---

Very little idea can be formed of the sufferings of Cain, when we read that God visited him with life-long remorse. John Randolph, in his last illness, said to his doctor: "Remorse! Remorse! Remorse! Let me see the word! show it to me in a dictionary." There being none at hand, he asked the surgeon to write it out for him; then, having looked at it carefully, he exclaimed: "Remorse! you do not know what it means." Happy are those who never know. It gives, as Dr. Thomas says, a terrible form and a horrible voice to everything beautiful and musical without. It is recorded of Bessus — a native of Polonia, in Greece — that the notes of birds were so insufferable to him, as they never ceased chirping the murder of his father — that he would tear down their nests and destroy both young and old. The music of the sweet songsters of the grove was as the shrieks of hell to a guilty conscience. And how terribly would the familiar things of life become to Cain a source of agony!The kiss of his children shall scorch him like flame,
When he thinks of the curse that hangs over his name,
And the wife of his bosom — the faithful and fair,
Can mix no sweet drop in his cup of despair:
For her tender caress, and her innocent breath,
But still in his soul the hot embers of death.

---

---

KJV: And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear.

WEB: Cain said to Yahweh, "My punishment is greater than I can bear.