no particulars, but such as are designed to be the subject of marked attention and the vehicle of important instruction?

Let us again advert to the view of this transaction which is afforded by the apostle to the Hebrews. By this writer, the outward act and the inward disposition are plainly distinguished. The former is designated by faith; the latter by a more excellent sacrifice; delova vola, a more abundant sacrifice, or that which has more of the real nature of sacrifice. The matter itself of the sacrifice is also stated explicitly, as partly constituting the ground of its acceptance: for it is said, that God testified of his gifts. If we thus combine together the views afforded by Moses and St. Paul, it will not be easy to evade the following conclusion: namely, that faith and obedience were both exercised in the specific act and mode of worship performed by Abel, and that both were wanting in the performance of Cain.

Those however who maintain the human institution of sacrifice, will argue thus: "It is certain that "Cain and Abel presented such offerings as were "respectively most suitable to their several means "and occupations. Cain, being an husbandman, is "said to have offered from the fruits of the ground, " and Abel, being a shepherd, to have offered from "the firstlings of his flock, an offering to the Lord. "Here we have a probable ground of conjecture, "that they offered their sacrifices, only as the voluntary expressions of gratitude to God, for the "blessings with which he had prospered their se"veral labours; and that reason dictated no less

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"the act of sacrifice, than the matter of the sacri"fice. For Cain and Abel appear, from the instruc"tion of their natural reason, to have judged, that "in making a sacred offering of gratitude to God, "that which they had first received from him should "be preferred as the matter of the oblation: in or "der that their sacrifice might thus become a more expressive declaration of the Divine goodness and "of their own thankfulness"."

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Such is the reasoning of Spencer, one of the most learned and strenuous maintainers of the human original of sacrifice. But if I am capable of rightly estimating the value of his argument, the facts on which it professes to be grounded are such as dictate an inference, precisely the contrary to that which he has deduced from them.

That Cain, filled as he was with pride and wickedness, and destitute of faith, humility, and holiness, should have been actuated by the principle thus ascribed to him, is a probable supposition. It may be allowed, that he contemplated his own proceeding as perfectly agreeable to reason, and indeed far more so than that of his brother. For uninstructed reason could never discover, in the slaughter of a victim, a fit mode of worshipping God, or of obtaining the great ends of a religious service: and as to revelation, the want of faith which is imputed to him would naturally induce a resistance of that authority. Pride may have felt a degradation in the selection, as an offering to the Majesty of heaven, of that which had more affinity to his brother's habits

P Spencer de Legg. p. 767. The foregoing citation is translated from that work.

of life than his own: and the selection, thus made by the supreme authority of God, may have induced, in a mind festering with vanity, a stinging, though groundless, sense of personal inferiority.

But if we look to the final issue of this transaction, we surely cannot discover the slightest ground for supposing, that the principle thus described was agreeable to the Divine will: nor the slightest countenance of that opinion, which refers the introduction of sacrifice to the dictates of reason, the sentiments of nature, and the suggestion of circum

stance.

Indeed, I cannot but think, that the sacred record was designedly framed, in regard to those few particulars which are here presented to our notice, with a view to cut off all pretence for the inference which has been drawn from it by this writer, and by others who have followed him in the same line of argument. Had Moses simply recorded the different acts of worship performed by Cain and Abel; had he omitted the mention of any following events subsisting in connexion with those acts: here would have been a fair show of probable evidence in support of their reasoning, who maintain the human institution of sacrifice. But this is not the character of the statement before us. From this statement it appears, indeed, that both Cain and Abel presented an oblation to God; and that these oblations had respectively an equal affinity to their several occupations in life. Thus far then, we admit, a case is before us, which may countenance, though faintly, an opinion, that sacrifice was the progeny of human reason, and that the earliest oblations were suggested

by the employments and situations of the worshippers. Faintly, I say, by reason of the preponderating weight of scriptural evidence which militates against it. This however, to make the most of it, is reasoning upon a half of our subject, while we profess to reason upon the whole. If we will only view the entire transaction, we shall quickly see it in a different shape and complexion. For when we find that, in the event, one of these offerings was accepted, and the other rejected; does not this imply a declaration, that those rational considerations, which are supposed to have dictated the first sacrificial observance, were contrary to the will and approbation of God? As to the natural fitness of the acts with relation to the circumstances of the agents, both offerings stand on the same footing of propriety: Abel's offering was an act of devotion suitable to the character of a shepherd, and that of Cain was equally so to the character of an husbandman. So far, both had an equally fair prospect of acceptance and favour; and yet the result was far different from any expectation which might thus have been framed.

On the whole, then, if we would frame a just conclusion with regard to this transaction, we must take a full and impartial view of it: we must have a regard to the different result of the two offerings: we must attentively remark those additional particulars which have been communicated to us, and which may afford a clue to the explanation of that difference and most especially, we must not, after the example of this learned writer, confine our attention to those circumstances in the two cases

which are apparently similar or analogous, while we exclude others which are marked by the most striking disagreement. These additional particulars are as follows. First, the accepted offering consisted in the shedding of blood, without which we are instructed, that there" is no remission9;" whereas that which was rejected was an offering of inanimate things. Secondly, the accepted offering was offered by faith: the rejected offering, without faith. Thirdly, it is said that God testified of Abel's gifts: the gifts being a subject of approbation plainly distinguishable from the disposition of the offerer.

So little countenance indeed does the scriptural account of this transaction afford to those who maintain that sacrifice originated in human reason, that we might, in the case of Cain, contend with greater justice and probability, that human reason had unwarrantably and presumptuously interfered to alter the mode of worship prescribed by God. With regard also to Abel, it would be more consistent with the discoveries of revelation to suppose, that his pastoral occupation had been taken up, as the consequence of a Divine institution to which it was subservient, than that the mode of worship he performed was suggested by the employment which he followed.

In the language of those theologians against whom we contend, we find the greatest stress laid upon the dictates of natural reason, the circumstances and habits of life of the earliest sacrificers. Whether such causes are in themselves adequate to the pro

9 Heb. ix. 22.