the ram caught in the thicket, conducted and detained of Providence, and substituted as a sacrifice in the room of Isaac, and think of him of whom it is written" he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." From the tendered sacrifice of Isaac arose new prospects and new promises to his family; from the death of Christ sprung up the hope of " an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away," to all them that believe. The substituted sacrifice was of God's appointment, providing an acceptance, both in the figurative and the real history, and by both we are instructed, that when men have the wisdom to submit to, and follow God their Maker, they may safely commit the issue of all to him.

To view the history of Abraham in detached parts, is to involve ourselves in difficulty and distress,-to read patiently to the end, is the road to light, and peace and joy. The prejudiced Jew, and the self-conceited Greek, look at the cross and pronounce it foolishness, or fall over it as a stumbling block; but to them that believe, who wait the issue, who look to the end, "Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God." Presumptuous men will take upon them to judge of a plan which is not yet executed, and will apply to the narrow and erroneous scale of their own reason and understanding, the infinite and eternal designs of the only wise God. When the fabric of creation was completed, God pronounced all to be very good, and then "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy ;" when the plan of redemption is executed, then, and not till then, let men or angels presume to judge of the fitness or unfitness of it. Determine nothing before the time. The Lord, and the day of the Lord, is at hand.

In meditating on this history, may it not be asked-Who among you is with Abraham sacrificing, I do not say, his lawful joys, but his sinful lusts? Who among you is rising up early, and, with a resolute hand, slaying his sloth, his pride, his avarice, his lust, his malignity, before the altar of God? Who among you is rising betimes to "offer unto God thanksgiving;" to contemplate the glories of nature; to adore and admire the wonders of Providence ; to look into the mystery of redemption, and to meditate with new and increasing delight on that love of Christ which passeth knowledge ?"

The little good which we do, we wish to be seen of all men; not like Abraham, who would have his devotion neither witnessed nor interrupted by any one. But glory pursues true goodness notwithstanding its own modesty and humility. Why should I suffer myself to be teazed and vexed with the cavils of an unbeliever? Let him start ten thousand objections, if he will, to the frame of nature, the conduct of Providence, or the method of salvation. I will thus simply reply; Do you comprehend the whole? Are you of the privy council of Heaven? Can you account for any thing you behold? Do you know to what all these things tend, and in what they are to issue? Rest, christians, in general, obvious, useful, practical truth; and know that devotedness to God is the essence of religion, and the sum of human happiness. Look forward to that day when light shall arise out of obscurity, when all mysteries shall be unveiled; when the faculties of the human mind shall be strengthened and increased, and the objects contemplated shall be brought nearer the eye, placed in a fairer point of view, and irradiated with a fuller glory; when God shall in the most complete and satisfactory manner vindicate his ways to men.

The next Lecture will conclude the History of Abraham, and the proposed course for this season. If to your former attendance and kind attention, you will indulge me with one audience more, it will increase the affectionate regard of a grateful heart, and afford an opportunity of expressing that gratitude at greater length. May God bless all the means of knowledge, of piety, and of improvement. Amen.

HISTORY OF ABRAHAM.

LECTURE XVIII.

HEBREWS XI. 13, 14, 15, 16.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises; but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned but now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.

WHAT is the amount of human life? Vanity and vexation of spirit. All our wanderings tend towards the grave. The anxieties and solicitude, the hopes and fears, the disappointments and successes which alternately occupy and agitate the mind, at length come to one issue, and all-conquering death settles the account. The time is at length come that Sarah must pay the debt of nature. That beauty which conjugal affection doated on, and which princes coveted, becomes deformed with wrinkles; the cold hand of death chills the fond maternal heart, and even the delight of an Isaac is enjoyed no more. The Jewish Rabbins, fruitful in legends, affirm, that grief for the sa crifice of Isaac shortened her life. For that the devil, who had exulted in the prospect of seeing Isaac perish by the knife of his father, to revenge himself for the disappointment which he felt upon his deliverance by the angel, conveyed intelligence to Sarah that the sacrifice was actually performed; which news speedily proved fatal to her. As if the oppressive weight of one hundred and twenty-seven years did not sufficiently account for the death of a frail woman, without the necessity of a preternatural interposition.

Affecting change! The eyes of Abraham himself cannot now endure to look upon her, whom once he shuddered to think that the eyes of another should behold with too much desire; and he is now as eager to bury her out of his sight, as he formerly was to retain the possession of her wholly to himself. Let the beautiful and the vain, the gay, the admired, and the flattered, think of this and be humbled. The latter end of her life, however, is better than the beginning. Tormented with the unaccomplished desire of having children, subjected to all the hardships of a pilgrimage state, and stung with the keen pangs of jealousy, almost up to her ninetieth year, life at length subsides into a delightful calm of thirty-seven years more, cheered and cherished by the unabated affection of her beloved lord, and blessed with the progress and accomplishments of the son of her womb, Isaac, the favourite of God and

man. But she must finally make one remove more; not to that country from which she came out, but to that land "from whose bourne no traveller returns." A partaker as of the fortunes, so of the faith of Abraham, she sees the promises afar off, is persuaded of them and embraces them; desires and looks for another country, that is, an heavenly.

