they may appear to express themselves in some places without due caution, yet refer the custom of sacrificing, ously employed on similar occasions; or which, if then exhibited for the first time, was attended with evidences of divinity, too striking to be overlooked, and too plain to be misunderstood. That a particular intervention of Deity should be vouchsafed, to crown a rite of human contrivance, is a notion not authorized by any analogous procedure in all the recorded communications of God with man.

We are not left, however, to form conclusions on this subject from mere probability or analogy. By the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, the superiority of the accepted oblation is ascribed to the faith of the offerer. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." Hebrews xi. 4. If Abel's faith was no more than a general belief of the existence and providence of the Creator and Governor of the universe, there can be no reasonable doubt that Cain was actuated by the same sentiment; or he would not have "brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto "the Lord"-and faith, so explained, could not have conferred upon one any superiority over the other. But the faith celebrated in this chapter evidently appears to have been a belief of divine declarations, followed by obedience to divine commands. 66 By faith Noah, being warned of God of "things not seen as yet, prepared an ark :" he believed what God foretold, and built an ark according to his injunction. "By faith Abraham, when, "he was called to go out into a place which he should afterwards receive "for an inheritance, obeyed:" he believed that God would put him in possession of the promised inheritance, and left his native country in obedience to the divine call. In conformity with the representation of faith in this chapter, it is expressly affirmed in another epistle, that "faith "cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Romans x. 17., Faith, then, necessarily supposes a divine revelation. That Abel, "in

things pertaining to God," was guided by the discoveries of revelation, rather than the deductions of reason, is further evident from the apostle's assertion concerning him and others whom he had just named: "These "all died in faith not having received" (the fulfilment of) " the promises, "but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and em-. "braced them." Hebrews xi. 13. Dr. Kennicott judiciously argues: 'Temporal promises relating to the land of Canaan are not entirely, if at 'all, meant here; for the apostle speaks of all the patriarchs whom he had ⚫ mentioned in the beginning of this chapter but of Abraham, one of the 'patriarchs mentioned, it is expressly said, that he "sojourned in the land ' of promise;" and as Abel, Enoch, and Noah, three of those included in the word ALL, had not received the promise of entering the land of Canaan, it must have been some other promise, made in the first ages, ' and frequently repeated, to which the apostle here alludes: and what promise can that be, but the promise of a future Redeemer, made to

not to the laws of nature, properly so called, which are indeed eternal and immutable; but to that class of

Adam?' Two Dissert. p. 214, 215. Abel believed the divine word, and evinced his belief by practising that mode of worship which was appointed to typify the promised seed, and the benefits to be derived from him, who was one day to be known on earth as "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world," and was afterwards to be glorified in heaven as a Lamb that had been slain."

If these remarks are correct, they throw considerable light on the divine expostulation with Cain; which, with any other exposition that has been suggested, is scarcely intelligible. "Is there not, if thou doest well, ex66 altation, or pre-eminence, and, if thou doest not well, a sin-offering "lying at thy door?" Pooli Synops, in loc. In many other passages of scripture the word unquestionably signifies a sin-offering; and that it should be so rendered in this place, as proposed by Dr. Lightfoot, is most consitent with the grammatical construction of the sentence, as well -as with the connection and obvious design of the address. Dr. Magee's Discourses and Dissertations, Vol. II. No, 65. God suggests to Cain the cause of the rejection of his offering, and directs him to the instituted mode of acceptable worship.

The arguments which tend to prove the sacrifice of Abel to have been offered in conformity to divine appointment, equally induce a belief that this rite must have been enjoined on our first parents immediately after their fall. Whence, also, the skins with which they were clothed? It is utterly improbable that any animals had died of themselves so soon after their creation; nor can it with plausibility be pretended that any had yet been slain for food. The only reasonable conclusion is that they were from animals slain in sacrifice. Connected with the institution of sacrifices, these coats of skins acquire an importance which may account for the mention of them by the sacred historian; though the brevity of the whole narrative may likewise account for his having said nothing further concerning them. That sacrificial rites had been practised antecedently to the recorded oblations of Cain and Abel, many learned men consider as placed above probability by the terms which describe the time when these offerings were brought they contend that the phrase D' yp, literally the end of days, must denote a stated season for the performance of a stated service. Kennicott's Two Diss. p. 177-183.

