The rite of bloody sacrifice, utterly unintelligible without the notion of sin, and inconceivable without a positive divine institution, so precise in its formularies about the statement of sin, and the need of expiation, is an everliving prophecy of the great sacrifice which God had intended "before the foundation of the world," and a token of the knowledge which He had communicated to [Pg16] Adam before he became a father. Unfallen man needed to make no sacrifice, but only the triple offering of adoration, thanksgiv-
ing, and prayer. These Adam would have given before he fell; after his fall he became a priest, and the bloody sacrifice to God of
His own creatures, a mode of propitiating God which man could never have invented or imagined of himself, is a token of the ritual enjoined upon him, and of the faith which it symbolised and perpetuated.
Such, then, was the condition of the children of Adam, the first human society, in those "many days" which passed before Cain
rose up against Abel: the state of a family living in full knowledge of their own creation, being, and end, in vast security, for who
was there to hurt them? worshipping God the Creator by a rite which He had ordained in token of a great promise, at their head the Father, the Teacher, and the Priest, with the triple dignity which emanates from the divine sovereignty, and makes a perfect government.
The two powers which were to rule the world rested as yet undivided upon Adam after his fall.
It is evident that nothing could be further from a state of savagery or barbarism, from a state of defective knowledge of God and man, and his end, than such a condition as this, which suggests itself necessarily to any one who considers attentively the sacred narrative.
But as Adam in paradise was left to the exercise of his free-will, and fell out of the most guarded state of innocence by its misuse,
so the first-born of Adam broke out of this secure condition of patriarchal life through [Pg 17] the same misuse, and begun by fratricide the City of the Devil. We are told that God remonstrated with him when he fell under the influence of envy and jealousy, but in vain. He rose against his brother and slew him; he received in consequence the curse of God; "went out from his face, and dwelt
a fugitive on the earth at the east side of Eden." There it is said that he built the first city, on which St. Augustine comments: "It is
written of Cain that he built a city; but Abel, as a stranger and pilgrim, built none."
The fratricide of Cain leads to a split in the human family. The line of Cain seems to depart from Adam and live in independence of him. It becomes remarkable for its progress in mechanical arts, and for the first example of bigamy. The end of it is all we need here note. In process of time, "as men multiplied on the earth," two societies seem to divide the race of Adam--one entitled that of "the sons of God," the other that of "the daughters of men." But the ruin of the whole race is brought about by the blending of the better with the worse: the bad prevail, the two Cities become mixed together in inextricable confusion. God left to man throughout his free-will, but when the result of this was that "the wickedness of men was great upon the earth, and that all the thoughts of their heart was bent upon evil at all times," that is, when the City of the Devil had prevailed over the City of God in that patriarchal race which He had so wonderfully taught and guarded, He interfered to destroy those whose rebellion was hopeless of amendment, and to make out of one who [Pg 18] had remained faithful to Him a new beginning of the race.
The race had been cut down to the root because in the midst of knowledge and grace it had deserted God; and Noah, as he stepped forth from the ark, began with a solemn act of reparation. He "built an altar to the Lord and offered holocausts upon it of all cattle and fowls that were clean." God accepted the sacrifice, inasmuch as it was in and through this act that He bestowed the earth upon Noah and his sons, and gave him everything that lived and moved on it for food. He consecrated afresh the life of man by ordaining that whoever took human life away, that is, by an act of violence, not of justice, should himself be punished with the loss of his own life; and He grounded this great ordinance upon the fact that man was made after the image of God. At the same time God repeated to Noah and his sons the primal blessing which had multiplied the race, and was to fill the earth with it, and made a covenant with him and with his seed for ever, a covenant to be afterwards developed, but never to be abrogated. It is to be noted that the sacred narrative dwells rather upon the sacrifice made by Noah immediately upon issuing from the ark than upon the original sacrifice offered by Adam. Of the first institution of sacrifice it makes only incidental mention, referring with great significance to those skins
of beasts, of which God provided a covering for the nakedness of Adam and Eve. It is as if the rite of sacrifice, instituted as a
prophecy of the future expiation of sin, might fitly [Pg 19] supply from the skins of its victims a covering for that nakedness which
sin alone had revealed and made shameful. The mention of this fact ensues immediately upon the record of the fall, before Adam is cast out of paradise. And again, by the mention of the sacrifice of Abel, and of its acceptance, it is shown that the rite already existed in the children of the first man. But now the sacrifice of Noah, and the covenant made in it, as being of so vast an import to every succeeding generation, is described at length as the starting-point of the whole renewed, that is, the actual race of man. In this sacrifice it is emphatically declared that "the Lord smelled a sweet savour," since it stood at the beginning of man's new life, coming after the waters of the deluge as the image and precursor of the Sacrifice on Calvary, which was to purify the earth, and which those waters typified.
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As, then, we considered lately the position of man as to his knowledge of God and of himself in the "many days" which ensued after the fall before the death of Abel, so let us glance at his condition in these same respects at the starting-point of this new life of man. First of all, out of the wreck of the old world Noah had carried the two institutions, one of which makes the human family in its natural increase, while the other constitutes its spiritual life--marriage and sacrifice. In marriage we have the root of society; in sacrifice the root of religion. These had not perished, neither had they changed in character. They were the never-displaced foundation of the race, an heirloom of paradise never lost; marriage, as established in the primeval [Pg 20] sanctity before man fell, sacrifice as superadded to man's original worship of adoration, thanksgiving, and prayer immediately upon his fall, in token of his future recovery. God, in selecting Noah to repair the race, made him, in so far like to Adam, the head of the two orders, King and Priest, and from that double headship the actual government of the world through all the lines of his posterity descends.
Thirdly, we find in Noah's family the divine authority of government expressly established; for in the protection thrown over human life the power to take it away in case of grievous crime is also given. Authority to take life away belongs of right to the giver of life alone. He here bestows the vicarious exercise of it upon that family which was likewise the first State, and the fountain-head of ac-tual human society. "At the hand of every man, and of his brother, will I require the life of man: whosoever shall shed man's blood, his blood shall be shed, for man was made to the image of God. But increase you, and multiply, and go upon the earth, and fill it."
We have then the charter here of human society;[8] the delegation to it of supreme power by the Head of all power, to be vicariously
exercised [Pg 21] henceforward over the whole race as it went out, conquered, and replenished the earth; the sacredness of man's life
declared, in virtue of that divine image according to which he alone of all creatures upon the earth was made, yet power over that life for the punishment of crime committed to man himself in the government established by God. An absolute dominion over all beasts was given
