"SUNDOWNER" AND ISRAEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 656, 1 February 1952, Page 5

"SUNDOWNER" AND ISRAEL

Sir,-I am interested in this discussion about the story of Cain and Abel, which puzzled me from childhood. In the light of pfesent-day thought it would seem to put the emphasis in the wrong -place. Now, as a teacher of Bible lessons in school, I have had to tind a way of using the story to the advantage ‘of my small hearers. As I take it, my task is

to acquaint them with the contents of the Bible, but unless I can link this to their own experience in some way, I might as well tell them stories from Hans Andersen or Aesop. Reading the story of Cain and Abel with this in view, I find that Cain was indignant and resentful at the outcome of their sacrifice. And God said, "Why art thou wroth? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door." It was not the nature of the sacrifice that was in question, but something which went before, and which both God and Cain knew. This reminds me of the injunction of the Lord Jesus, "If thou have anything against thy brother, go and be reconciled with him, and then come and lay thine. offering on -the ‘altar,", Cain’s actions after his talk with God furnish me with my "link" for ‘the children, and I tell them that he’ had a violent temper, which he allowed to get the better of him, so far in this case that he slew his brother-a climax no doubt often repeated in the lives of people of undisciplined violent temper, an unpfemeditated blow, *hardér ‘than it was judged to be, So, I use.this as a text or a little talk on self-control and a right. attitude’ towards 6éthers-"Am I my brother’s keeper?". The point is, as I see it, not in the nature of the gift, but in the heart of the piver.

H.

HARRIS