be the doctrine of original depravity, a right view of the Fall, of its guilt and consequences, lies at the basis of all right views in Christian theology. Strike from the record only a few facts in relation to Adam and his sons, and there can be no clear idea of the Christian system, nor any just appreciation of the nature and design of the Redemption by Christ Jesus. Either the original record is literally true, or Christianity is false.

But not only does the Bible enable us to trace man to his origin; it shows us that from the beginning he was wont to render homage to his Creator; and it is remarkable, that the further we go back in profane history, the nearer approach do we find to the pure worship of God.1 Even in his fall, he did not lose all consciousness of the claims of God on his devotions and obedience. It may be inferred from the record, that the sons of the first man were trained to religious services; for it is expressly stated, that "at the end of days," probably on the Sabbath, which was instituted at the close of the six days' work of creation, they "brought an offering to the Lord.'2 And as we are able to trace the worship of God to the infancy of the world, so even in the record of the earliest acts of religious worship, may we see that God was then, as he is now, a holy and jealous God, satisfied with nothing short of the humble and contrite heart; and that man might make an offering to God, yet fail of the Divine acceptance.

There was a striking difference between Cain and Abel; a difference in their natural dispositions, rendered greater by the dissimilarity in their habits and pursuits; all the difference, between a wicked and a righteous man, an infidel and a believer; the one being proud, selfish, and malevolent the other humble, grateful, and kind. There was consequently a great difference in their offerings; Cain's being a general acknowledgment of God as the Creator; Abel's a sacrifice of atonement, as to an offended Lawgiver. The one offered from the persuasion that some act of homage was required; the other from a sense not only of his indebtedness to the Bounteous Giver, but of his own ill desert and need of pardon. The latter had a reference. to God's promise of a Redeemer, as well as to the Divine 1 Leland's Advantages of Revelation,' chap. xi. Shuckford's 'Connection,' vol. i, p. 304. * Gen. iv, 34.

requirement; the former merely to his own dependence, and relied therefore on the expression of his gratitude. Hence, he offered of the fruits of the ground; but Abel brought "of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof." Still, there might have seemed to be no essential difference in their devotions, and in either case, the sacrificer himself a truly good man. As we are now unable to discriminate between the hypocrite and the believer in their external religious acts, so the one as well as the other might have assumed the posture and worn the aspect of simple-minded and serious worshippers. But God, who sees not as man sees, knew they were actuated by different principles; and accordingly it is stated, that while "he had respect to Abel and his offering, to Cain and his offering he had not respect;" because, "the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord," and "without faith it is impossible to please God."

That the want of faith in "the promised seed" was the' especial reason for God's rejection of Cain's offering, is not a gratuitous supposition. Various explanations have been attempted, yet none but this to which we have referred, will admit of rigid scrutiny. To suppose that the difference in the treatment of the brothers arose from the "different mode of dividing their several oblations," is to sanction the view which an ancient enemy to Christianity, Julian the apostate, derived from the Septuagint translation, in order to represent the God of the Christians in an unworthy light; or that it was owing to Cain's not having brought of the first and best of his fruits, as Abel did of the firstlings of his flock, has almost as little support from the text as the fanciful construction of Grotius, that by the firstlings is meant the wool of the animal, and by the fat thereof, the milk: with hardly less disregard to the text might we adopt the conceit of Josephus, that "God was more pleased with the spontaneous productions of nature than with an offering extorted from the earth by the ingenuity and force of man. Nor could the difference have been owing to their different moral characters, for we have no record of the acceptance of the one and the rejection of the other, separate from the nature and circumstances of their respective oblations; much less, then, to Cain's design against his 1 Antiq. lib. i, c. 3.

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brother's life, for this was formed subsequently to the rejection of his sacrifice. The fact is, the actions of both the brothers in their offerings seem to have been, as even Priestley admitted, of the same nature, and to have had exactly the same meaning. It matters not in what light sacrifices may be regarded; whether as gifts, as federal rites, or as symbolical actions, the brothers appear on the same ground, in the same attitude, and with the same purpose of worshipping Him by whom they had been blessed, in an offering of their respective possessions. There was as clear an acknowledgment of the supremacy and benignity of God's providence in the offering of the fruits of the earth, as in that of the firstlings of the flock; and whether their gifts were equally valuable or not, they were such as respectively belonged to them, and in either offering, the expression of gratitude might have been significant and forcible, and alike pleasing to a Being who looks down on the hearts of his worshippers.

