When Cain "went out from the presence of Jehovah," he faced the world and life alone and without God. It was not the same world as before. The glory was gone, the beauty and sweetness of it was vanished, the halo had dissolved and left all things bare and cold and naked. For a man's world is largely the reflection of his heart. Now fell that deadly dullness upon him, the "shades of the prison house" closed upon his soul, and all things became full of weariness. He was alone. His own heart gave him no comfort. To God he could not turn: he had gone out from the presence of Jehovah. He had but one recourse left to him--to bestir himself to get all there was out of this world and to beguile the emptiness of his soul with what he could get of pleasure and comfort and greatness. And thus he became the type of all those earth dwellers, the "men of the world, whose portion is in this life." (Ps. 17:14.) He and his descendants to the seventh generation left a remarkable record. A godless, energetic, enterprising, ambitious race were they. They built the first city; they were the first polygamists; the father of the cattle industry is found there; the father of musical instruments and instrumental music; there arose the metal workers, the artificers in brass and iron; and there we find the first poetry--Lamech's [191] famous "sword song," in which he, the worthy offspring of the line, celebrated in beautiful meter the slaying of a young man; city building, stock raising, metallurgy and craftsmanship, art, poetry, music, polygamy, murder. This is also the picture of the world to-day in its worldly ambition, its endeavors to make life tolerable, to cover the aching void with earthly things, and clothe their disenchanted world in a new halo of romance and beauty--in one word, to find satisfaction and happiness without God. The line of Seth could make no such showing. They were humble, quiet, unambitious, unprogressive men of whom little is to be said except in reference to their relation to God. So is it now. The arts, sciences, and enterprises of the world are not at all wrong in themselves; but now, as then, they represent the world's effort at gaining satisfaction apart from God; and there is in these things no true help or happiness.

[TAG 191-192]