ture, the conduct of Providence, or the method of salvation. I will thus simply reply; Do you comprehend the whole? Are you of the privy council of heaven? Can you account for any thing you behold? Do you know to what all these things tend, and in what they are to issue?

Rest, Christians, in general, obvious, useful, practical truth; and know that devotedness to God is the essence of religion, and the sum of human happiness. Look forward to that day when light shall arise out of obscurity, when all mysteries shall be unveiled; when the faculties of the human mind shall be strengthened and increased, and the ob

jects contemplated shall be brought nearer the eye, placed in a fairer point of view, and irradiated with a fuller glory; when God shall in the most complete and satisfactory manner vindicate his ways to men.

The next Lecture will conclude the History of Abraham, and the proposed course for this season. If to your former attendance and kind attention, you will indulge me with one audience more, it will increase the affectionate regard of a grateful heart, and afford an opportunity of expressing that gratitude at greater length. May God bless all the means of knowledge, of piety, and of improvement. Amen.

HISTORY OF ABRAHAM.

LECTURE XVIII.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises; but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned: but now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.-HEBREWS xi. 13-16.

WHAT is the amount of human life? Vanity | desire; and he is now as eager to bury her and vexation of spirit. All our wanderings out of his sight, as he formerly was to retain' tend towards the grave. The anxieties and the possession of her wholly to himself. Let solicitude, the hopes and fears, the disappoint- the beautiful and the vain, the gay, the adments and successes which alternately oc-mired, and the flattered, think of this and be cupy and agitate the mind, at length come humbled. The latter end of her life, howto one issue, and all-conquering death settles the account. The time is at length come that Sarah must pay the debt of nature. That beauty which conjugal affection doated on, and which princes coveted, becomes deformed with wrinkles; the cold hand of death chills the fond maternal heart, and even the delight of an Isaac is enjoyed no more. The Jewish Rabbins, fruitful in legends, affirm, that grief for the sacrifice of Isaac shortened her life. For that the devil, who had exulted in the prospect of seeing Isaac perish by the knife of his father, to revenge himself for the disappointment which he felt upon his deliverance by the angel, conveyed intelligence to Sarah that the sacrifice was actually performed; which news speedily proved fatal to her. As if the oppressive weight of one hundred and twenty-seven years did not sufficiently account for the death of a frail woman, without the necessity of a preternatural interposition.

Affecting change! The eyes of Abraham himself cannot now endure to look upon her, whom once he shuddered to think that the eyes of another should behold with too much

ever, is better than the beginning. Tormented with the unaccomplished desire of having children, subjected to all the hardships of a pilgrimage state, and stung with the keen pangs of jealousy, almost up to her ninetieth year, life at length subsides into a delightful calm of thirty-seven years more, cheered and cherished by the unabated affection of her beloved lord, and blessed with the progress and accomplishments of the son of her womb, Isaac, the favourite of God and man. But she must finally make one remove more; not to that country from which she came out, but to that land "from whose bourne no traveller returns." A partaker as of the fortunes, so of the faith of Abraham, she sees the promises afar off, is persuaded of them and embraces them; desires and looks for another country, that is, an heavenly.

God had promised to Abraham and his seed the possession of Canaan, and lo, it commences in the purchase, at their full value, of a little field and a cave, for a burying place. He had been threatened with a severe stroke in the demanded sacrifice of Isaac, he is made to feel one in the loss of Sarah.

one kind of goods for another, is derived from that which signifies a lamb ;* the verb which is translated to sell, comes from the noun, which translated signifies a colt or young horse; the Greek word, which in our language is to buy, comes from that which signifies an ass: the term that denotes rent or revenue, and that which signifies a sheep, are of kindred composition and import. A criminal, according to the magnitude of his guilt, was condemned to pay a fine of four, twelve, or an hundred oxen. A wealthy person is called a man of many lambs. Two rival brothers are represented in Hesiod, as fighting with each other about the sheep of their father; that is, contending who should be his heir. But even so early as the time of Abraham, we find silver employed as a more commodious mean of traffic; and the concurrence of all civilized and commercial

