"And the Lord set a mark upon Cain." What Lord? says the infidel. He accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother, without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers. We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral, however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages, of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just, to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, _O Altitudo_! O the height and depth! with all our strength. "The gods Elohim, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took for wives those whom they chose." This imagination, again, may be traced in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a race of giants.