hore watching a line of crabs make for the sea, and
squashes the twentieth for mere variety and sport. If Jehovah is
requested to explain his loves and hates, he answers with Shylock, "it
is my whim." It was his whim to love Jacob and hate Esau, and it was no
doubt his whim to accept Abel's offering and reject Cain's.

Mythologically the acceptance of Abel's offering and the rejection of
Cain's are easily intelligible. The principle of sacrifice was deeply
imbedded in Judaism. Without shedding of blood there could be no
remission of sin. Under the Levitical law the duties of the priesthood
chiefly consisted in burning the sin offerings of the people. It is,
therefore, not difficult to understand how the Jewish scribes who wrote
or revised the Pentateuch after the Babylonish captivity should give
this coloring to the narrative of Genesis; nor is it hard to conceive
that for centuries before that date the popular tradition had already,
under priestly direction, taken such a color, so as to give the oldest
and deepest sanction to the doctrine of animal sacrifice.

It must also be noticed that Abel, who found favor with God, was "a
keeper of sheep," while Cain, whose offering was contemned, was "a
tiller of the ground." This accords with the strongest traditional
instincts of the Jews. The Persian religion decidedly favors
agriculture, which it regards as a kind of divine service. Brahminism
and Buddhism countenance it still more decidedly, and even go to the
length of absolutely prohibiting the slaughter of animals. The Jews,
on the other hand, esteemed the pastoral life as the noblest, and
the Hebrew historian very naturally represented it as protected and
consecrated by the blessing of Jehovah, while agriculture was declared
to have been imposed on man as a _punishment_. The nomadic origin of the
Jews accounts for their antipathy to that pursuit, which survived
and manifested itself, long after they settled in Palestine, devoted
themselves to the cultivation of the soil, and enacted agrarian laws.
They always esteemed agriculturalists as inferior to shepherds; men of
superior attainments in their histories and legends rose from pastoral
life; and kings kept their flocks. David, the man after God's own heart,
and the national hero of the Jews, was a shepherd, and the Lord came
to him while he was keeping his father's sheep. Moses was keeping his
father-in-law's sheep when God appeared to him in the burning bush at
Mount