which he had just received, the patriarch asks, “Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" In answer to this inquiry, the glorious Personage with whom he was conversing, directed him to "take an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another; but the birds divided he not." It is carefully to be observed that these animals are the same, both in kind and age, which were afterwards appointed for sacrifices, and which had, in all probability, previously bled on the patriarchal altars from the beginning; which sacrifices were all types of "the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all." The correspondence that continually appears between the sacred rites of the patriarchal religion, and the ceremonies which were enjoined under the Sinaitic dispensation, affords a strong presumptive proof that there existed a revealed directory for the regulation of Divine worship from the beginning, which was carefully transmitted from Adam to his posterity. Without this supposition, indeed, the religious practice of the patriarchs must be classed with those instances of "Will Worship," of which God has always expressed his disapprobation.

The custom of dividing animals slain in sacrifice,

and of passing between their parts, in confirmation of a league or covenant, may be supposed to have originated on this occasion, as this is the first instance of it that occurs in the sacred history. But the rite, thus sanctioned, became common among all nations.* The act was an exhibition to the eye of the pledge implied or expressed in the solemnity of an oath. It was in the present instance, virtually saying, "As I live, I will fulfil the promises which I have made."

In this transaction, then, Jehovah condescended to confirm the patriarch's faith by a solemn rite which was afterwards a common mode of adjuration. "The smoking furnace, and the burning lamp," were a cone of fire in the midst of a smoky cloud. This, as hath been remarked in some of my past letters, was the common emblem of the Divine presence. For when the Lord marched before his people Israel, through the wilderness, this was the symbol, which assured them that He was with them; Exod. xiii. 21, 22: "The Lord went before them by day, in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light to go by day and night." It was not as I have before shown, two pillars, but one, which adapted itself to the circumstances of the day or the night. When

* Comp. Jer. xxxiv. 18, 19, 20.

Jehovah came down on Mount Sinai, Exod. xix. 18, "Mount Sinai was altogether in a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace;" it resembled the cone of fire and cloud that proceeds from the mouth of a furnace. And at Solomon's dedication of the Temple, 1 Kings viii. 10, "It came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord; so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord." This was the Shekinah that rested on the propitiatory in the most holy place between and over the CHERUBIM, marking, as I conceive in the clearest manner, the symbolic character of those images. (See also Exod. xvi. 7, 10. xxiv. 16, 17. xl. 34, 35. Lev. ix. 23. Num. xiv. 10. xvi. 19, 42. xx. 6. Comp. Acts. ii. 2, 3.). This glorious symbol of the Divine presence passed between the divisions of Abraham's sacrifices, to ratify the solemn covenant made in his favour, and just revealed to him. Jehovah, Father, Son, and Spirit, represented by this emblematic vision, thereby bound Himself by a new obligation to fulfil all his promises; not only as they regarded the immediate descendants of the patriarch and their possession of the earthly Canaan, but also and more especially as they had respect to the

advent of the Messiah, and the possession of the heavenly inheritance by all his spiritual seed.

It does not appear that the patriarch was a party to this federal transaction, since he was not directed to pass between the divided animals. The high contracting parties were "the ALEIM of Abraham," a name by which Jehovah delighted to be called. It consisted of unconditional promises, in which the patriarch, and all the heirs of his faith, are beneficially interested, through the mediation of one among the confederate persons, who is their Representative and Surety, under whom they claim its benefits, and in whom "all the promises are Yea and Amen to the glory of God the Father."

The Abrahamic dispensation may be considered as the third grand climacteric (if I may so speak) in the revelation of the covenant of mercy which had existed before time, ensuring the redemption of a lost world by Jesus Christ our Lord. The first was made at the period of the Fall; the second, immediately after the Flood; and the third on the call of Abraham; and on each of these renewals of the great Promise, visible confirmation of its truth was afforded to those who were its favoured recipients, on their own behalf and that of their posterity. At the appointed place of worship, the spot chosen for intercourse between a reconciled God and his guilty creatures, "on the east of Eden," the Cone of fire and a

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cloud accompanied the institution of the symbolic worship which then began to be performed in order to keep up the expectation which had been kindled of the promised "Seed of the woman," THE JEHOVAH whom she exultingly thought she had borne when her first born Cain came into the world. After the flood the Rainbow, substantially the same symbol, though circumstantially varied in order that it might be adapted to the peculiar situation of the survivors from the recent catastrophe, became, by Divine appointment, "the faithful witness in heaven," occasionally testifying that God would in due time accomplish his engagements; while the other standing symbol, as we may fairly suppose from its appearance to Abraham and ever after, still dignified the place of religious congress chosen by Noah and his sons, as it had dignified that of Adam. And again, at the call of Abraham, the same symbol of the Divine presence passed through the divisions of the sacrificed victims, which the patriarch, by immediate revelation, had offered up to God. There were, in each of these dispensations of mercy, accompaniments of the grand promise of a Saviour in the provision made for the temporal comfort of mankind; but that Promise was the grand feature of them all. From that Promise those of a temporal nature, connected with it, originated; and from the former all the good, conveyed by the latter, arose.