On the other hand, by the method taken, the nature, deserts, and consequences of sin were unmistakably shown, by its being embodied and publicly exhibited in visible acts and their consequences. Thus the transgression of Adam, regarded in its connection with the prohibition which had been emphatically enjoined, with his arraignment, and the sentence pronounced upon him, and with his expulsion from Eden, and the curse and blight visibly produced upon the earth on which he was doomed to toil for a subsistence, and at length to decline and die, furnished illustrations of the indescribable turpitude of his apostasy, and of the moral and physical evils that were among its just and legitimate consequences, which neither then nor now could be conveyed in an abstract statement. So the hypocrisy, envy, infidelity, and malignity of Cain, regarded in connection with the knowledge he had of the consequences of Adam's transgression, and of the laws, obligations, and duties which were binding upon him; and in connection with the remorse visibly depicted on his countenance, his expulsion from the accustomed place of worship and of intercourse with Jehovah, and the spectacle he was to exhibit as a fugitive and a vagabond, despised and shunned as an outcast, for whom the earth, in respect to his tillage of it, was specially cursed and blighted; furnished, to the view of all intelligent observers, lessons and illustrations which could in no other conceivable way have been exhibited. The like may be observed concerning the spectacle of violence and corruption which all but universally prevailed before the deluge, and on account of which that exterminating judgment upon the race, with its visible accompaniments and its physical effects upon the earth itself and its irrational inhabitants, was, in the view of the whole universe of accountable creatures, specially and judicially inflicted. Also, concerning the notorious and awful wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the exterminating retribution visited upon them, making them a public and perpetual example. And, omitting to specify less conspicuous and individual instances to the like effect in the history of the patriarchs, or that of the treatment of the Israelites in Egypt, and its counterpart in the plagues which ensued, or any of later date, it is manifest that this method of manifestation, instruction, warning, and reproof, was characteristic of those early times.