In Genesis 4:17 we are told that Cain builds a city. He has a thriving, prosperous family. Through
their skill and industry the face of the world flourishes and looks well. All is respectable, and the
people are pleasant and friendly to one another. The murder of Abel is forgotten. Man does not
hear the cry of blood, but rather the sound of the harp and the organ. His inventions have stifled
his convictions. Cain is an honorable man, but he is as thoroughly separated from the presence
of God as when his hand was freshly stained with the blood of his brother. The ease and
indifference with which Cain could turn his back upon the Lord, and upon the recollection of his
brother’s blood, is astounding. He got a promise of security (verse 15), and that was all he cared
for. And quickly, under his hand, accommodations and delights of all sorts fill the scene.

In some sense this is very alarming. But is not this the "course of the world"? Was it not man that
slew the Lord Jesus? Does not the guilt of that deed lie at every man’s door? And what is the
course of the world but the ease and indifference of Cain in this highest state of guilt? The earth
has borne the cross of Christ; and yet man can busy himself with garnishing and furnishing the
earth, and making life on it convenient and pleasurable without God. This is solemn and awful
when we look at it in full divine light. Cain was a respectable citizen of the world, but all the
while a heartless forgetter of the sorrows of Abel! His ease and respectability are the blackest
features of his history. He went away as soon as he got a promise of security; and that promise
he used, not to soften his heart and overwhelm him with convictions of all that had happened, but
to give him full occasion to indulge and magnify himself.

We read in the New Testament of "the way of Cain" (Jude 11). It may be_in fact it is_run by
others. And what a way does this chapter show it to be! Cain was an infidel, a man of his own
religion_not obedient in faith to God’s revelation. He practiced the works of the liar and the
murderer; he hated the light; he cared nothing for the presence of God which his sin had forfeited,
or for the sorrow of his brother which his hand had inflicted. And, as such a one, he could take
pains to make himself happy and honorable in the very place which thus witnessed against him.

Is this "the way of Cain"? Is man still like this? Yes! and nature outlives a thousand restraints and
improvements. For at the end of Christendom’s career it will even then be said of a generation,
"They have gone in the way of Cain" (Jude 11).

This is deeply solemn, beloved, had we but hearts to feel it. There is, however, a rescued,
separated people. Seth’s family are after another order altogether. They are not seen in cities,
furnished with accommodations and pleasures, apart "from the presence of the Lord" like Cain;
but as the household of God, they are separated from that world that lay "in the wicked one," to
the faith and worship of His Name. They are strikingly opposed to the way of Cain, and
remarkably sensitive to the way of God.

The details about these believers living prior to the flood are very scanty; but through it all there
is this heavenly character. They do not supply history for the world; but they do supply instruction
for the Church. Their conduct asks, "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
and what communion hath light with darkness?" (2 Cor. 6:14). Their religion is characterized by

separation from the world, and so are their habits.

They "call upon the name of the Lord." The name of the Lord is the revelation He has been
pleased to make of Himself. Immanuel, Jesus, the Lord our Righteousness, Jehovah, God
Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit_ these are among His names graciously and
gloriously published by Himself. And "to call upon the name of the Lord" was service or worship
of God in spirit and in truth.

This was the religion of these earliest saints. It was the religion of simple faith and hope. They
worshiped God, and apart from the world they waited in hope. "The work of faith" and "the
patience of hope" are seen in them. Something of the Thessalonian spirit breathed in them. For
they served the living and true God, and waited for His Son from heaven, who had already
delivered them (1 Thess. 1:9,10).

In their ways and habits the family of Seth are only seen as a people walking across the surface
of the earth, till their bodies are either laid under it, or are translated to heaven above it. All
around them is as Babylon to them, and their harps are on the willows (Psalm 137). Cain’s family
have all the music to themselves. But Seth’s family are a risen people. Their citizenship is in
heaven. They look for no estates or cities. Nothing is told us of their place or their business. They
are strangers where even Adam was once at home and, much more, where Cain still was.

They are the earliest witnesses of this heavenly stranger-ship. They leave the world to Cain. There
is not the symptom of a struggle, nor the breath of a complaint. They say not, nor think of saying,
"Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me" (Luke 12:13), In habits of
life and principles of conduct, they are as distinct from their injurious brother as though they were
of another race or in another world. Cain’s family make all the world’s history. They build its
cities, they promote its arts, they conduct its trade, they invent its pleasures and pastimes. But in
all this Seth’s family are not seen. The one generation call their cities after their own names; the
other call themselves by the name of the Lord.

We may bless the Lord for this beautiful portrayal of heavenly strangership on earth and ask for
grace to know some of its living power in our own souls. After this pattern the Lord would have
us in the world, but not of it; of heaven, though not as yet in it (except in Christ). Paul, in the
Holy Spirit, would so have us, taking example from those whose "conversation is in heaven"
(Phil. 3:20). Peter, in the same Spirit, would so have us "as strangers and pilgrims" abstaining
"from fleshly lusts" (1 Peter 2:11). James summons us, in the same Spirit, to know that "the
friendship of the world is enmity with God" (James 4:4). And John separates us as by a stroke:
"We are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19).

May God grant that our practical lives as saints of God might become more and more delivered
from "the way of Cain," from association with the world in all its most respectable as well as its
basest forms. May we rather become more like the family of Seth, separated unto and calling
"upon the name of the Lord." It is for the Church, surely, to walk in this elevation and
separateness. What is according to the call of God, and what worthy of heavenly hopes, but this?
Compared to these and like witnesses, our testimony is feeble indeed.

Lead us, Lord, we pray Thee!