(Lincoln’s Inn, Quinquagesima Sunday, Feb. 26, 1854.)
‘And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.’—GENESIS iv. 3-7.
I believe the teaching of the Bible on the subject of Sacrifice is very methodical. By mixing together texts concerning it, which are taken at random from any book between Genesis and the Apocalypse, we confuse our minds, and often end with holding the notions which we should have held if no such words had been written. Perhaps, if we have sufficient reverence for the book to follow in the steps which it marks out for us, we may learn something from it. We shall not learn, even then, if we forget that all true words—the truest most of all—only speak to us when they speak in us, when they awaken us to thought, self-questioning, wonder, hope. It is not, therefore, an idle form which preachers use—if it is, it must be a blasphemous form—when they ask that the Spirit of God may quicken and raise the hearts which the word of God is sent to illuminate. To imagine that any book or any living voice can give, if there is not a receiver, or that it can give, except according to the measure of the receiver, is to contradict all experience and all reason.
The passage I have read to you is the first in the Bible which refers to a sacrifice. It has stirred up a number of doubts in the minds of men. I will refer to a few of them, and I will say how far I think this story will resolve them, how far it obliges us to seek for further light, which it does not impart, and which it ought not to impart.
(1.) The first question is this: What did Cain and Abel know about sacrifice? Were they told by a special revelation that they were to offer something, and what they were to offer? or had that revelation been made to Adam, and did they receive the knowledge by transmission? You say, ‘It may be very well to form guesses upon this point, but who can give us any satisfaction? The Scriptures are silent; what can we do but set up one speculation against another?’ The objection is a plausible one, to a great extent a substantial one, confirmed by the experience of those who have travelled this road. But yet men will ask themselves again and again, ‘How did this knowledge respecting the way of approaching God reach men in early days?’ They will feel that this demand has very much to do with another: ‘How do we become possessed of it now? Can we have that knowledge? Is it not all a dream?’ The most practical issues appear to be involved in some way with this inquiry; however we may wish to avoid it, we find it continually coming round to us and confronting us.
We are bound, I conceive, never to assume the existence of a decree which is not expressly announced to us. A decree is an open, explicit, formal thing; if it is to be obeyed, it must be set forth in intelligible terms. The book of Genesis has already recognised that principle. The command not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden is strict and definite. It is proclaimed as the precept which the parents of the race were to recollect and follow; the one which they could not disobey without bringing death upon themselves. If another precept of wider range and greater permanence, as definite and positive, was made either then or speedily afterwards, would the historian have left those whom he wrote to instruct, to guess or divine it?
But is it at variance with his principle, or with the style of his narrative, to assume that a revelation of God had preceded any acts of theirs, and was the cause of them? I am most anxious to lead you to notice this distinction; it is so important for the understanding of this subject, and of the whole doctrine of Scripture. I think you will find that throughout the Scriptures, an announcement about this or that act which it behoves a man to do or to leave undone, is called a statute or an ordinance. It is said to proceed from the Lord; He makes it, He enforces it. But a revelation is a discovery of Himself to a creature whom He has formed to know Him. Such revelations, when they mark out great epochs in the history, as that to Moses in the bush did, may be recorded with especial solemnity; but they are implied in every part of the narrative. It is constructed upon the assumption that they occur continually. The postulate of the Bible is, that man could not be what he is, if God did not hold converse with him; that this is his distinction from other creatures; that this is the root of all that he knows, the ground of what is right and reasonable in him. You cannot read the Bible narratives simply without perceiving that this is the maxim from which they start; people who will not acknowledge it as a true maxim, talk of the language they find in the sacred writings as characteristic of a Semitic people, or of the infancy of civilisation; but they cannot help perceiving that it is there, and that the essence, as well as the outward form, of the history depends upon it.
Although, then, we should certainly have expected Moses to inform us plainly if there had been a direct ordinance to Adam, or his sons, concerning the offering of fruits or animals, we have no right to expect that he should say more than he has said, to make us understand that they received this much more deep and awful kind of communication. If he has laid it down that man is made in the image of God—if he has illustrated that principle after the fall, by showing how God met Adam in the garden in the cool of the day, and awakened him to a sense of his disobedience—we do not want any further assurance that the children whom he begat would be born and would grow up under the same law. We should want a very distinct assurance, and we should have reason to be very much startled and perplexed if we received it, that this was not the case. Certainly, we have no such intimation. The history of Cain, as I shall show you presently, affirms in the most simple and distinct manner, that he as well as his brother was under the divine teaching, that he knew he was, and that he did not lose that knowledge till he had brought himself into an utterly inhuman condition.
