till the millennium. It is not to be in this dispensation. The great Master speaks to many a hot zealot in such tender and glorious words as these: "Do not go in your zeal to pull up the tares, lest in pulling them up, you pull up the wheat also let both grow together till the Lord of the harvest come." It is each man's duty to see that his heart is right with God, to be far more anxious to know what is in me than what is around me, to have more introspection into his own conscience, to see if that be right in his own sight, rather than to have a cautious, critical investigation to see whether A is what he should be, or whether B is what he professes. The church of Jesus Christ, we are told, is a mixed body, and it will continue to be so till One, having the authority, make the separation.

The place of worship is nothing, the worshippers are all. Our Lord has most truly defined it, "Wherever two or three are met in my name" - and Cain and Abel met in Christ's name, they were professed followers, one a true, and the other not a true, follower of Christ- "Wheresoever two or three meet in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Now this is the root of a Christian church. All beyond this is development for convenience, for order, for decency, for use; but the first Christian church - the normal idea of a Christian church is, "Where two or three are met in my name." The architect builds the house; but unless the queen consent to dwell in it, it is not a palace. The builder raises the cathedral; but unless the Lord of glory come down and consecrate it, it is no church. It is not dead stones, it is not carved rafters, it is not exquisite imagery, that makes a church; but it is a company of men who fear and love the Saviour, meet in his name, rely on his intercession, and seek his blessing. There is a church, whether it meet in a barn, in a dungeon, in the catacombs of Rome, on the hill-side, on the highway—there is a true church of

the Lord Jesus Christ. The visible church, then, began thus early. The Christian church is not the creation of Martin Luther, of Paul, of Isaiah, or of Abraham; it began the instant sin and grace were introduced in the world. Its external names have varied, but the thing has been the same. As it is, for instance, with men, who are called Greeks, and Romans, and Jews, so are they called Christians, and Protestants; but it is man running through all the great aboriginal thing that is in all, that cannot be separated from any. So we have the Christian church, the Patriarchal church, the Jewish church, the Protestant church; but it is the same church with different names, and different phases, presenting different aspects. We have the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the White Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the German Ocean, the Atlantic; but it is the same sea in its different relations locking and interlocking with the dry land. It was the church of Christ when Abel was its minister, its true son, and its martyr. The Christian church now has different forms and aspects; but it is the same church, because the same substantial creed, the same Saviour, the same Lord, and the same hope.

I look now at the respective sacrifices. Why was Cain's rejected? Why was Abel's accepted? I answer, Cain's was rejected because he had not faith. But, it is said, reject a man and his soul because he has not a form of belief! It was because he did not believe in things unseen, and things hoped for; because he did not believe in a Saviour, because he did not believe that the woman's seed should bruise the serpent's head-the great promise that God made amid the wrecks of Paradise, and gilded its decay with an aureole of unearthly glory. "The woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head;" that is, There is a coming Saviour. Now Abel had faith in this; Cain had no faith in this; and if no belief in Christ, then no belief or

faith in sin, and in the depth, and dye, and wickedness of sin. In fact, Cain, to use a modern expression, ignored the Fall. He rejected the Fall as a thing that had not been; or, as many people do now regard the promise of the Saviour, as a fact like that of Alexander the Great, an historical person with whom they have no connection. He looked upon the world as if the Fall had never been, as if ruin had never smitten it, and as if all things were, in his day, precisely as they were when Adam and Eve walked in Paradise, and responded to the voice of their Father, whose footsteps they heard at morning and at eventide. We not only gather that one offered by faith an acceptable sacrifice, and the other, through want of faith, a rejected sacrifice; but we gather this from the very nature of their offerings. Cain took of the fruits and flowers of the ground and offered them unto God. I have no doubt that this was one of Adam's and Eve's offerings before they fell; and Cain continued the same practice, rejecting the fact of a great disruption, treating it as if it had never been; and therefore, when Cain was about to offer to God, he walked forth at the sunrising, and gathered flowers, not yet so blasted as ours are, because sin had not then made such inroads into creation as it has since made. He gathered the most beautiful flowers that still grew beneath the cherubim that guarded the gates of Eden from access. He wove these flowers into a garland; he laid that garland upon the altar of God, and he stood before God, and said, "O God, thy smiles gave to these flowers their exquisite tints. Thy breath, O God, gave to these roses this delicious fragrance. Thy fingers and thy great wisdom shaped every petal, and trimmed it as exquisitely as if thy wisdom had nothing else to do. And I take these flowers, Great Creator, Great Preserver, and I lay them upon thy altar, as an offering expressive of my

belief in thee as the Creator of all, and of my trust in thee as the Preserver of all. Amen." The offering was rejected, and the offerer too.

Abel, whose trade was a shepherd, did not take what Cain took, nor did he join in Cain's offering. Abel was a Protestant, protesting against the service of Cain, because a wrong one. And, therefore, Abel, when he offered to God, separated the firstlings of his flock. He took, in other words, the most beautiful and the most healthy and the most unblemished lamb of his flock, - and what did he do? What human nature, at the first blush, would have recoiled from. He plunged his knife into that innocent creature's throat, he laid it a victim on the altar, and he said, "O God, my Father, with my brother Cain, I, too, own thee as my Creator, and as my Preserver; but I go further than my brother Cain. I have sinned. O Father, sin hath entered into the world, and death by sin, and I slay this lamb in token of my belief that I, too, deserve to die; and I offer this my lamb to thee in token of, and to prefigure, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And I look to thee, O God, to take away that sin which must otherwise sink me for ever, by that blood which must be shed in the fulness of time, without the shedding of which there is no remission, and by the cleansing efficacy of which I may be presented before thee without spot or blemish, or any such thing." God accepted Abel's offering, and the offerer too. Now, if we had no Bible to guide us, we should say, Cain offered the most beautiful and acceptable offering, and he ought to have been accepted; and if ignorant of the Bible, we should say, How is it possible that God could accept the painful destruction of an innocent and inoffensive lamb? The answer is, Cain's offering showed, if we had not the record of the text, that he had no faith in the Fall, or in the entrance of sin, or in the

promise of a Saviour, or in cleansing through his blood. And Abel's offering showed that he had faith, or believed in death by sin, and accepted by faith that Saviour slain from the foundation of the world, by whose blood, Abel, the first martyr, and the very last in the history of our world, must be equally cleansed and accepted by God.

We discover, in this one fact, the origin of animal sacrifices. We see that man, left to his own suggestions, would not likely have thought that a good God could approve of the slaughter, the painful slaughter, of an inoffensive animal; that it must therefore have been taught him by God, or he never would have practised it. I hold, therefore, that, in heathen countries, where animal sacrifices are found, we have not the invention of man, but traditional usages, borrowed from the rubric of an original or God-taught age. That it was so, that they were taught by God to offer these sacrifices, is plain from this one fact, Adam and Eve were clothed, we are told, with the skins of animals. For what purpose did they slay these animals? They did not eat flesh till after the Deluge; and therefore the inevitable inference is, that these animals were killed for sacrifices; and that the first pair were clothed with their skins, as prefigurative of the necessity of their being clothed with the spotless robe of the lamb, slain in the fulness of time. If we investigate the Levitical economy, we shall find there, that the offering of lambs, and goats, and bullocks, was the every day duty of the priests of God; that it was a divine appointment, and therefore not the invention of man, but the inspiration of his Maker. God had no more pleasure in the slaughter of a lamb than in the gathering of flowers

one would suppose less. Evidently therefore these victims were appointed to be slain, not for God's sake, but for man's sake; man needed to have it riveted in his very soul, imprinted deeply on his heart, by seeing constantly the very