When we make of intellect an idol; when we exalt reason above revelation, and would draw down God's hidden mysteries to the level of our finite comprehension, we are putting forth our hand, like Eve, to pluck and taste the forbidden fruit; forgetful of the warning of the Saviour: "He that receiveth not the kingdom of heaven as a little child shall in no wise enter therein."
[II.]
Cain's Offering.
MORE of the fruits of the earth are here, though no longer the fruit of Eden. These, too, are rich and beautiful, and a special interest attaches to them, for they are the offering made to God by the first man who was ever born into a sinful world.
Have we ever realized the feelings with which Adam and his wife must have watched the dawn of intellect in their firstborn son, or the mingled grief, shame, and hope, with which they would tell him the history of the Fall, and the mysterious promise linked with the sentence passed upon them by the righteous Judge? Did young Cain share the hope, which appears at one time to have been his mother's, that he should be the one to whom it would be given to set his foot upon the Serpent's head, and crush the Enemy of his race? We know not whether such thought as this ever passed through the mind of the boy, but he never seems to have entered, like his younger brother, into the solemn meaning of sacrifice for sin.
Cain was not one to neglect all forms of religion; he had his thank-offering for the God of Nature. It is possible that when he looked around him on swelling fruits and ripening grain, and found the earth beneath the labour of his hands yield thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold, a feeling both of adoration and of gratitude may have stirred within his soul. "Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord."
But the offering was not accepted. And wherefore was it not? Let us search a little more deeply into this matter, and see, if God help us to understand, wherefore that sacrifice of Cain was rejected, and if there be any danger that ours may be even as his.
It is clear that the case of Cain differs from that of the man utterly indifferent to religion; the man who cares not to make any offering at all. There are those, bearing the name of Christians, whose purses (readily enough opened at any call of pleasure or pride) are kept systematically shut when God's service or His people's need require their contributions. It may well be a startling thought for such that they do "less than Cain."