The mellowed friendship of so many years, and union cemented at last by so dear a pledge, could not be dissolved without pain. Abraham is sensible of his loss, and bewails it. His religion is not of that sort which values itself on doing violence to nature; he knows nothing of that vain philosophy which affects to deny what it feels: neither has an old age of one hundred and thirty-seven years extinguished in the heart those tender emotions, which the deprivation of an object, once fair, and ever dear, naturally excites. He who does not weep on such an occasion as this, is something more or less than a man. But to persevere in bewailing the dead, to the neglect of our duty to the living, is both folly and impiety. Abraham's sorrow encroaches upon none of the valuable principles of a good mind. His whole conduct in the purchase of the field of Ephron the Hittite, and the cave of Machpelah, ex-nations to this day, in employing the precious hibits a soul replete with the most amiable and respectable virtues. Tender and affectionate, he is desirous of honouring in death the remains of what he prized in life. Noble-minded, generous, and independent, he refuses to show respect to the memory of Sarah with that which cost him nothing. Civil and polite, he repays the courtesy of his neighbours with affability and condescension. Scrupulously just and honest, he will give nothing less than the full price, and in full tale, weight, and purity, for what was frankly tendered him as a gift. The dialogue of the twenty-third chapter is a masterly picture of the beautiful simplicity of ancient manners, and exhibits a strife of unaffected kindness, good-nature, and civility, which at once pleases and instructs. Let me beseech you to peruse it carefully when opportunity offers. Would to God such contentions were more frequent in the world. The purchase is made, the price is paid, possession is made sure, and then was Sarah buried. And thus, first, Abraham became seized of the land of promise. So differently does Providence shape events from our preconception of them.

metals for this purpose, is a proof how early men learned the wisdom of this world; and discovers to us, how readily they invent, how accurately they reason, and how prudently they act, in matters that are conducive to their temporal interest and advantage. But to return

By the death of Sarah, the care and anxiety about the dear object of their common affection becomes naturally much increased to the surviving parent. Isaac was now arrived at man's estate, and it is fit that the heir of the promise should be established in a family of his own. For how are the promises of God brought into effect, but by the intervention of the means which nature and Providence have appointed? Abraham, with the solicitude of a good father, is desirous of matching his son, rather prudently and piously, than nobly or wealthily. In these days of simplicity and nature, the partner for life was sought after, not for the largeness of her possessions; but gold, and silver, and jewels, were employed to court beauty and virtue to their proper sphere of importance and usefulness in life. Abraham judges it unwise to marry his son into a Hittite famiIt is worthy of observation, that this is the ly, because they had deviated from the worfirst money transaction which we read of in ship of the true God. He could esteem their the world. Till then, and long after, both hospitality, kindness, and civility, as they among the posterity of Abraham and other deserved, without falling in love with their nations, wealth was estimated by the num- religion. And he who cannot make this ber and quality of cattle; and cattle were distinction must either be unfaithful to God the principal instruments of commerce.- or unfriendly to man. Affecting view of Thus we read in many places of Homer, of the corruption and degeneracy of human a coat of mail worth an hundred oxen; a nature! that Isaac, the son of faithful Abracaldron worth twenty sheep; a cup or goblet ham, should be deemed in greater danger of worth twelve lambs; and the like. The being perverted by an idolatrous wife, than words belonging to commerce or exchange that a woman of Canaan should be converted of commodities, in the Greek language, are to the worship of the living and true God, by mostly derived from the names of certain a believing husband. animals, by means of which that exchange was originally carried on. Thus the word arnusthai-arnos. tpoolein-poolos. tooneisthajitself which signifies to truck or commute boion, doodekaboion, ekatomboion. § Probmasis-Probaton.

onos.

