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for security or for subsistence: dwelling on that account, not in any fixed abode, but in tabernacles or tents, which to-day might be pitched in one spot, and to-morrow carried to another. Yes, and as if to preclude all prospect of his increasing in strength, the circumstances of his situation were such as to render it necessary for Lot, his kinsman, with all his family and servants, to separate themselves from Abraham, and go to live in another district of the land. Add to this, Sarai, Abraham's wife, was barren, and they had both come to an age when the hope of having children must have been altogether extinguished.

What then, you will ask, was it that kept Abraham firm in his reliance upon God, under circumstances so depressing? It was, in a word, his faith; the faith which first brought him out from his father's home, and which now sustained him against despair. Nor was he without comfort from God. The word of the Lord came to him with this assurance,"that all the land in which he now sojourned should be given to him and to his seed for ever;" it was an assurance mercifully repeated, and continually enlarged in proportion as the probability of its accomplishment seemed more remote. Thus at his first entrance into Canaan the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, "Unto thy seed will I give this land." Again, after his separation from Lot,

the promise was renewed in these striking words,— "Lift up thine eyes and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward, and eastward and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and the breadth of it, for I will give it unto thee." And again, in the fifteenth chapter and the first verse, "Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward." And then, in this passage of great sublimity at the fifth verse," The Lord brought him forth abroad and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars if thou be able to number them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be."

In these repeated renewals of God's promises, Abraham found support in this trying period of his life. "He believed in the Lord:" he was fully persuaded that all that He had spoken He was able to perform; and though to human thought it might appear impossible that his hope of inheriting the land of Canaan should ever be accomplished, yet he knew that nothing was impossible to God. And so he hoped even against hope: he was not weak in faith; he dared to believe that, stranger as he was, separated from all intercourse with his own

people, childless, and now well stricken in years, he should yet become that mighty nation in whom all the families of the earth should find a blessing. And so he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness." The Almighty viewed him with increased favour, and in token of it vouch safed to reveal to him things that were to be hereafter. He showed him what should happen to his descendants; their early afflictions and their subsequent advancement: and not long after He changed his name from Abram, which means a high father, to Abraham, which denotes a father of a multitude of nations; declaring, as aforetime, that he should become exceeding powerful, and fruitful; that nations and kings should come out of him.

Nor was this all; that which had appeared as the greatest hindrance to Abraham's promised happiness was now removed: Sarah, when ninety years old, received strength to bear a son, and when past age, became the mother of Isaac: the mother of him concerning whom, before he was born, God had said, “With Isaac will I establish my covenant, and with his seed after him.”

I must pass over much that remains of the history of Abraham; his intercession with the Almighty on behalf of wicked Sodom; the dismissal of Ishmael and Hagar,-matters full of interest and instruction, and carefully to be studied by all who would

obtain a full view of the noble character we are considering and proceed to one other passage in the patriarch's life; a passage which, familiar as it is to every reader of the Bible, can never be approached without its awakening in our minds sentiments of reverence amounting to awe, at the spectacle which it presents of self-denying faith and holy fortitude: I allude to the trial of Abraham by faith, in the offering up of his son Isaac.

The account is given us at full in the twentysecond chapter of Genesis; and the chief points of it are as follows. "It came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And God said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." Surely this was a commandment very hard to bear, even for one so habitually resigned to God's will as was Abraham. It was a commandment very grievous to flesh and blood. It was a call to Abraham to give up that which of all other things was dearest aud most precious to him; to give up to death, and that by his own hand, his only son Isaac whom he loved: Isaac the son of his old age, the son at whose birth he had so greatly rejoiced, for whose sake he had cast out

Ishmael; the son on whom was built all his hope of inheriting the promises of the Almighty; the son which had been granted to him for this especial purpose, of whom it had been declared, "That in Isaac shall thy seed be called!" Can the range of human record afford a parallel case to this? Have we ever read, have we ever heard of a faith so sorely tried? Was there ever such a sacrifice required by God of any of his creatures? No, surely there is nothing to which we can liken it amongst the bitterest sorrows, and most painful circumstances, that ever were allotted to the human kind. And no wonder: for in it was prefigured, shown forth before it came to pass, that greatest and most awful proof of the justice and compassion of our Heavenly Father; the offering up of his only begotten Son to be the propitiation for our iniquity; to be the Lamb of God, the Lamb provided by Himself, to take away the sins of the world.

But into the spiritual and typical meaning of Abraham's offering I must not enter to-day. What we have to consider is, the effect of that trial upon the patriarch himself; how did he conduct himself under it? Was it too hard for him? Did he at length fail? No, my brethren, he did not. Even in this bitter hour he did not shrink from the burden that was laid upon him. He murmured not at God's command, but hastened at

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