“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star. Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, Who is our home.” Our author too suggests it; and it is true. We need not maintain it as an external fact in the history of the soul, according to the old doctrine, resuscitated in our own times, of Traducianism. The Apostle represents it rather as a feeling. There is a Christian consciousness of heaven, as if the soul had been there and longed to return. And if it is a glorious attainment of faith to regard heaven as a city, more consoling still is the hope of returning there, storm-tossed and weather-beaten, as to a home, to look up to God as to a Father, and to love all angels and saints as brethren in the household of God, over which Christ is set as a Son. Such a hope renders feeble, sinful men not altogether unworthy of God’s Fatherhood. For He is not ashamed to be called their God, and Jesus Christ is not ashamed to call them brethren.[270] The proof is, that God has prepared for them a settled abode in the eternal city. _Third_, the faith of Abraham is compared with the faith of Abel. In the case of Abel faith is more than a realisation of the unseen. For Cain also believed in the existence of an invisible Power, and offered sacrifice. We are expressly told in the narrative[271] that “Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” Yet he was a wicked man. The Apostle John says[272] that “Cain was of the Evil One.” He had the faith which St. James ascribes to the demons, who “believe there is one God, and shudder.”[273] He was possessed with the same hatred, and had also the same faith. It was the union of the two things in his spirit that made him the murderer of his brother. Our author points out very clearly the difference between Cain and Abel. Both sacrificed, but Abel desired righteousness. He had a conscience of sin, and sought reconciliation with God through his offering. Indeed, some of the most ancient authorities, for “God bearing witness in respect to his gifts,” read “he bearing witness to God on the ground of his gifts;” that is, Abel bore witness by his sacrifice to God’s righteousness and mercy. He was the first martyr, therefore, in two senses. He was God’s witness, and he was slain for his righteousness. But, whether we accept this reading or the other, the Apostle presents Abel before us as the man who realised the great moral conception of righteousness. He sought, not the favours of an arbitrary Sovereign, not the mere mercy of an omnipotent Ruler, but the peace of the righteous God. It was through Abel that faith in God thus became the foundation of true ethics. He acknowledged the immutable difference between right and