[Timeema tessaraPoluarnos.

whom he dignified by the title of his friend, only by such things as are the common gifts of his providence to all, and which are often bestowed on the vilest and most worthless of mankind? If the grave were to terminate

Isaac, it would appear, devoted to retirement and contemplation, little attached himself to the concerns of this life; the management of his affairs and his settlement in the world, he leaves to the wisdom of his father, and the fidelity of an ancient domestic. The the existence of man, such questions would journey of that servant into Mesopotamia, and the success of it, belong more properly to the history of Isaac. As far as Abraham is concerned in it, we behold a holy man acknowledging God in all his ways, and making the ordinary concerns of life a religious service: and we see God, in return, directing every step to a happy issue.

be indeed of difficult solution. But the difficulty of them scatters and disperses before one word of God, spoken three hundred and thirty years after the patriarch's death, even to Moses at the bush in Horeb. I am the God of Abraham. His relation to God was as entire three centuries after his body was consumed in dust in Machpelah, as when he was entertaining angels in Mamre, or sacrificing upon Mount Moriah. "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." To Him, and for Him, and with Him, now live the faithful of all past ages; and precious is their very dust in his sight. Judge nothing then before the time, till the day come which shall unfold the purpose of Heaven, which shall clear up the mystery of Providence, and fully vindicate the ways of God to man.

Having seen his beloved son settled entirely to his satisfaction, he enters again himself into the honourable state of marriage, and is blessed in it by a progeny of six sons and ten grandchildren born in his life time. In order to prevent strife after his death, as far as human sagacity and foresight could do it, and knowing that property is the great source of contention among men, he settles his worldly affairs, bequeathing the great bulk of his fortune to Isaac, the son of his It appears that some intercourse between first and principal wife; following in this the Ishmael and his father's family had been destination of Providence, and fulfilling the kept up; for we find him apprized of Abracondition of the covenant under which Re- ham's death, and assisting at his funeral. He bekah was induced to become Isaac's wife. must be a wild man indeed, not to have He makes a suitable provision for the young- been tamed, at least into a temporary sorrow, er branches of his family, and sends them, by such an event, and melted into forgetfulby dint of his paternal authority, into a dis-ness of all past resentments, by the death of tant part of the country, where he yet lived, a father. Providence wisely produces this that the quiet and peaceable temper of Isaac might not be exposed to disturbance and trouble, from the neighbourhood of ambitious, violent, or avaricious brothers, after his death.

That fatal period at length overtakes him also, and he comes to the grave, "like as a shock of corn cometh in his season," in a good old age, "an old man, and full of years," at the age of one hundred three score and fifteen. A life shorter by far than any we have hitherto studied, but much fuller of incidents and events. A life chequered with uncommon trials, and blessings as extraordinary. A life distinguished by the most brilliant virtues which adorn human nature, but not wholly exempted from its frailties and infirmities. Abraham purchased a grave for Sarah. Alas! he was only providing a habitation for himself! How short, how unimportant the distance between the funeral rites which we prepare, and those which are prepared for us!

But can this be all that God intended to bestow upon our patriarch by promises so lofty, conveyed in language so solemn? Was it for this he was called to leave his country and his father's house? Did vision upon vision, covenant upon covenant, promise upon promise, conduct only to a little cave in Hebron? Was the favour of the Almighty, the all bountiful Jehovah, expressed to the man

good effect, by the common calamities wherewith families are visited; they tend to reconcile the alienated, they extinguish bitterness and strife, they rekindle the dying embers of filial duty and brotherly love. Isaac and Ishmael, men of different natures, of opposite interests, rivals from the womb, forget all animosity, and mingle tears over a father's tomb.

It remains, in conformity to our plan, that we point out in a few particulars, the resemblance betwixt Abraham and Christ, that we may see wherein the former typified the latter.

Abraham, at God's command, leaving his country, and his father's house, points to us obviously, Jesus, at the fulness of time, leaving heaven's glory and the bosom of the Father, and coming into our world and living a pilgrim and a stranger in it. Abraham, in a land which was his own by the gift and promise of God, nevertheless obtained no fixed residence in it, but wandered about from place to place; Jesus, in a world which he made and upholds, which is his by the most undeniable title, was without a place where to lay his head. Abraham was called the friend of God, and to him God communicated his purposes of mercy and of judgment; Jesus, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and knows intimately the mind of the Lord, he hath declared him.