Some of these arguments might be further enforced, and others not unworthy of serious attention might be adduced in confirmation of the opinion here maintained; but this note having already extended to a great length, I shall only add one observation more.

The diversity in the oblations of Cain and Abel, and their different reception, have been finely illustrated by a comparison with the parable in which our Lord represents the different devotions of a pharisee and publi

institutions which may have been devised by natural reason as adapted and suitable to the public worship of God. If any have referred it to the laws of nature, their error is easily proved from this fact, that the sacrificial rites practised by the ancients have been wholly abolished by Christ among his followers; though he was far from abolishing any of the laws of nature, but by his authority ratified, confirmed, and established them all.

VII. But though it does not clearly appear, whether the first sacrifices were offered in obedience to any certain command of God, or in compliance with the dictates of human reason, yet it is beyond all doubt, that, on the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt, God himself enjoined on them the rite of sacrificing, by a written law. His design in doing this is the next subject of inquiry.

On this topic Maimonides justly observes, that in the religious rites connected with sacrifices there was nothing intrinsically acceptable to God, nothing with which he was pleased for its own sake; and hence he concludes, that the law of sacrifices was not given by the first counsel of God, but proceeded from the second. This is clearly suggested in the following passages, as Maimonides himself also perceived. can, and their different success. Abel who by sacrificing an animal acknowledged his true character as a sinner, and evinced his faith and hope in the divine mercy by the appointed way of seeking forgiveness,--was accepted: while Cain who contented himself with a eucharistic offering, acknowledging his obligations as a creature, but regardless of his condition as a sinner, and neglecting the instituted means of seeking the divine Inercy, was rejected, So the publican, with his confession of guilt and supplication for pardon, "went down to his house justified, rather than "the" pharisee, with his fastings and tythes and thanksgivings. Cloppenburg Sacrif. Patriarch. Schol. apud Shuckford, Vol. I. p. 87, 88. Edit. 1731. * Moreh Nevoch. par. 3. c. 32.

“Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings "and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the "Lord ?* To what purpose is the multitude of your "sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of "the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed "beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that "I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: but this thing com"manded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will '' be your God, and ye shall be my people." The following passage also is to the same purpose. "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow

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myself before the high God? Shall I come before "him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, "or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give 66 my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, "O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord

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require of thee,

but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" From these scriptures it is fairly concluded, that those things which pertain to the immutable law of nature, rest on a very different foundation from sacrifices; that the former are of themselves acceptable to God, but that the latter, unconnected with the former, afford him no pleasure at all.

VIII. But though these things are sufficiently evident, it was not for trivial reasons that God enjoined on the Hebrew nation, a religion which consisted in a great measure in the offering of sacrifices. The ancient * I Sam. xv. 22. † Isai. i. 11. Jerem. vii. 22, 23. § Mic, vi. 6, 7, 8.

Christians, indeed, were of opinion, that the cause of this appointment was the deep root which this kind of religion had taken among that people before their departure from Egypt. With this rite the sons of Adam, Noah, and Abraham himself, who was always held in high estimation by his posterity, had worshipped God, as is sufficiently manifest. But it prevailed most of all in succeeding times in Egypt, where the Hebrews dwelt for a long series of years. Hence the fathers concluded, that the attachment of the Hebrews to sacrifices was such as could neither be safely prohibited, nor, amidst the daily growth of superstition, be left to the choice of every individual. It could not well be prohibited, they say, especially among the Hebrews who were so excessively addicted to sacrifices; the practice having grown so inveterate, that there seems not the least reason to doubt but they would have offered sacrifices to false gods, if they had not been permitted to offer them to the true God. Nor, on the other hand, would it have been proper to leave to individual choice a religion which, if not defined and circumscribed by the laws of God himself, might easily slide into barbarous and strange customs, and gradually draw a superstitious people into a strange worship. And this is supposed to have been the reason why God transferred the rite of sacrificing to his own worship; being a rite of such a nature as could not be advantageously, either abolished, or practised in a variety of ways according to individual caprice.

But it must be particularly observed, that the things which the heathens connected with their sacrifices were not all introduced into the worship of God with the sacrifices themselves: neither the kinds of ani