“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous; but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” Ps. i.
And again: “Set thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquities of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.” Ps. cix. 6–14.
Such is the prospect of the desperately wicked: “The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just.” Prov. iii. 33.
LESSON III.
But Cain had a mark set upon him. The word translated mark is א֔וֹתʾôt oth: it means a mark of a miraculous nature, whereby some future thing is of a certainty known, and may be something done or only said. Whatever it may have been, the object was to prevent him from being slain by any one meeting him, by its proclamation of the burden of the curses under which he laboured. It was, therefore, absolutely the mark of sin, sealing upon him and his race this secondary degree of slavery. The mark distinguished them as low and servile as well as wicked, and hence its protective influence.
But what was the mark of sin? What is it now? and what has it ever been? If one is accused of some vile offence, a little presumptive evidence will make us say, It is a very dark crime; it makes him look very black. This figure, if it be one, now so often applied, is so strongly used in Scripture, and in fact by all in every age, that the idea seems well warranted that the downward, humiliating course of sin has a direct tendency, by the Divine law, to even physically degrade, perhaps blacken and disbeautify, the animal man.
A similar doctrine was well known to the Greeks. Demosthenes says to the Athenians, “It is impossible for him who commits low, dishonourable, and wicked acts, not to possess a low, dirty intellect; for, as the person of a man receives, as it were, a colouring from his conduct, so does the mind take upon itself a clothing from the same acts.” See Second Olynthiac. So the Arabians: “God invited unto the dwelling of peace, and directed whom he pleaseth into the right way. They who do right shall receive a most excellent reward, and a superabundant addition; neither blackness nor shame shall cover their faces.” Koran, chap. x.
“On the day of the resurrection, thou shalt see the faces of those who have uttered lies concerning God, become black.” Koran, chap. xxxix.
So, the Mohammedan belief is that a man who has some good qualities may die; but, on the account of his wickedness, he will be sent to hell, and there tormented until his skin is black; but that if he shall ever be taken thence, by the mercy of God, he will be immersed in the river of life, and his skin become whiter than pearls; see Pocock, notis in part. Moris, p. 289 and 292; but that the faces of the wicked will ever remain black. See Yalkut Shemuni, part ii. fol. 86; also Sale, Prelim. Disc. p. 104, 105.