God had promised to Abraham and his seed the possession of Canaan, and lo, it commences in the purchase, at their full value, of a little field and a cave, for a burying place. He had been threatened with a severe stroke in the demanded sacrifice of Isaac, he is made to feel one in the loss of Sarah. The mellowed friendship of so many years, and union cemented at last by so dear a pledge, could not be dissolved without pain. Abraham is sensible of his loss, and bewails it. His religion is not of that sort which values itself on doing violence to nature; he knows nothing of that vain philosophy which affects to deny what it feels: neither has an old age of one hundred and thirty-seven years extinguished in the heart those tender emotions, which the deprivation of an object, once fair, and ever dear, naturally excites. He who does not weep on such an occasion as this, is something more or less than a man. But to persevere in bewailing the dead, to the neglect of our duty to the living, is both folly and impiety. Abraham's sorrow encroaches upon none of the valuable principles of a good mind. His whole conduct in the purchase of the field of Ephron the Hittite, and the cave of Machpelah, exhibits a soul replete with the most amiable and respectable virtues. Tender and affectionate, he is desirous of honouring in death the remains of what he prized in life. Noble-minded, generous, and independent, he refuses to shew respect to the memory of Sarah with that which cost him nothing. Civil and polite, he repays the courtesy of his neighbours with affability and condescension. Scrupulously just and honest, he will give nothing less than the full price, and in full tale, weight, and purity, for what was frankly tendered him as a gift. The dialogue of the twenty-third chapter is a masterly picture of the beautiful simplicity of ancient manners, and exhibits a strife of unaffected kindness, good-nature, and civility, which at once pleases and instructs. Let me beseech you to peruse it carefully when opportunity offers. Would to God such contentions were more frequent in the world. The purchase is made, the price is paid, possession is made sure, and then was Sarah buried. And thus, first, Abraham became seized of the land of promise. differently does Providence shape events from our preconception of them. It is worthy of observation, that this is the first money transaction which we read of in the world. Till then, and long after, both among the posterity of Abraham and other nations, wealth was estimated by the number and quality of cattle; and cattle were the principal instruments of commerce. Thus we read in many places of Homer, of a coat of mail worth an hundred oxen; a caldron worth twenty sheep; a cup or goblet worth twelve lambs; and the like. The words belonging to commerce or exchange of commodities, in the Greek language, are mostly derived from the names of certain animals, by means of which that exchange was originally carried on. Thus the word it

So

self which signifies to truck or commute one kind of goods for another, is derived from that which signifies a lamb ;* the verb which is translated to sell, comes from the noun, which translated signifies a colt or young horse;† the Greek word, which in our language is to buy, comes from that which signifies an ass: the term that denotes rent or revenue, and that which signifies a sheep, are of kindred composition and import. A criminal, according to the magnitude of his guilt, was condemned to pay a fine of four, twelve, or an hundred oxen. A wealthy person is called a man of many lambs.¶

Two

6 Probmasis-Probaton. ¶ Poluarnos.

1

rival brothers are represented in Hesiod, as fighting with each other about the sheep of their father; that is, contending who should be his heir. But even so early as the time of Abraham, we find silver employed as a more commodious mean of traffic; and the concurrence of all civilized and commercial nations to this day, in employing the precious metals for this purpose, is a proof how early men learned the wisdom of this world; and discovers to us, how readily they invent, how accurately they reason, and how prudently they act, in matters that are conducive to their temporal interest and advantage. But to re

turn

By the death of Sarah, the care and anxiety about the dear object of their common affection becomes naturally much increased to the surviving parent. Isaac was now arrived at man's estate, and it is fit that the heir of the promise should be established in a family of his own. For how are the promises of God brought into effect, but by the intervention of the means which nature and Providence have appointed? Abraham, with the solicitude of a good father, is desirous of matching his son, rather prudently and piously, than nobly or wealthily. In these days of simplicity and nature, the partner for life was sought after, not for the largeness of her possessions; but gold, and silver, and jewels, were employed to court beauty and virtue to their proper sphere of importance and usefulness in life. Abraham judges it unwise to marry his son into a Hittite family, because they had deviated from the worship of the true God. He could esteem their hospitality, kindness, and civility, as they deserved, without falling in love with their religion. And he who cannot make this distinction must either be unfaithful to God or unfriendly to man. fecting view of the corruption and degeneracy of human nature! that Isaac, the son of faithful Abraham, should be deemed in greater danger of being perverted by an idolatrous wife, than that a woman of Canaan should be converted to the worship of the living and true God, by a believing husband.

