to serve; another as important object was, to enable his fellowmen to know and to avoid him, God might, indeed, have protected him in some supernatural manner; but this He did not do; He left the possibility of his becoming the victim of human revenge; and this is evident from the menace which God added: "Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken for him (Cain) sevenfold": if the sign was not unmistakeably visible to all, Cain was neither sufficiently shielded, nor could so severe a punishment have been pronounced against him who might kill him. Whether, then, the author believed, that such a sign was attached to Cain's person, is not certain; but it is not improbable. Marks of ignominy for degrading conduct were common among the eastern nations; and the Hebrew servant who disdained the supreme boon of liberty after six years of bondage, suffered public perforation of his ears, both as a sign

of his baseness, and as an indisputable mark of his identity. We may, therefore, find, in this part of our narrative, the important practical and philosophical truth, that the traces of crime are indelibly visible in the person of the criminal; the "human form divine" is degraded and corrupted by vice; it loses that sublime dignity with which a pure and noble soul never fails to impress it; the shy look, the uncertain step, the sinister reserve, the lurking passion, these and many other symptoms of the highest interest for the physiognomist, mark the outcast of society, and make the man conspicuous upon whose conscience weighs the burden of an enormous misdeed.

Cain settled "in the land of Nod, in the east of Eden." It is evident, that the name Nod expresses the nature and character of the locality; it signifies flight or exile; and the same root means sometimes, grief and mourning. Nod is, therefore, the land of misery and exile. But, although this appellative signification of Nod is clear, it is not less certain, that the historian intended to describe thereby a distinct country; he designates its position in the east of Eden; and he mentions a town which Cain built in that land of flight. Nod is, therefore, as little as Eden itself, a mere abstraction, or a fictitious name, invented for the embodiment of a myth. But, as it is only described by its relative position to Eden, its situation is, naturally, as disputed as that of Paradise itself. It has been placed in Susiana, Lydia, and Arabia, in Nysa and China; in the mountains of the Caucasus and the vast steppes in the east of Cashmere; in Tartary, in Parthia, or any part of India. However, it appears that the whole extent of Asia eastward of Eden, was comprised under the name of Nod; Cain was expelled to the east of Paradise, where the Cherubim with their flaming swords for ever prevented the access; we are, thus, expressly reminded, that the mur

derer, who with one audacious step ascended the whole climax of crime, was removed far from the seat of blessedness and innocence; and it is natural, that his numerous descendants spread further and further in the same eastern direction, till they were believed to occupy the whole vast territory beyond the Indus, which, as we have shown, is the most eastern river mentioned in the description of Paradise. Nor do we believe this opinion to be devoid of a fruitful idea. The intercourse and commerce of the Israelites seldom extended beyond the Tigris, and scarcely ever beyond the Indus. The nations, therefore, which lived to the east of this river, were of no historical or social interest to the Hebrews. They were excluded from every contact with the people of God. It is, therefore, natural, that they should have been considered less favoured; that their agricultural pursuits, far from the great and exciting political life of the west, should be regarded as the effect of Divine displeasure; the " land of exile" embracing all those tribes which were unconnected, by any internal or external link, with the chosen people, lay, as it were, under the curse of banishment, far from the selected land of Divine glory. Thus, the repeated lamentations of Cain, regarding his flight, receive new vigour and emphasis.

From the "garden of delight," a part of the young human family was removed into the "land of flight" within one single generation; the fall by disobedience was too soon followed by degeneracy and violence; the newly acquired gift of knowledge led, in its first exercise, to error and to crime; reason, too weak to rule, was overpowered by passion; the spiritual part succumbed, and the earthly elements obtained a fatal ascendancy.

