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The truth soon flashed upon the father's mind. The fatal spade was stained with marks of blood; and Cain's bewildered manner brought conviction that the dreadful deed was his. This was, to all, the bitterest fruit the tree of knowledge had yet produced. Adam bore away the corpse of his dead son; and Eve would have cursed her first-born, but for the interposition of an angel, who warned her that this would add another to the list of human crimes; vengeance belonging to the Lord alone. His soothing voice was heeded; and, save the elder sister, who, notwithstanding his guilt, craved to remain with her brother, Cain was left alone with the angel.

Where is thy brother Abel?" asked the angel, when the family had departed.

Cain, abashed, and apprehending a fresh and heavy denunciation, if he acknowledged his crime, sought to evade the enquiry, and replied, "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper ?"

The angel answered, "What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto the Lord from the ground. Now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth."

Cain, stricken with the depth of his remorse and the heaviness of the curse now pronounced upon him, replied, "My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, the Lord hath driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from His face shall I be hid: and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that when the earth is peopled, whosoever findeth me shall slay me.”

Cain looked upon his sister, as though a thought might be nurtured in her bosom of future injury to him. But the angel quickly dissipated his fears, by saying, "Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold."

The angel, therefore, before he sent him forth to seek a new home, afar from the scenes of his infancy and the huts of his father and his slain brother, set a mark upon Cain, that it might be known to all that the Lord reserved the punishment of his offence to himself. And when the beloved sister of Cain had taken a tender leave of her father and mother, and her brother Abel's widowed bride, she accompanied her now wandering husband in his lonely journey into a region eastward of Eden, more desolate than that they had left; but suiting better, perhaps, on that account, with the gloom of his recollections. From that day forth he never saw again the kindred from whom he had been banished. Cain, the first murderer, was a wretched wanderer.

D

THE DELUGE.

THE world was rapidly peopled by the children and descendants of Adam and Eve. Many generations had arisen upon the earth, before the father of mankind sunk into the grave to which his crime in Eden had subjected him. The Lord did not at once shorten the life of man to the brief space to which it was afterwards limited. Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years: a long period as compared with the threescore and ten years, which, in the days of the Psalmist David, constituted the extent of vigorous human life; but how brief, and how full of care, anxiety, and evil, when we reflect on the immortality of happiness originally promised by the Almighty as the reward of obedience!

The family of Cain, with the knowledge of the crime of that patriarch, retained much of the proud and scornful spirit of their forefather; and by degrees estranged themselves from the worship of God, and followed the bent of their vicious inclinations, regardless of the anger of the Lord, which was sometimes visibly manifested against them in the miseries inflicted upon themselves and their offspring, by sickness and

premature death. The family of Seth, the son who had been given to Adam in place of the murdered Abel, were at first more righteous than the progeny of Cain, calling upon the name of the Lord, and conducting themselves in the way which they conceived to be most agreeable to Him. But in course of time they also degenerated, following the example of the tribe of Cain, and committing great wickedness in the sight of God.

One family alone remained faithful servants of the Most High, consisting of Noah, a man of the tribe of Seth, and his three sons and their wives. And the Lord was angry at the wickedness of his creatures, and repented that he had made man to cumber the fair earth, and render it hateful through the evil that was constantly committed. Dissension, strife, fraud, bloodshed, blasphemy, every vice and crime that could enter into the hearts of evil-minded persons, were perpetrated without fear or reproach. Every imagination of man was a sin against the majesty, mercy, and justice of his Maker.

When the Lord beheld that there was no penitence nor remorse remaining in his creatures, and that nothing but a great judgment could cleanse the earth from its pollution, he resolved to destroy all living beings that he had made, that so the generations of the world might be renewed after a

terrible atonement. Noah and his family alone found favour with the offended Deity; for Noah was a just and devout man, and he and his household walked in the way of the Lord. And an angel sent from God warned Noah, and said, "The end of all flesh is come before Jehovah, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, the Almighty will destroy them with the earth."

This terrible denunciation of Divine displeasure was not made to one of callous heart. The good are always kind and gentle, feeling for the woes and sufferings of others, notwithstanding their knowledge that misery is often self-inflicted, and more frequently still, deserved. Noah prayed and entreated the Lord that he would yet spare the beings of his hands; and in order that he might obtain a more effective hearing, he admonished the wrong-doers among whom he dwelt, that though God was merciful and long-suffering, yet that his patience would not endure for ever. But the hearts of his hearers were hardened, and insult and mockery were returned for the kindness of the good man, who sought to save them from the dreadful fate which had been decreed. Injurious aspersions, ribaldry, scoffing, and jests were multiplied against Noah, and against his sons and daughters; and not content with this, the vain and ignorant people, who had set themselves in array against the Lord, conspired

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