Af

Isaac, it would appear, devoted to retirement and contemplation, little attached himself to the concerns of this life; the management of his affairs and his settlement in the world, he leaves to the wisdom of his father, and the fidelity of an ancient domestic. The journey of that servant into Mesopotamia, and the success of it, belong more properly to the history of Isaac. As far as Abraham is concerned in it, we behold a holy man acknowledging God in all his ways, and making the ordinary concerns of life a religious service: and we see God, in return, directing every step to a happy issue.

Having seen his beloved son settled entirely to his satisfaction, he enters again himself into the honourable state of marriage, and is blessed in it by a progeny of six sons and ten grandchildren born in his life time. In order to prevent strife after his death, as far as human sagacity and foresight could do it, and knowing that property is the great source of contention among men, he settles his worldly affairs, bequeathing the great bulk of his fortune to Isaac, the son of his first and principal wife; following in this the destination of Providence, and fulfilling the condition of the covenant under which Rebekah was induced to become Isaac's wife. He makes a suitable provision for the younger branches of his family, and sends them, by dint of his paternal authority, into a distant part of the country, where he yet lived, that the quiet and peaceable temper of Isaac might not be exposed to disturbance and trouble, from the neighbourhood of ambitious, violent, or avaricious brothers, after his death.

That fatal period at length overtakes him also, and he comes to the grave, "like as a shock of corn cometh in his season," in a good old age, "an old man, and full of years," at the age of one hundred three score and fifteen. A life shorter by far than any we have hitherto studied, but much fuller of incidents and events. A life chequered with uncommon trials, and blessings as

extraordinary. A life distinguished by the most brilliant virtues which adorn human nature, but not wholly exempted from its frailties and infirmities. Abraham purchased a grave for Sarah. Alas! he was only providing a habitation for himself! How short, how unimportant the distance between the funeral rites which we prepare, and those which are prepared for us!

But can this be all that God intended to bestow upon our patriarch by promises so lofty, conveyed in language so solemn? Was it for this he was called to leave his country and his father's house? Did vision upon vision, covenant upon covenant, promise upon promise, conduct only to a little cave in Hebron? Was the favour of the Almighty, the all bountiful Jehovah, expressed to the man whom he dignified by the title of his friend, only by such things as are the common gifts of his providence to all, and which are often bestowed on the vilest and most worthless of mankind? If the grave were to terminate the existence of man, such questions would be indeed of difficult solution. But the difficulty of them scatters and disperses before one word of God, spoken three hundred and thirty years after the patriarch's death, even to Mosts at the bush in Horeb. I am the God of Abraham. His relation to God was as entire three centuries after his body was consumed in dust in Machpelah, as when he was entertaining angels in Mamre, or sacrificing upon Mount Moriah. "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." To Him, and for Him, and with Him, now live the faithful of all past ages; and precious is their very dust in his sight. Judge nothing then before the time, till the day come which shall unfold the purpose of Heaven, which shall clear up the mystery of Providence, and fully vindicate the ways of God to man.

It appears that some intercourse between Ishmael and his father's family had been kept up; for we find him apprized of Abraham's death, and assisting at his funeral. He must be a wild man indeed, not to have been tamed, at least into a temporary sorrow, by such an event, and melted into forgetfulness of all past resentments, by the death of a father. Providence wisely produces this good effect, by the common calamities wherewith families are visited; they tend to reconcile the alienated, they extinguish bitterness and strife, they rekindle the dying embers of filial duty and brotherly love. Isaac and Ishmael, men of different natures, of opposite interests, rivals from the womb, forget all animosity, and mingle tears over a father's tomb.

It remains, in conformity to our plan, that we point out in a few particulars, the resemblance betwixt Abraham and Christ, that we may see wherein the former typified the latter.

Abraham, at God's command, leaving his country, and his father's house, points to us obviously, Jesus, at the fulness, of time, leaving heaven's glory and the bosom of the Father, and coming into our world and living a pilgrim and a stranger in it. Abraham, in a land which was his own by the gift and promise of God, nevertheless obtained no fixed residence in it, but wandered about from place to place; Jesus, in a world which he made and upholds, which is his by the most undeniable title, was without a place where to lay his head. Abraham was called the friend of God, and to him God communicated his purposes of mercy and of judgment; Jesus, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and knows intimately the mind of the Lord, he hath declared him. With Abraham God established the political covenants which secured to him and his family the possession of Canaan, and all the temporal and spiritual blessings of a transitory and preparatory economy; Jesus is the Mediator of a better covenant, established upon better promises; even the covenant of redemption, whereby the kingdom of heaven, and eternal life, are made sure to all his spiritual seed; for thus it is written of him, "I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy throne to all genera