Do not, I beseech you, try to realise this conviction, by imagining these two men to be different from others of their kind. Conceive of them just as the Scripture represents them—one as the tiller of the ground, the other as a keeper of sheep. They are working just as men have worked in all countries and in all generations since. They look now and then to the sky over their heads; generally they are busy with the stubborn earth, which they are weeding of its thorns and thistles, or with the animals they are watching and folding, and following when they wander. To such men there come thoughts of One who is ruling them as they rule the sheep, who in some strange way makes the seeds grow which they put in the ground. These thoughts are altogether wonderful; they cannot weigh them nor measure them; at times they are crushed by them; at times they are lifted up by them. No doubt their parents have told them that they have a Lord, and that He sees them, and that he is ordering their ways. Surely it is He who is making them feel His presence, urging them to confess Him. How shall they confess Him? What is the simplest of all possible methods, in which they can manifest their subjection? Ask yourselves: Is it speech? Is it some vehement phrase of thanksgiving, some passionate petition? These may come in time, but they cannot come first; they are not the most childlike way of testifying homage, not the one which ordinary human experience would lead us to look for, when One has revealed Himself to us whom we perceive but dimly, yet with whom we feel we have to do. Acts go before words. The shepherd takes the sheep; he desires to present it to this Ruler, who must ’be near him, whom he must find some way of acknowledging. The tiller of the ground takes the fruits of the earth; he would present these. You ask why one mode of presenting them occurs to him rather than another? I cannot tell, any more than I can tell you why one mode of tillage, or one mode of folding the sheep, occurs to him rather than another. There is no doubt one mode which is better than another; it may be shown him in due time, if he has not found it. Whatever he discovers on that subject, or any other, he receives. It is wisdom which is imparted to him, light which comes to him from the Source of light. I do not see what one can say different, or more, in the other case. There, too, the suggestion of the mode in which the service is to be performed is welcomed as divine; yet it is felt to be natural and reasonable. When once it has been practised, it seems as if there could scarcely be another mode. The historian, however, does not tell us in what way Abel or Cain offered their gifts; he merely says that they did offer them. Everything is done to make us feel that we are not reading of a time when laws have been established which prescribe the nature and method of sacrifice,—that we are in a much more elementary stage of culture; but that the Teacher in each stage is the same, and that we shall recognise Him in more advanced periods, if we understand His lessons in this.
(2.) It has been asked again, ‘Was not Abel right in presenting the animal, and Cain wrong in presenting the fruits of the earth? Must not the first have been obeying a precept, and the second transgressing one?’ I must apply the same rule as before. We are not told this; we may not put a notion of ours into the text. Moses does not inform us that Cain’s was an illegitimate kind of offering. It would have been strange if he had; for the fruits of the earth were offerings which the law that was given to the children of Israel required, as well as those of sheep and oxen. The latter may have had a deeper significance; I shall hope to consider that significance on some future occasion. But the former had certainly their own honour, and the notice of them here is not a disparaging one. It would appear from the narrative, as if each brother brought the gift which most suited his occupation. The pastoral occupation may suggest more living and human thoughts than that of the mere husbandman. The care of animals, with their caprices and their affections, may call forth a patience and a sympathy which are rarely found in him who is only busy with the inanimate clods. But our Lord revealed divine analogies in the sower and the seed, as well as in the shepherd and the sheep. It is not safe to disparage any work, or not to own it as pregnant with wisdom and mystery. God is surely present in all. It cannot be that he who in dependence and submission offers Him of the fruits of the ground, which it is his calling to rear, is therefore rejected, or will not be taught a deeper lore by other means, if at present he lacks it.
(3.) In saying this, I have anticipated a third, and still more serious question, which is raised by the words, And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. In their haste to determine why this difference was made between two brothers, many have resorted to the notion of some disobedience or ignorance on the part of Cain, in the choice of his gift. I have tried to show you that this opinion is not sanctioned by the passage in which we should have looked for some confirmation of it. The words of this clause are still more repugnant to it. When it is said, unto Abel and to his offering, unto Cain and to his offering, we are led to think that, at all events, the distinction is to be first sought in the persons; that the things which they bring are quite secondary.
