All Authority
Only gradually did the knowledge of all their curse come home to our first parents. “The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children.” Science joins with religion to warn us of this solemn fact. The evil that we harbor within ourselves, we transmit in some form to our children. They inherit always something of our weaknesses as well as of our better gifts. Perhaps when Cain was born his father and mother still harbored something of resentment and bitterness toward God; for the boy grew into a man sullen of mood and selfish, stern and fierce of wrath.
The parents taught both him and Abel to worship God, to sacrifice to heaven some portion of their possessions by building altars and burning the offered gifts, so that the smoke rose to the sky. Abel made his offerings gladly, so that God was pleased by his pure and trusting faith. But Cain acted as Eve and Adam had in paradise, with suspicion of the Lord, distrust of His intent, and with secret anger. Therefore God rejected the lip service of Cain and reproved him. The picture suggests this by showing the smoke of Cain’s sacrifice beaten back from heaven by the wind, and smoldering round him, while from Abel’s altar the vapor rises fair, and the light of God streams about him.
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