you rather as those who have been, than those who are; when the efforts of science were at an end, and her most skilful followers had no counsel to offer, then has the thought that "God will provide," brought peace and consolation to your hearts; then has the good Physician manifested his power and love, and more fulfilled your most anxious expectation, and shown that "what is impossible with man is possible with God." And as in temporal, so in spiritual difficulties, the Lord has indeed provided abundantly above all that you are able to ask or think. Have you never felt so oppressed with the burden of sin that you knew not where to look, or whither to fly for refuge-life has become irksome and the thoughts of eternity terrible? Here again the Lord has provided, and by leading you to the knowledge of a merciful and tender Redeemer, he has restored a peace to your bosom of which neither Satan nor the world shall ever permanently deprive you.

What then ought to be the effect of these re

peated interferences of divine mercy in your behalf? Surely to teach you never to doubt, never to despair, never to despond. If you are visited with the severest trials, to feel assured that they are as much the fruits of your heavenly Father's love, as

his more obvious blessings. If you are called to give up your dearest possession, the wife of your bosom, the children of your love, to be content, even amidst nature's keenest sufferings, to kiss the rod, and Him who appointed it. If you are called away from them instead of they from you, while you behold those around your bed who will soon be unprotected and helpless orphans, still even in this darkest hour of nature's wo, to remember with confidence, "God will provide," and to trust implicitly to Him who said, "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive: and let the widows trust in me."

So far, then, from these being the moments to doubt the love or tenderness of your heavenly Father, these are the times when they shine with the most resplendent lustre. But why is it that God loves thus to appear in your most urgent need, and at your most pressing extremity? It is that you who are really his children may learn not to limit your view of his infinite power and mercy to what the eye of reason can discern in present appearances, or even to what the eye of faith can distinguish in God's recorded promises. He is anxious that you should trust Him far, far beyond all that can be brought within the scope of the most ex

tended vision; that you may know that you possess a resource more abundant, a fountain of good whose waters stand more deep and flow more widely than either reason, or even faith itself can fathom, in the ALL-SUFFICIENCY of God. When every particular attribute of God fails you, when you are driven to such utter extremity that the panting soul cannot venture to believe that the love of God, or the forbearance of God, or the faithfulness of God is sufficient to reach his case; then does the ALL-SUFFICIENCY of God, in whom you trust, stand out in letters of light, which even the closing eye can read, and the fainting heart can dwell upon; then can you still hope still struggle on, still feel assured that He who has been able and willing to provide for you in time, is as able and as willing to provide for you in eternity.

My Christian brethren, strive to appreciate this blessed view of the all-sufficiency of Him in whom you have believed. Delightful as it is in our emergencies to apply the express promises of God, and they are "exceeding great and precious," to our souls, there is something more delightful in this which embraces all promises. Many have known the time-you whom I address may know itwhen the languid frame and the baffled spirit are

you

incapable of recalling a single definite declaration, a single promise, with sufficient distinctness of apprehension, to rest the troubled soul upon. Oh! at such an hour how blessed is the thought that have to deal with an ALL-SUFFICIENT Comforter, -an ALL-SUFFICIENT Saviour,-an ALL-SUFFICIENT God! In the application of a particular promise of God you may be mistaken; in this simple dependence upon his all-sufficiency you never can. Therefore, in your extremest difficulties, and troubles, and trials, cast yourself in the full assurance of faith upon this infinite ocean, and you are safe. To adopt the beautiful language of an old divine, "If we could in all our trials lay ourselves down in the arms of the Almighty, his all-sufficiency in power and goodness, how much of the haven should we have in our voyage, how much of home in our pilgrimage, how much of heaven in this wretched earth! Friends throw away your staves, break the arm of flesh, lie down here quietly in every dispensation, and you shall see the salvation of God."

LECTURE XII.

GENESIS XXV. 8.

“Then Abraham gave up the ghost and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years; and was gathered to his people."

WE this morning arrive at the conclusion of the history in which we have now for some time past been engaged, and desire to offer our sincere and hearty thanksgivings to Almighty God for such a measure of divine assistance as He has been mercifully pleased to supply. The closing years of life are usually not unaccompanied by warnings or by trials. The companions of our youth, the friends of our maturer age, the near connexions who have gladdened life, and the beloved relatives who have endeared it, fall around us, and they who live to approach the scriptural limit of the days of the years of man, often find themselves, even among the thickest throngs of earth, solitary and deserted, their contemporaries removed, while they themselves remain as the "shaking of the