1. The blood of Abel testified to the actual infliction of _the penalty of death_ which had been passed upon the race. It is evident that Adam and Eve could not have fully understood the full meaning of the curse which had been pronounced upon them. Spiritual death, consisting in a loss of holiness and separation from God's favor, they had already suffered. And they might have had some vague idea of that death which would close their earthly life, and dissolve the body back to dust; but they could know very little about it. They had never seen it. The death of animals offered in sacrifice would help their conceptions very little. Anxiously they questioned what more there was in the sentence which God had pronounced upon them. Time wore along; their family increased: sons and daughters grew up around them, and yet they had never witnessed an instance of death. Perhaps they began to doubt whether there was any thing more in the curse than what they had already suffered. With ruddy cheeks and growing strength, their posterity increased for more than a century after the fall. Their children's children smiled upon their knees. As yet they had never seen a corpse; as yet the earth had not a single grave. But from the blood of Abel there came a message of unutterable anguish, which dispelled the faintest hope of escape from the threatened penalty. Around his body, stretched on the bloody ground, gathered Adam and Eve and their descendants, and there in heartrending agony and distraction gazed on the dead man's ghastly features, and read in them the first lesson of death. Yes, there was death!--death, which they had long talked about, and wondered what it was--death, which they had never seen before: it had come at last. The awful revelation was before them. All doubt, all questioning about their fatal doom was gone. The king of terrors had entered upon his dominions, and set up his ghostly sceptre over every thing that breathed. There was his first conquest. And from that blood there went forth a voice which published to all the living the execution of the curse. Henceforth all hope of escape must be cut off. The work of death had now begun. Adam and all his race must prepare to die.