SERMON S.

I.

THE GIFTS OF THE EVIL ONE.

"And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."-GENESIS iv. 6, 7.

THAT part of the Bible which contains the his

tory of the world before the Flood has been the source of much difficulty. Some people may think that you are too young to be told of this, and that you should take everything for granted till you are grown up. Now I think otherwise. It would seem to me to be contrary to our implied mutual contract to be above-board in everything, if I gave you the impression that I understood anything in a literal sense when I did not

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so understand it. And reserve would as usual

do harm in the end. For what happens when a young man first finds out that things which he had been brought up to regard as part of his religion will not bear the strain of honest inquiry? Why, that the very foundations of his faith are disturbed. He finds that he has anchored on treacherous ground; and then perhaps, when compelled to shift his moorings, he drifts away from belief in religion altogether. But if you are left in doubt, how much is literal fact, and how much is the language of parable or poetry, some of you may ask, "Then are we not to look upon this part of the Bible as inspired?" Why, it simply palpitates with inspiration. Outside the Bible there is no account of the spiritual nature of man comparable for truth and depth with that contained in the 2d and 3d chapters of Genesis. And let us, in studying these chapters, look beyond the letter that killeth to the Spirit which giveth life.

There are two brothers,-Abel, a keeper of sheep; Cain, a tiller of the ground. Observe that this marked distinction of occupation is characteristic rather of parable than of the earlier stages of human society; and that, like our Lord's parables, the story subordinates its details to the

spiritual truths which it is designed to enforce. Both brothers, with the universal instinct of human nature, whether civilised or savage, are conscious of a Presence from which there is no escape of a Being who has paramount claims. upon them and theirs. Each offers of his best. But here we find a sharp division, which appears again and again in the language of Scripture as the broad and narrow way-the right hand and the left the two, of whom one was taken and the other left. Abel's offering was accepted by God; Cain's was not. This has nothing to do with the nature of the offering, whether it was sheep or corn, whether it is the stately anthem rolling among the arches of some vast cathedral, or whether "Martyrdom" or "Dundee," floating up from the thronged hillside, loses itself in the blue depths of heaven. Cain is told, "If thou doest well, shall thy offering not be accepted?"-i.e., it is not your offering, not your form of worship, which is wrong, but your heart, your conduct that is what God cares for. People talk about purity of worship as if it were connected with the presence or absence of some particular forms. The only purity of worship which I can find in the Bible, is that of a soul which is athirst for God and which seeks to do His will by follow

ing even the dimmest indications of paths which lead to the water of life. The light of fuller revelation tells us that the blood of bulls and of goats cannot take away sin, yet God accepts Abel's freewill offering of love, while he rejects the tax which fear or superstition extracts from Cain.

In the true sense of the word he cannot sacrifice, any more than the king in Hamlet' can pray :

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'My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go."

"But if not well, sin lieth at the door." Not as a crouching wild beast eager to leap in and devour. Not as a foe in ambush bursting in to kill, burn, and destroy, if the sentinel is for an instant off his guard. No, I think that is not the metaphor; for," unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." These words have been supposed to constitute a difficulty. I cannot see it. They fit perfectly into the context and the facts of life. They embody the truth which underlies all the fables of witchcraft, all the strange phenomena of devil-worship, as well as the weird legend, recurring as it does in some form in the literature of most countries, of Faust and Mephistopheles. "Sin lieth at the door," a fawning friend, a cunning flatterer, and, if

you let