With Abraham God established the political | with the antediluvian world; giving you covenants which secured to him and his family the possession of Canaan, and all the temporal and spiritual blessings of a transitory and preparatory economy; Jesus is the Mediator of a better covenant, established upon better promises; even the covenant of redemption, whereby the kingdom of heaven, and eternal life, are made sure to all his spiritual seed; for thus it is written of him, "I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy throne to all generations;" and "according to his abundant mercy he hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." In Abraham we venerate the natural head of a great family, raised up, multiplied, preserved and distinguished by the hand of Providence to this day. Of Christ, "the whole family of heaven," and all the families of the earth" are named," "and he is before all things and by him all things consist." Abraham stands forth the typical representative, father, and pattern of believers; Christ is "the head of the body, the church," the real source of a spiritual and divine life to all them who believe.

Abraham's intercession in behalf of Sodom, and Christ's lamentation over Jerusalem, are a beautiful and striking counterpart to each other. The sacrifices which Abraham and Christ respectively offered up unto God, wonderfully illustrate and explain one another.

But in the midst of so many marks of resemblance, who does not by a glance discern as many characters of dissimilitude; and an infinite superiority claimed by Him who " in all things must have the pre-eminence ?" Who shall declare his generation, who saith of himself" before Abraham was, I am?" Abraham was a man of like passions with us, and even the father of the faithful stumbled and fell; Jesus was "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners," and the prince of this world himself, when he came, found nothing in him. Abraham was ready to offer up Isaac: Christ actually offered himself "a sacrifice of a sweet smelling savour unto God." The faith of Abraham could not redeem him from death; the power of Christ *triumphed over the grave. The first covenants, being of a temporary nature, having fulfilled their design, are passed away. The New Testament in the blood of Christ being for everlasting, continues in full force, and shall last while sun and moon endure, nay, when "all these things shall be dissolved."

Being arrived at one of the great epochs in the history of the world, we shall just for a moment look back, and mark the link which connected this period with the flood, and even

only names and dates for the sake of brevity.
SHEM the second son of Noah, and father of
Arphaxad and of all the children of Heber,
to whom the family jewel, that is, the pro-
mise of the Messiah, was committed, who
saw two of the great calamities of the world
and outlived them, the deluge, and the con-
fusion of languages, and who lived no doubt
to see and rejoice in Abraham and Isaac as
the heirs of the promise; Shem, I say, is the
great link of these two eras of the world.
For, he lived before the flood ninety-eight
years, and after it five hundred and two; of
consequence he died only twenty-five years
before Abraham. His life accordingly may
be calculated thus, with regard to the great
persons and events with which he was con-
nected. Before the flood, he lived ninety-
eight years. After the birth of his own son
Arphaxad, five hundred. After the death of
Arphaxad, sixty-one. After the death of
Noah, one hundred and fifty-two. After the
confusion of tongues, three hundred and for-
ty-eight. After the death of Sarah, thirteen.
Before the birth of Jacob, ten. Before the
birth of Moses, two hundred and seventy-five.
When Abraham was one hundred and fifty
years old, Isaac fifty, and before the descent
into Egypt, one hundred and forty. The
chronology of Abraham's life, according to
the scripture account, stands thus. He died
in the one hundred and seventy-fifth year of
his age, and of the world, two thousand one
hundred and eighty-three. Before the birth
of Christ, one thousand eight hundred and
twenty-one. After he discomfited and slew
Chederlaomer, and the other kings, ninety-
one. After the intended sacrifice of Isaac,
fifty. After the death of Sarah, thirty-eight.
After his marriage with Keturah, thirty-five.
After the death of Shem, twenty-five. Be-
|fore the descent into Egypt, one hundred and
fifteen. When Isaac was seventy-five years
old; Esau and Jacob, fifteen; Ishmael, eighty-
nine, and Heber his great grandfather, from
whom the name of Hebrew comes, four hun-
dred and sixty. "By faith he sojourned in
the land of promise as in a strange country,
dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the
heirs with him of the same promise," and
when he gave up the ghost, was buried in
the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, by his
sons Isaac and Ishmael.