17. Cain was soon domiciled in the land of Nod, for his vocation as husbandman forced him to seek settled abodes; he had taken his wife with him from the paternal house; she was evidently his

sister, since Adam and Eve are represented as the only primitive human pair. Such alliances were, even in much later times, and among very civilised nations, not considered incestuous; the Athenian law made it compulsory to marry the sister, if she had not found a husband at a certain age; Abraham married his halfsister, Sarah; and the legislator Moses himself was the offspring of a matrimony which he later interdicted as unholy (Exod. ii. 1, vi. 20). The great and important principle of the unity of the human race was to be proclaimed and enforced; one couple were, therefore, made the progenitors of the whole human family; all other considerations were deemed of minor importance compared with that momentous doctrine which twines a tie of brotherhood around all nations and all ages; a plurality of first couples would have prevented marriages which were later justly regarded with abomination, but it would have destroyed a fundamental truth, which is the germ of noble social virtues, and which sheds brilliant rays of hope over the confusion of national strife and warfare.

Cain became the father of a son; he called him Enoch. This name cannot be without meaning, for Cain soon afterwards built a town, which he called Enoch after his son. The Hebrew root to which it belongs has two principal significations: to teach, and to consecrate. The name of Cain's son seems to point to the former, that of the town to the latter meaning. Cain had felt the curse of impiousness; he could not master his vices or his passions; although he struggled against them, he fell and succumbed; he began the resistance when the enemy in his heart had gained too much power; even the solemn warning of God, that he ought manfully to oppose his evil disposition, was of no avail. He wished that his son, at least, should reap the benefit of his own mourn

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ful experience; he intended to instruct him from his early years in the duties of virtue, and he called him by a name which involuntarily reminds of the maxim: "Train a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it." And when he later built the first city, and called it consecration," he meant to intimate that the firstling of his social prosperity belongs to God, for he had learnt to appreciate the value of His blessing; and, at the same time, he perpetuated the name of his son, in whom all his hope and all his joy were centred.

* It was a very decided step towards civilisation, when the idea of building a city was first conceived and realised. The roaming life of the homeless savage was abandoned; social ties were formed; families joined families, and exchanged in friendly intercourse their experience and observations; communities arose, and submitted to the rule of self-imposed laws; the individuals resigned the unchecked liberty of the beasts of the forest, and felt the delight of being subservient links in the universal chain. Social and personal excellence depend on, and strengthen each other. Therefore, when the first communities were organised, the way to a steady and continuous progress was paved, and the first beams of dawning humanity trembled over the night of barbarism and ferocity. It is a deep trait in the Biblical account to ascribe the origin of cities to none but the agriculturist. Unlike the nomad, who changes his temporary tents whenever the state of the pasture requires it, the husbandman is bound to the glebe which he cultivates; the soil to which he devotes his strength and his anxieties becomes dear to him; that part of the earth to which he owes his sustenance assumes a character of holiness in his eyes; and if, besides, pledges of conjugal love have grown up in that spot, he is

more strongly still tied to it; he fixes there his permanent abode, and considers its loss a curse of God. Thus, even in the "land of flight," the agriculturist Cain was compelled to build houses and to form a city. Many inventions of mechanical skill are inseparable from the building of towns; ingenuity was aroused and exercised; and whilst engaged in satisfying the moral desire of sociability, man brought many of his intellectual powers into efficient operation. Necessity suggested, and perseverance executed, inventions which safety or comfort required; and when man left the caverns which nature had beneficently provided for his dwelling-places, to inhabit the houses which his own hands had built, he entered them with that legitimate pride which the consciousness of superior skill begets, and with the consoling conviction, that although God had doomed him, on account of his own and his ancestors' sins, to a life full of fatigue and struggles, He had graciously furnished him with a spark of that heavenly fire which strengthens him to endure and to conquer.

Greek mythology also attributes to the agricultural tribes the first building of houses and cities. Ceres, aided by all the gods and goddesses, erected the walls and finished the roofs; she herself taught the first citizens the rudiments of a social legislation, and united solemnly a young couple in the sacred bond of matrimony. In the Hebrew records, this progress is both more moral and more rapid. The first parents already formed a united household; the example of a social life under the authority of a chief was given; and in the next generation a man of energy and influence might already establish himself as the head of a well-regulated community.

We have above attempted to explain the meaning of the name of the town Enoch. But to define its position is an impossibility. It lies "in the land of