family kept strictly apart from Cain and his family; and the before cited stigmas of the New Testament confirm such traditions by the decided condemnatory opinions expressed respecting Cain by the inspired writers of that volume.

Verse 17. "And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life."

This curse of the earth as a punishment, and the doom of Adam to sorrow for all the days of his life, must incline us to look forward with apprehension for the particular consequences which are to produce such lasting sorrow, both to Adam and his wife; for the briars and the thistles are mentioned only in a subsequent verse, and appear but a slight addition to the great malediction, which, according to the wrapt method's of Scripture, was in all probability pregnant with greater woe than the growth of briars could occasion. Toil and sweat of the brow would be the natural consequence of their prevalence; but sorrow is from the

heart, and the bitterest species of it is remorse when degradation and punishment succeed voluntary guilt. Adam and Eve had been sole possessors of the ground, once destined to nourish the pure seed alone, and afford a blessed abode to the happy-but now accursed; and the denunciation passed, that Satan's seed should be participators of it: and we shall see, that such a race did succeed, as filled the earth with violence, and, by mixing with the good seed, caused the deluge. But whether the great prevalence of sin and violence arose from an influx of Satan's seed, or from his power to corrupt the heart, still it was brought on by the fall of our first parents; and as they lived many centuries to behold the woe of it, we need not seek any farther for the fulfilment of their doom to sorrow,

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for all the remaining days of their lives. Yet there is every reason to conclude, that their hearts continued loyal to their Creator, and that they were penitent; for it appears that they brought their children up in the habit of making sacrifices unto the Lord; nor did they, like Cain, make any ferocious answer to God.

Adam himself had been taught of the Lord, and

lived after the birth of Seth eight hundred years, to confirm the instructions to the good seed; and in that line we find Enoch, who walked with God three hundred years, and then was translated: finally, before the flood we meet, in the same genealogîcal line, Noah, a just man, perfect in his generations, and a preacher of righteousness.

Thus, taking the early chapters of Genesis in the literal sense, the common reader must perceive that the line of Cain was evil; but that in the true line of Adam and Seth, loyalty to God, and a right apprehension of his will, was the guidance of their lives.

In the third chapter of Luke, Adam is called the son of God; and in Exodus, chap. iv. the children of Israel, who were perfect in their generations from Noah to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are in the aggregate called my son; verse 22. " And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my first-born."

Isaiah, chap. xl. verse 11. "Thus saith the Lord, the holy One of Israel, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye me."

In Job the sons of God are incidentally mentioned; also in several other parts of the Old Testament. And when, in the long subsequent elucidations of the New Testament, we are informed that there are people in the world born of the flesh, and other people born of the spirit, the latter, we may fairly infer, are of that species which in the Old Testament are called the sons of God. But that term also occurs in the New Testament; Romans, chap. viii. 19. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." And in many other passages the term sons of God appears.

But Cain, who was stained by the blood of the first murder, cursed from the earth, banished from the presence of the Lord, and omitted in Adam's genealogy, we never can suppose was allowed that title, or that his descendants would be eligible to bear it. Cain was wroth with God, and we never hear of his penitence afterwards. It was, therefore, to be expected that there would spring from him, in the land of his banishment, an untaught and rebellious race of men, who would hate God, and who would either receive some line of demarcation, or

some denomination, that would, though not too obviously, distinguish them from the acknowledged sons of God; and Cain being, as we must apprehend from the regular series of information concerning him, born of the flesh instead of the spirit, and therefore inferior in his collateral line, and partaking more of the nature of man than of God, it follows naturally that his descendants, in process of time, would be appropriately termed the sons of men, in contradistinction to the sons of God.

Verse 26." And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord;" or, as it is noted in the margin of some Bibles, "began to call themselves by the name of the Lord." Others translate it, "Then men began to be called by the name of the Lord;" and others, "That then men profaned in calling upon the name of the Lord." The Hebrew word is ambiguous, signifying either to begin, or to profane. But none of these significations can make the thing alleged applicable to Adam's immediate family; for this calling upon