The Way of Cain. Jude 11.
By E. P. Marvin
ATTENTIVE students of the word may see that the reference in Jude 11 to "the way of Cain," points to worship and not to murder. Abel's worship is commended and Cain's condemned, in Heb. 11:4. The epistle addresses professed worshipers and not murderers, mere formalists who mingled in the "feasts of charity." Cain was a type of the flesh, or of the natural man. He acted in worship, upon the self-willed and æsthetic impulse of his nature. He rejected God's symbol of blood, and in will-worship offered what, in the judgment of the natural man, was far more suitable and pleasing—the fruits of the earth, probably decorated with flowers. Through these rather than the blood, he proposed to worship God. No stretch of imagination is required to see "this way of Cain" in many of our modern churches. Nor should we fail to see that such practices violate the second commandment, as interpreted by our standards, which forbids "all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving any religious worship not instituted by God himself." If we begin to introduce at option new forms and symbols, where shall we pause short of Rome? If flowers and fruits are in churches simply for æsthetic admiration, they detract from spiritual worship and impression. If symbols or aids, they dishonor the blood, and savor of idolatry. . . . The Reformers, guided by the word and Spirit, abolished the high ecclesiastical art of Rome. Who now supposes that the elaborate musical performances in our chapels of ease and entertainment are inspired by the Holy Spirit, or that they promote spiritual worship? Are they not especially intended to raise pew stock in the world's market, and so often inspired by brandy, vanity, and irreverence, that the proverb is everywhere heard, "The devil is in the choir"? Instead of keeping our young people from the opera and the theatre by these unblest entertainments, the number attending has increased five or tenfold since this worldly policy was invented. We are thus giving them horrid poison, and whetting their carnal appetites for the real thing, found in the play-house, among professionals. In such an atmosphere of showy forms, and in the awful presence of wealth and pride, professional peril overhangs the head of any preacher who earnestly presents the humbling doctrines of the gospel, rings out the three great R's and warns sinners to "flee the wrath to come."—E. P. Marvin, in Messiah's Herald.