lead you to glorify God in your day and generation? So believing with a true, a living, an obeying faith, the object of your belief, the Lord Jesus Christ, will be made unto you "wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption;" so believing you also will be justified before God; and "whom He justifies, them He also glorifies." Therefore, as the apostle says, "there is now no condemnation "-there will be none hereafter-to you "who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

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LECTURE VII.

GENESIS XV. 17.

"AND IT CAME TO PASS, THAT, WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN, AND IT WAS DARK, BEHOLD A SMOKING FURNACE, AND A BURNING LAMP THAT PASSED BETWEEN THOSE PIECES."

WE considered, in the last discourse, the testimony borne by the Spirit of God to the faith of Abram, with respect to the promised seed and to the Messiah who should spring from his loins. "He believed God, and he counted it to him for righteousness.”

There was yet, however, another subject upon which the faith of the patriarch was to be exercised, which had been already revealed to him by the Almighty, and which was now briefly but strikingly

reiterated. This was the promise of the territory which his future progeny should inherit. The Lord said unto Abram, "I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.”

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It is worthy of observation, with what

beautiful propriety to the peculiar subject of the revelation, the Almighty always adapts the name under which he reveals himself. Thus, when about to deliver to the Israelites a law which was to bind them to Him as a people for ever, the Almighty marked his peculiar claims upon their gratitude and their obedience. by saying, "I am the Lord, the God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; leaving it to their own hearts to supply the addition, "Can we therefore refuse to obey Him who has broken every chain which held us in captivity, that He might bind us to himself in the bonds of love?" It was thus also that the Lord ushered in

to Abram the improbable promise of the whole territory upon which he stood, by revealing himself to him as the God who had done greater things for him than this already, when he brought him out of the idolatrous land of his nativity.

And is it not in a similar manner, my brethren, and with the same beautiful propriety, that the Almighty continues to reveal himself to the heart of every one of his believing and obeying people? Does He not say to each of you, I am the Lord who redeemed thee, I am He who called thee when in ignorance and sin; "when I passed by thee," I quote the words of God by his prophet Ezekiel, "and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, Live;" and wilt thou cease to follow me, or can I ever cease to love, to guard, and to provide for thee? Surely there can be no promise of future protection so encouraging as the recollection of past mercies. What could establish Abram more fully in the hope

that the land of Canaan should one day be his own, than the remembrance that he who promised it had already demonstrated his love, by calling him from the land of the Chaldees; and his power, by bringing him thus far in security and peace? What can establish you, my brethren, so fully in the hope of an inheritance in the heavenly Canaan, as the grateful recollection of all that your heavenly Father has done for you in the land of your nativity? When you remember for how many years you, most probably, lived in utter forgetfulness or ignorance of God, and yet during the whole of that period, were nurtured by his parental care; when you consider for how long a time you continued, perhaps in open defiance, or in secret neglect of God, and yet even then were sought and found by the influence of his good Spirit, and brought to some little degree of knowledge and love of himself; when again you reflect how God has watched