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Gen 4:1-6

The offerings of Cain and Abel have suggested a difficulty to those who know that ceremonial worship did not have its rise until a later period, that is, until the Ancient Church was established among the descendants of Noah; but no difficulty really exists. The original Adamic Church had an internal perception of the correspondence of natural objects to spiritual realities; all of their compositions were structured according to the law of correspondence and their mode of conversing was correspondential. They employed the objects of nature to express their spiritual ideas. This was especially true of the animal kingdom. When, for instance, we read of Adam giving names to the animals that are said to have been brought to him, we are not to think of natural names given to natural animals, but instead we are to think of the church giving a celestial quality to the various affections and thoughts of the mind. So of the fruits of the ground. They were, to the Most Ancient Church, symbols of the fruits of the mind. The worship or offering of Cain and Abel was not therefore what we understand by ceremonial worship. This did not begin until in the Ancient and succeeding churches, men lost the spiritual ideas of worship and formed a worship with the things that in the beginning were spoken of only as symbols of celestial affections and thoughts.

The period in the Adamic Church pictured to us in the story of Cain and Abel, was not far enough removed from the original state of the church as to require ceremonial worship. This state came, however; and when it did come, the things, the names of which only were mentioned in connection with worship, began to be used. Here was the origin of outward sacrificial worship. In the original Adamic Church, Cain was the name given to those who made religion to consist in faith without charity. The people of this Cainitish sect in the Most Ancient Church who adopted this doctrine had their own mode and principle of worship. At first there was something of charity among the Cainites. They did not begin as they ended. They underwent a gradual decline. Each step they took was away from their original regard for charity, until they finally eliminated it entirely from their lives and from their worship of the Lord.

This is pointed out in the allegory itself. It is said: "And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord." Adam when expelled from the garden was sent forth to till the ground from whence he was taken. The ground Adam was sent forth to till was the external man. The external man is the ground on which the celestial and spiritual states of the internal man rest. They must be grounded in what is natural; for the external mind is to the more interior things of the soul what the earth is to the body.

The original Adamic Church was made of the dust of this ground, which means that as the most ancient man rose into the life of celestial regeneration, a human quality was given to the most external plane of his mind. The Lord, in the gospel, uses the ground in a spiritual sense. He said: "The kingdom of heaven is as if a man should cast seed into the ground." And in the parable of the Sower, He speaks of the seed falling on "good ground." It is plainly to be seen that in these instances, the Lord used natural ground in a symbolic sense as denoting the external mind of man.

Now, notice one important thing. Cain did not bring to the Lord an offering of the fruit of seeds sown in the ground. He brought of the fruit of the ground and not the fruit of the seeds. Do we see the point? The fruit of the ground represented simply the works - the deeds - of the external man. By the external man, the church writings do not mean man's physical body. In the psychology of the church, the external man is formed of the affections, thoughts and knowledge that are gathered from the natural world and which form the exterior plane of man as a spiritual being. The natural body, strictly speaking, is no part of man. It is only a material scaffolding within which the external man and the higher spiritual man are being reared.

The internal man is created on a level with heaven. He is so formed that he can see and love the things of heaven. The external man is created on a level with the world and is formed to see and love the things of the world.

In a perfectly regenerated man these two, the internal man and the external, act as one. But in the man whose loves are evil, the internal man is closed to heaven and his external man only is open and active. The quality of the external mind in such a man is evil. He is separated, in the motive of his life, from all that is of heaven. He becomes a worldly man, no matter how much memory knowledge he may have of spiritual things; and the good he does is done from himself and not from the acknowledgement of the Lord. This is what is meant by the ground of which Cain was a tiller. The religion, therefore, of the Cainites had not anything from the Lord in it. It was the fruit of the ground - mere knowledge, mere form - a body that had no soul in it. How could it be acceptable unto the Lord? It was heartless. Faith alone can never be a thing of Divine regard. Faith as a thing by itself is mere self-derived intelligence. It belongs to the external man separated from its proper internal - the fruit of the ground - and is not accepted by the Lord. This is why Cain's offering was rejected.

Look now at Abel. The Lord had respect unto Abel's offering because he, as representing the branch of the Adamic Church principled in charity, brought to the Lord the offering of a sincere and good heart. Under the ceremonial law, offerings taken from the flock were lambs, sheep, rams and goats. These stood for the good things of charity. The Abelites were full of innocence and charity. They worshipped the Lord with their whole heart. Their faith was only the form of their charity, and their charity consisted in shunning evils as sins against God and in doing good from Him.

There is no real charity without innocence; and innocence is the quality of singlemindedness - a willingness to be led by the Lord alone. As Abel stands, in this allegory, for all who preserved in the church the principle and life of charity, his bringing to the Lord, as an offering, the firstlings of the flock, which were lambs, therefore the quality of the worship of the Abelites that made it acceptable unto the Lord was innocence. All that made them men of charity with its innocence of life, came to them from the Lord, and they acknowledged Him in every form of their charitable and innocent lives, and worshipped Him from the good of charity.

The Abelites were not without faith, but their faith was a living and doing faith - a faith made perfect by love. They knew their Heavenly Father's will; they believed His word; but they also did their Heavenly Father's will and Word. This is why the Lord had respect unto Abel's offering.

When Cain's offering was rejected, it is said: "He was very wroth and his countenance fell." How expressive this is! Faith alone has in it the wrath that is to come to those who adopt it as a principle of religion. Cain's anger is the evil that fills the place in the heart that charity should occupy. The falling of Cain's countenance expresses the dreadful state of those long-ago faith-alone people of the Adamic age; for the changes that take place with the countenance indicate corresponding and causal changes in the mind. With Abel it was different. Worship from charity was acceptable to the Lord; and the Abelites must have experienced in their hearts the sweetness of their communion in worship, with their good and Divine Father in heaven.