LECTURE III.

GENESIS XIII. 2.

"And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold."

THE patriarch, whose history we are pursuing, had been but a short time in the land of Canaan, that country which is described as above all other countries in richness and fertility, when the providence of God so ordered it, that there was "a famine," "a grievous famine in the land." This was a new trial to the faith of Abram, and to his dependence upon his God. He had advanced to the very heart of the territory, which had been esteemed worthy of two such remarkable promises, and of two personal appearances of the great Jehovah; and now that Abram had forsaken all for it, what had he obtained? The grant of a country which could not maintain its own inhabitants. And is this the manner in which the Almighty keeps his promise to the ear, but breaks it to the apprehension? Yes, my brethren, so the natural mind will argue; so the hesitating believer will fear; but as his subsequent conduct proves, so did not Abram

either argue or fear. To remain in Canaan was impossible; the natural determination, therefore, would have been to have returned to his own land, where he might feel assured of meeting with the abundance from which he had been called. Was this then the manner in which Abram acted? No, he followed the dictates of divine grace, and rejected the cowardly suggestions of carnal nature. He went boldly forward, turning his back still upon the bounties of the land of his nativity, and passing directly through the barrenness of Canaan into Egypt, where there was a sufficiency for himself and his numerous retinue.

My brethren, do I speak to any among you who have been led by the sovereign grace of God, to choose with Mary that good part which shall not be taken away from you; and who have already found that the Christian profession is something more than a name; that if the cross of a crucified Redeemer be indeed faithfully taken up, it will involve you in trials and difficulties of no ordinary nature? Have you experienced this, and do you begin to fear that the promised land upon which you have entered is not that fertile flowery mead which your imagination had portrayed? That you have entered upon a course requiring daily and

almost hourly self-denials: the restraints of the natural will, the subjection of the natural temper, the coercion of the natural inclinations? That where you expected to be "satisfied with good things," there are seasons,-but, blessed be God, they are neither long nor numerous, although to the truest believer not wholly unknown,-when even the food of the good land, the best of all lands, appears to fail you; and when, though there be "bread enough and to spare" in your Father's house, you fear lest you should perish from hunger? These are intended to be to you, what the famine of Canaan was to Abram, trials of your faith, tests of your consistency, and perseverance, and dependence upon God. At such seasons do the natural feelings of our fallen nature ever tempt you to return? Do they suggest to you, this is, after all, a barren course upon which I have ventured; its joys are few, its trials numerous, its restrictions grievous; would that I had been content to remain among the people of the world, where there was a far greater abundance of enjoyment, infinitely more of pleasure, and less of privation and toil? In moments such as these, my brethren, and there are few to whom such moments come not, believe that the suggestion is the voice of your

soul's worst enemy, of him who never counsels but to ruin and to destroy; close your ear to his delusions, and open your heart to your Redeemer: tell Him your difficulties and your troubles, and in his strength, "forgetting those things which are behind, press forward to those which are before ;" the dark and lowering season will soon be over, the sky will clear, and the bow of promise will again be seen in the cloud.

To encourage you to perseverance, under the most discouraging aspects, remember that one of the highest testimonies borne by the Spirit of God to the faith of the patriarchs, in the New Testament, is grounded upon their conduct in seasons. such as this. "If they had been mindful," says the apostle to the Hebrews," of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned;" that which we are considering was precisely one of those opportunities. "But now they desire a better country, that is a heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city." When therefore, in a spiritual sense, "the fig-tree does not blossom, and there is no fruit in the vine;" when you have, like the patriarchs of old, not only opportunity, but strong temptation to

return; when the pleasures of life assume their most fascinating garb, or the business and occupation of life their most engrossing aspect, and endeavour to win back the vantage ground in your mind's affections, from which the Spirit of God has driven them; like Abram, resolve to forget the country whence you came out, and to press forward only with greater ardour, and more enduring perseverance, to that better country, even the heavenly, which is promised you. With the eye of faith fixed on the cross of your Redeemer, look calmly and cheerfully forward; "with Him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." He is gone to prepare a place for you, where the joys will be infinitely superior to all the petty gratifications which are now so strongly contesting with Him the power to influence your heart; and most assuredly He will not desert you by the way: "in the end you shall reap, you faint not."

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It was during the period of Abram's short but necessary sojourn in Egypt, that we find one of the few instances of the sinful fear of man, and faithlessness towards God, which marred the fair outline of his otherwise perfect character. The inspired historian, with that fidelity which always marks his pen, and which forms one of the great beauties of