the power of the Holy Spirit, freely offered to all who seek him, a full and complete dependence upon the word and promises of God, upon the merits and righteousness of your Redeemer, and all will be easy. With the love of God shed abroad in your heart, and the desire of obeying him here, and of living with him for ever hereafter, in full possession of your mind, no self-denials will be too great, no sacrifice too costly. Like Abram, you will be content to separate, "in the spirit of your mind," from every allurement which would detain you from the heavenward journey; and, like him, in obeying the command, you will inherit the promise, "I will bless thee, and thou shalt be a blessing;" you will not indeed necessarily become great and affluent, but then "the little that the righteous hath is better than the riches of the ungodly," and you shall assuredly be a blessing to all around you, as a son, a husband, a father, in fact in every relationship in life. Once having taken the decided step of declaring yourself for God, in opposition to the idolatry and follies of the world, you will be surprised at the daily and hourly manifestations of His providence and love, in diminishing your difficulties and sweetening your labours. You will find indeed that the yoke of Christ is easy and his

burden light. For every evil companion you forsake, He will raise you up Christian friends; for every worldly pleasure you relinquish, He will present you with spiritual joys; and should you ever forfeit the countenance and affection of those, who ought to encourage you on the heavenly road, He will himself be more, infinitely more, than they have ever been, or can be to you-your father, your counsellor, and your abiding and ever-present friend.

What more can you desire?-that the end of your journey should be prosperous? Do not for a moment doubt it. No; He who only promised Abram to show him the land, has promised you that it shall be your own; He will never leave you or forsake you until He has carried you to the haven where you would be; for your Lord has said, and He will bring it to pass, “Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory."

LECTURE II.

GENESIS XII. 7, 8.

"The Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, unto thy seed will I give this land; and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord."

In our first lecture on the history of Abram, we beheld him, in obedience to the divine direction, leaving the land of his nativity, and going forth into a land which God had promised to show him.

This was at present the whole extent of the promise regarding the land of Canaan; God had promised to show it to him, and he had fulfilled his promise, for we are told that Abram came into the land of Canaan, and "passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh." The "place of Sichem" was that spot which was rendered famous in the next generation by the well of Jacob, and is known by every Bible reader as the Sychar of the New Testament, where the

Saviour of the world, "wearied with his journey," sat upon this well, and conversed with the woman of Samaria. It was about the middle of the land of Canaan, so that Abram had travelled over a large portion of his future inheritance, without receiving even a hint from the Almighty that this was the land which the Lord had promised to show him. In addition to this trial of Abram's faith, we are told that "the Canaanite was then in the land," an idolatrous and warlike people, the presence of whom must have tended to render the journey of the patriarch still more arduous and painful.

When, however, Abram had reached Sichem, we are told that "the Lord appeared unto him, and said. Unto thy seed will I give this land." The promise was now for the first time revealed to him, that the land was not merely to be shown to him, but given to him; and of this he was assured by the express word of God himself. It may not be unnecessary to remind you, that in all these instances in the Old Testament where it is explicitly stated, that "God appeared," so that there was some visible manifestation of the great Jehovah, independently of the schechinah, or divine glory, the difficulty of reconciling such appearance with the declaration of our Lord Jesus Christ, that "no

man hath seen God at any time," is easily and scripturally surmounted by all who hold the true and catholic doctrine of the real divinity of our ever-blessed Saviour. He it was, even the second person of the Holy Trinity, who thus from time to time manifested himself, and in all probability in human form, to Adam and to Abram, and to Jacob and to Moses, and by this means kept up a continual expectation among the sons of men, of the time when he should in a still more remarkable manner take our nature upon Him, and dwell with us. It seems by no means impossible that the traditionary accounts of these primeval appearances of the Son of God, may have been the groundwork of the fabulous statements of the incarnations of their imaginary deities, which we meet with so frequently in the Hindoo, Grecian, and Roman mythologies. He then, even God the Son, appeared unto Abram, and promised that all the country through which he was travelling should be made over to his heirs for ever. No sooner had this astonishing annunciation been revealed, than we read, "there builded Abram an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him."

This is the first time in the history of Abram, that any act of worship or sacrifice to the Al