And thus, my dear friends, we have, through the help of God, finished the first part of the plan of these Lectures. And the season of interruption and separation being now come, permit me, with a heart overflowing with affection and gratitude, to return you my sincere thanks for your regular attendance and patient attention. You were invited hither with much humility and diffidence; you have come hither with much alacrity and steadiness, and you must not

depart hence, without bearing along with | or to feel the powers of a world to come senyou the grateful acknowledgments of the sibly, verily he has his reward. Lecturer. He has the consolation of believ- But he affects not fastidiously to undervaing, that as neither he, nor his undertaking, lue some considerations of inferior importare the creatures of party, or of human sys-ance; he dwells with secret delight on the tem, nor aim at any interests but those of disinterested attachment and generous servirtue, good sense, and religion; so they have vices of his private friends; his heart glows been encouraged by wise and good men of at the public marks of regard he has received; various sects and denominations. He hum- and the temporal emolument arising from his bly hopes he has interfered with the happi- labours, he receives with much thankfulness ness, fame, or usefulness of no good man to you, and to that kind Providence, which whatever. If he has led any one to read the is pleased to smile upon another effort to rear Bible more carefully, to trace the connexion up a numerous family. May the kindness betwixt the Old and New Testament charac- you have shown the preacher, return a thouters, institutions, and events more accurately; sand fold upon your own heads. The God to trace the ways of Providence more closely; of love be with you all. Amen.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

LECTURE XIX.

Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever? But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? And they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.-ZECHARIAH, i. 5, 6.

REFLECTIONS upon the shortness of human | mercifully hid from our eyes; life, and the uncertainty of sublunary enjoyments, naturally present themselves, in the various changes which we daily observe, and daily feel. But alas, our reflections are too superficial and transitory, to produce habitual superiority to the world, uniform submission to the will of God, and efficacious impressions of eternity. Wasting and decaying every hour, we form and prosecute schemes of futurity, as if "our strength were the strength of stones, and our bones brass." Reasoning and reflecting as men, we live and act as children; and pursue the bauble of the moment, as if it were "the pearl of great price." When the drama of human life is ended, and the curtain drops, lo, it has shrunk to a measure so small, and contains events of so little importance, that it is difficult to render a reason why man should have existed at all; and we are constrained to cry out with the Psalmist, "Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity; surely every man walketh in a vain show; surely they are disquieted in vain."*

and every man is taught to consider himself, his life, his actions, as of importance, that we may exert ourselves to the last, and "do with our might whatsoever our hands findeth to do." Though our fathers are no more, and the prophets do not live for ever, yet the words and statutes which God commanded his servants the prophets, "took hold of our fathers, and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us." This leads us, in a direct road, to make a just estimate of the lives and actions of other men; and to consider seriously how we ought to order our own conversation, how we ought to spend our own days and years.

But my text greatly relieves this apparent insignificancy of our fleeting existence in this world, by conveying to us this important idea, that the Divine Providence is carrying on its great and wise designs, by feeble, short-lived and even worthless instruments. And the date of our latter end is wisely and

* Psalm xxxix. 6, 7.

In the preceding course of these Lectures we endeavoured, beginning at Adam, and ending with Abraham, historically to delineate, and practically to improve, the lives of those venerable men, by whom the world was first peopled, instructed, and governed: and who, in their persons, by their actions, or the events which befel them, successively typified, or foretold to their contemporaries, the great Saviour and Deliverer of the human race, during a period of more than two thousand years. By entering into the spirit of the prophet Zechariah, in the words now read, we shall be enabled to review that period with profit and delight. And this re