Cain's not doing well, has no moral bearing to warrant its
appearance here, and compels us to travel an inconveniently long
distance back in the context to find an antecedent to the 'his' and
'him' of our text. It seems to be more in consonance, therefore,
with the archaic style of the whole narrative, and to yield a
profounder and worthier meaning, if we recognise the boldness of the
metaphor, and take 'sin' as the subject of the whole. Now all this
puts in concrete, metaphorical shape, suited to the stature of the
bearers, great and solemn truths. Let us try to translate them into
more modern speech.

1. First think, then, of that wild beast which we tether to our
doors by our wrong-doing.

We talk about 'responsibility' and 'guilt,' and 'consequences that
never can be effaced,' and the like. And all these abstract and
quasi-philosophical terms are implied in the grim, tremendous
metaphor of my text 'If thou doest not well, a tiger, a wild beast,
is crouching at thy door.' We are all apt to be deceived by the
imagination that when an evil deed is done, it passes away and
leaves no permanent results. The lesson taught the childlike
primitive man here, at the beginning, before experience had
accumulated instances which might demonstrate the solemn truth, was
that every human deed is immortal, and that the transitory evil
thought, or word, or act, which seems to fleet by like a cloud, has
a permanent being, and hereafter haunts the life of the doer, as a
real presence. If thou doest not well, thou dost create a horrible
something which nestles beside thee henceforward. The momentary act
is incarnated, as it were, and sits there at the doer's doorpost
waiting for him; which being turned into less forcible but more