not to rest. Conscience drives a man 'through dry places, seeking
rest, and finding none.' All sin makes us homeless wanderers. There
is but one home for the heart, one place of repose for a man,
namely, in the heart of God, the secret place of the Most High; and
he who, for his sin, durst not enter there, is driven forth into 'a
salt land and not inhabited,' and has to wander wearily there. The
legend of the wandering Jew, and that other of the sailor, condemned
for ever to fly before the gale through stormy seas, have in them a
deep truth. The earthly punishment of departing from God is that we
have not where to lay our heads. Every sinner is a fugitive and a
vagabond. But if we love God we are still wanderers indeed, but we
are 'pilgrims and sojourners with Thee.'

9. Cain's remonstrance completes the tragic picture. We see in it
despair without penitence. He has no word of confession. If he had
accepted his chastisement, and learned by it his sin, all the
bitterness would have passed away. But he only writhes in agony, and
adds, to the sentence pronounced, terrors of his own devising. God
had not forbidden him to come into His presence. But he feels that
he dare not venture thither. And he was right; for, whether we
suppose that some sensible manifestation of the divine presence is
meant by 'Thy face' or no, a man who had unrepented sin on his
conscience, and murmurings in his heart, could not hold intercourse
with God; nor would he wish to do so. Thus we learn again the lesson
that sin separates from our Father, and that chastisements, not
accepted as signs of His love, build up a black wall between God and
us.

Nor had Cain been told that his life was in danger. But his
conscience made a coward of him, as of us all, and told him what he