It is needful to clear our minds of this confusion, though I am well aware that, when it is removed, the difficulty acquires a more terrible character than it had before. ‘These brothers, then,’ we say to ourselves, “without having done good or evil, each testifying his ‘gratitude in his own way, in the way which was most ’natural to him, are said to be respectively accepted and ’rejected, merely because it pleased God to accept one “and reject one. Are we not then met at the very thresh- ’hold of the Bible—in the very infancy of our race—with ’that tremendous assertion of arbitrary power, of simple “sovereignty, at the root of all things, which has driven,”and is driving, its thousands to despair, its tens of thou- “sands to Atheism? Are not the foundations of moral ’order and distinction sapped at the very opening of the “records from which we derive our belief in righteous-”ness and evil?’ I do not suppress the statement of this doubt, because I know how many are racked by it, and how many merely escape the torment by assuming that the subject is one which has nothing to do with them, and which it is safer not to think about. Would to God we all felt how much it has to do with us; how unsafe it is to put such a subject at a distance from us; how impossible it is for us to see into the nature of it, till it is brought near to us, close to our inmost being! There was never a more faithful description than that which Milton gives of the way in which evil spirits discuss such arguments:
‘Others apart, sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate;
Fixed Fate, Free Will, Foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.’
All ‘who sit apart upon a hill retired’ to amuse themselves with such reasonings, supposing that they have no concern with the crowds who are wandering below—supposing that these are topics for the wise to speculate about, not realities for living and suffering men—enter upon them in the same temper as those of whom our poet writes, and, whether their starting-point is a philosophical or a theological one, arrive at the same result. Only it is much more frightful when they talk their cruel metaphysics in the name of God; when they put him in place of the Fate which others more reverently speak of; when they pretend to build up a faith on the assumption that He is a being whom men generally cannot and should not trust.
Brethren, the Bible does not lead us in this way! It shows us how we may find another and more excellent way. Cain and Abel, in this early portion of it, are brought before us as both presenting their offerings to God. But the effect is different. They feel it to be different. We are not told how they came to feel it; whether any outward sign or token satisfied the one, and left the other discontented. The historian has not time to speak of such trifles. He only makes us understand that they did know it, and that Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. Thereby he at once connects the story with human experience,—with the experience of each human being. It is a fact which we cannot dispute, which all the world’s history confirms, that some have been the better for their prayers, and some very much the worse; that some have brought sacrifices and have gone away with their countenances shining as they had been angels, full of affection to their fellow-men, ready to do them all good,—that others have gone away with their countenances moody, discontented, wrathful, ready to wreak their vengeance on the first creature they met. There are these extreme differences,—there may be many degrees between each extreme—denoting that a blessing or a curse has followed the offering. It is so in what we call, formally, religious services; it is so with every ordinary work and service among our fellow-creatures. The Bible would not be a true book, if it did not exhibit this difference to us. We should look to see it exhibited early in such a record; for it must be one of those primary characteristics of human beings which will go through all periods, but which, by some means, make themselves manifest from the first. Having set it before us, we are left to find out much of the explanation from its own after-revelations. It does not anticipate the discovery which it is to make to us, by degrees, of the nature of Him who was governing both the shepherd and the tiller of the ground. It does not anticipate the discovery it will make to us of the mystery of evil, and of the sense of righteousness and good, which lay in the hearts of both—because they were not shepherds and tillers of the ground only, but men. It does, however, hasten at once to remove that which would make all these after-revelations incredible and self-contradictory. It does say, that God spake to Cain, and said, ‘Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.’ It does denounce at the very outset, the notion of a self-willed arbitrary being, who is making decrees for men, what they shall be, or what they shall not be; who of his pleasure is choosing one and rejecting another. It does set before us a righteous Being, who holds discourse with His creature, who treats him as a being made for right, and capable of following right; as only following wrong when he yields to the sin which lieth at the door, and not to that righteous Guide who is close to the same door, urging him to take the true and upward path. It does make us perceive that Cain defied that righteous Being and chose the evil guide, when he denied that he was his brother’s keeper, and became his murderer. It does show us that the issue of this crime, not of some fatal necessity, was, that he went out of the presence of God; that he became shut up in his atheism.