Why then should a distinction have been made in their offerings; and how is the difference in the Divine reception of their sacrifices to be explained? Reason cannot answer these questions. All solutions of this difficulty which the unassisted mind has devised, are contradictious and unsatisfactory. It cannot be resolved without the aid of that Volume to which we are indebted for the facts in the case.

We admit, however, that it is contrary to all our preconceptions, that such a being as God would transfer the sins of the sacrificer to his sacrifice: no opinion is more arbitrary, or seems to denote grosser superstition; yet all the ancient nations adopted this very notion, and in their desire to appease the Divine wrath, ceremonially devoted some living victim to God, under the persuasion that the sins of the offerers would be imputatively transferred to the victim. How can this be ac

counted for, unless all nations received the ordinance from some common source? Man's reason does not teach him that God could delight in blood, or in the fat of slain beasts; nor does instinct prompt him to spill for his own gratification the blood of an innocent creature; nor could appetite have dictated such an act before man was accustomed to the use of animal food, and when, on the supposition of animal victims, he must have known that they were to be consumed by fire; nor could

he have been led by a natural principle of association, from the practice of first offering the fruits of the earth to animal sacrifices; for there is no conceivable transition from the simple and innocent offerings of fruits, to a cruel and unnatural rite. It avails nothing to refer the practice to some unaccountable superstition, because there could have been no superstitions in the world, unless there had previously existed some true religion: nor may we reasonably refer it in the first instance to mere superstitious will-worship; as such it could not have been acceptable in the sight of God, much less would it afterward have been made so prominent in the divinely authorized ritual of the Hebrews, as to shadow forth the great atoning sacrifice for sin. Until the giving of the Law, no other offering than that of an animal, with the single exception of Cain's, is recorded in Scripture. The sacrifices of Noah and Abraham, and also of Job, were burnt offerings; and when the law was promulgated, the connection between animal sacrifice and atonement was distinctly made known by God's own declaration: The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls."

Hence the conclusion that Abel's offering was an animal victim, and that it had reference to the sacrifice of our redemption; and the manner in which it is introduced in the narrative, the allusion to a stated time for the performance of the duty, clearly indicates the pre-existence of this rite; so that what Abel did, Adam must have done.

If it be admitted, then, that the phraseology in which Abel's offering is mentioned, is not conclusive as to the nature of his sacrifice, the fact that his parents were clothed by the Lord God in the skins of beasts, furnishes incidental proof, that in offering an animal victim, he followed their example. To those who have not reflected on this circumstance, the proof may not be obvious. But how came they by their coats of skins? It is not probable that animals died of themselves, so soon after their creation; nor that they were slaughtered for food, for the grant of animal food was not till after the deluge; nor that Adam, without Divine direction, would have ventured to slaughter them for the sake of their skins, if indeed such an idea had occurred to him; nor that the Lord 1 Lev. xvii, 11.

God ordered them to be slain for such a purpose, when their wool or hair would have answered, and could have been procured without injury to their lives. It follows, then, that they were slain by Divine authority, primarily as victims; and that the whole of the victim was devoted to the purpose of sacrifice, except the skin, which our first parents were directed to use as covering, and perhaps as a constant memorial of the death which their transgression merited, and of the Divine mercy by which that death was withheld. Hence it is said that "the Lord God made coats of skins and clothed them;" and hence the appointment under the Levitical economy, that "the priest should have the skin of the burnt-offering."

In view of such considerations, it is unreasonable to regard the institution of sacrifice as a mere human invention which had its origin in anthropomorphic notions of the Deity. Even Priestley, with strange inconsistency, found himself obliged to admit, that “on the whole it seems most probable that men were instructed by the Divine Being himself in this mode of worship, as well as taught many other things that were necessary to their subsistence and comfort."2

If, then, the ordinance of sacrifice may be referred to so early a period in the history of man, it must have been instituted by God in consequence of the fall; nor is it to be presumed that God would have instituted such an ordinance without imparting to fallen man some insight into its nature and design; otherwise he would have been left in ignorance of the mode of his reconciliation with God, and his observance of a rite that he did not understand, instead of being a religious act, would have been an act of superstition.. Most probably, therefore, it was explained in connection with the promised Seed of the woman; the devotement of an animal victim practically exhibiting the mode in which that mortal part was to be bruised, as the substitute of the sinner. Unless an explanatory revelation had accompanied the first made promise, it is impossible to account for the woman's remarkable declaration on the birth of her first son: "I have gotten," not a man," but "the man;" that is, the God-man, the Angel of Jehovah! and quite as difficult to account for the facts, that even in the Gentile world the ordinance of sacrifice was associated with

1 Lev. vii, 8.

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2 See his note on Gen. iv, 3.