FROM THE RUINS OF THE PALENCIAN CITY.
Again, in this cradle of literary wonders—the Irish language—every letter in its alphabet expresses some particular tree; but its second, Beth,—whence the Beta of the Greeks, and a formative only of Budh, the radix,—signifies in addition to the tree which it represents[247]—knowledge also! And here, obvious as light, and impregnable to contradiction, you have the tree of knowledge, in natural nakedness, divested of all the mystery of pomiferous verbiage, and identified in attributes, as in prolific import, with the name and essence of the sacred Budh![248]
Here then we have, at length, arrived at the fountain-head and source of the mystery of Budhism. Eve herself, I emphatically affirm, was the very first Budhist. And, accordingly, we find that, in former ages, women universally venerated the Budh, and carried images of it, as a talisman, around their necks and in their bosoms![249]
But if Eve was the first Budhist, the first priest of the Budhist order was her first-born, but apostate son Cain: and in his acknowledging the bounty of Budh, the sun, who matures the fruits of the earth,—and thereby recognising Jehovah only as the God of nature and of increase,—rather than in looking forward by faith to the redemption by blood, as a different sacrifice would have intimated, consisted “the whole front and bearing” of his treason and offence.[250]
“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, a sin offering lieth at the door”[251]—the means of propitiation are within your immediate reach.
The endearing tone in which this is conveyed bespeaks an appeal to some usage familiar to the party. It betokens indisputably, that on previous occasions, when Cain had acted “well,” he had met with no rejection. And for the truth of this Jehovah refers to the defendant’s own experience and self-convincing consciousness.
Cain, therefore, was a priest under a former dispensation, and a favoured one, too, and his being deprived of this office, or, in other words, “cast off from the presence of the Lord,” was the great source and origin of his present wretchedness.
But if a priest, he must have been so to a larger congregation than his father, mother, and brother: and besides, he, as well as Abel, must have had wives; but the Scriptures do not tell us that Adam and Eve, as individuals, had any daughters; it follows, therefore, that the consorts of the two brothers must have sprung from some other parents. There, then, were more men and women on the earth than Adam and Eve: and this is still further confirmed by the apprehensions expressed by Cain himself, after the murder of Abel, lest he might be slain by someone meeting him.
Yes, in the paradisaical state, before “sin entered into the world,” the earth was as crowded with population as it is at present, and Adam and Eve are only put as representatives, male and female, of the entire human species all over the globe.[252]