And thus, my brethren, the Bible brings this history to a test which we may all use, if we will; by which we may prove whether it is true or not; by which we may rid ourselves of hard and artificial interpretations of it. We know—we positively know—what the Cain offering is, because we have presented the like ourselves. We have prayed; and then have complained, just as the Jews did, that it has all been in vain, that no good has come of it. We have made sacrifices, and we have wondered that we got no reward for them. Perhaps we have been angry that, being so good, we have not been more favoured by fortune and circumstances. Perhaps we have been angry that, trying so hard to make ourselves good, we have succeeded so little. Perhaps we have had a general notion that God could not be persuaded to be gracious to us and to forgive us, in spite of all the sacrifices we have offered, and that we must try others which are more costly. In all cases, the countenance has fallen; in all cases, we have gone forth with thoughts that were anything but gracious and brotherly to our fellow-men. We have thought of them as more in the favour of Heaven, on one ground or another, than we were; we have felt envious and spiteful to them, if we have done them no actual mischief. Assuredly, this is the Cain spirit in us all; assuredly, we have often been led by it; and, if so, have we not had a proof, the clearest which could be given, that it was not an arbitrary Being we were opposing, but a righteous and gracious Being? Was not our sin that we supposed Him to be an arbitrary Being, whom we, by our sacrifices and prayers, were to conciliate? Was not this the false notion which lay at the root of all our discontent, of all the evil thoughts and acts which sprung out of it? We did not begin with trust, but with distrust; we did not worship God because we believed in Him, but because we dreaded Him—because we desired His presence, but because we wished to persuade Him not to come near us.
And does not this experience, brethren, enable us to understand the nature of that true and better sacrifice which Abel offered? Must not all its worth have arisen from this, that he was weak, and that he cast himself upon One whom he knew to be strong; that he was ignorant, and that he trusted in One, who he was sure must be wise; that he had the sense of death, and that he turned to One whence life must have come; that he had the sense of wrong, and that he fled to One who must be right? Was not his sacrifice the mute expression of this helplessness, dependence, confidence? And was not the acceptance of it, the pledge that the Creator is goodness and truth, and that all creatures have goodness and truth, so far as they disclaim them in themselves and seek them in Him?
If this be the case, we have had a glimpse into the nature of sacrifice, and into its connection with the nature of every human creature, which we may hope will expand into clearer and brighter vision.
We have seen that sacrifice has its ground in something deeper than legal enactments. We may have to consider how such enactments affect it; how they may strengthen or weaken the principle which is implied in it. We have seen that sacrifice infers more than the giving up of a thing. We shall have to ask how the person who presents it may be enabled to give up himself, and into what errors he may fall in his effort to do that. We have seen that sacrifice has something to do with sin, something to do with thanksgiving. We must ask the Bible to tell us what it has to do with each, and how, in its application to each of these purposes, it may be perverted. We have contemplated it in the case of two individuals. We ought to inquire whether the principle of it belongs to society, and how the social and the individual sacrifice are connected, how they may be separated to the peril of the community and its members. We have seen that sacrifice is offered by man, and yet that the sacrifice becomes evil and immoral, when the man attaches any value to his own act, and does not attribute the whole worth of it to God. It will be our duty to ask, how it is possible that man should present the sacrifice, of which God is at once the Author and the Acceptor. These are questions which the history we have considered to-day suggests, but does not answer. We shall have reason enough to be thankful for it, if it has discovered to us a principle which can never forsake us, or be contradicted, at any step of our future progress; which will receive illustration as much from our own lives as from the word of God; which we deny whenever we try to interpret the one without the aid of the other.
My brethren, we are told, in the Gospel for to-day, that ‘as Jesus was going up with His twelve Apostles to Jerusalem, He said to them, The Son of Man shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death; and the third day He shall rise again.’ The twelve Apostles, says the Evangelist, ‘understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, neither understood they the things which were spoken.’ Those who were to be teachers of the world had not yet learnt the mystery of sacrifice. They heard of it from the lips of Him whom they called Lord and Master. His words at present fell dead upon their ears. But the story goes on: ‘And it came to pass, that as He was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging: and hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace. But he cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought unto Him; and when he was come near, He asked him, saying, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto Him, Receive thy sight; thy faith hath saved thee.’
That blind man entered into the meaning of sacrifice, into which the Apostles had not yet entered. He felt his blindness. He trusted in a Deliverer. He could believe that that Deliverer had given himself up to bear his infirmities and carry his sicknesses. He could expect that there were wonders of His mercy, which a still more complete sacrifice would be needed to reveal.