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The Story of Redemption
The curse upon the ground at first had been felt but lightly; but
now a double curse rested upon it. Cain and Abel represent the two
classes, the righteous and the wicked, the believers and unbelievers,
which should exist from the fall of man to the second coming of
Christ. Cain’s slaying his brother Abel represents the wicked who
will be envious of the righteous and will hate them because they
are better than themselves. They will be jealous of the righteous
and will persecute and put them to death because their right-doing
condemns their sinful course.
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Adam’s life was one of sorrow, humility, and continual repen-
tance. As he taught his children and grandchildren the fear of the
Lord, he was often bitterly reproached for his sin which resulted in
so much misery upon his posterity. When he left the beautiful Eden,
the thought that he must die thrilled him with horror. He looked
upon death as a dreadful calamity. He was first made acquainted
with the dreadful reality of death in the human family by his own
son Cain slaying his brother Abel. Filled with the bitterest remorse
for his own transgression, and deprived of his son Abel, and looking
upon Cain as his murderer, and knowing the curse God pronounced
upon him, bowed down Adam’s heart with grief. Most bitterly did
he reproach himself for his first great transgression. He entreated
pardon from God through the promised Sacrifice. Deeply had he
felt the wrath of God for his crime committed in Paradise. He wit-
nessed the general corruption which afterward finally provoked God
to destroy the inhabitants of the earth by a flood. The sentence of
death pronounced upon him by his Maker, which at first appeared
so terrible to him, after he had lived some hundreds of years, looked
just and merciful in God, to bring to an end a miserable life.
As Adam witnessed the first signs of decaying nature in the
falling leaf and in the drooping flowers, he mourned more deeply
than men now mourn over their dead. The drooping flowers were not
so deep a cause of grief, because more tender and delicate; but the
tall, noble, sturdy trees to cast off their leaves, to decay, presented
before him the general dissolution of beautiful nature, which God
had created for the special benefit of man.
To his children and to their children, to the ninth generation, he
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delineated the perfections of his Eden home, and also his fall and its
dreadful results, and the load of grief brought upon him on account