by us, but they should not be supreme and guiding in all our doings. The right course is to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness"-making religion the main, the guiding thing; and it is a fact, my dear friends, just as certain as that suns rise and set, if you do so, that "all other things shall be added." It is a law that all things illustrate, that if you set out to seek the world in order to gain it, you may lose it, and to a dead certainty you will lose your soul; but if you set out to save your soul, and to honor God, and to do his will, you will be astonished to see how every secondary thing will leap into its place, and contribute to your comfort. And what is true in the case of individuals, is true in the case of nations. Let nations seek first to do what is God's will, promote his glory, maintain his cause, and God will prosper them. Let them fight against him, and against his will and his cause, and God will not honor them. "Them that honor me, I will honor," has been illustrated from Abram and Lot downward to the present hour. We find, in the next place, that God, even then, and on earth, honored Abram for so doing; for the Lord appeared unto Abram, who had made so munificent a sacrifice, and said unto him, "Lift up now 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 forever." Abram had given up his temporal right, and God repeats to him the pledge of an eternal inheritance. He surrendered the place that was well watered before the Lord, and God instantly comforts him by the sure pledge and prospect of a better land, a brighter city, and a more happy rest. And he says also, "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." Now we believe that promise remains yet to be fulfilled. The Jew has a right to Canaan, and Canaan a right to the Jew; and that the strict language of this promise remains yet to be fulfilled. I cannot think that after God's using the words, "I will give it to thy seed forever," we are to dilute them. God's promises rather go beyond what we conceive than come short; and, therefore, we believe the giving it to his seed forever denotes that God's ancient people will be reconstituted a holy nation, a peculiar people, a royal priesthood, in the midst of their own land. It cannot be surely for nothing that a Jew's heart still vibrates to Jerusalem as the needle does to the pole; that his magnetic pole is still Jerusalem; and that Jerusalem remains in the hands of many people and of many tribes; but tribes and people who are at war with themselves, and evidently in it only just as we put people in an empty house to keep it till the inhabitant enters, or till the rightful owner takes possession of it. And, again, the investiture is here given to Abram, for God said, 'Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee;" that is, he gave him the investiture of it, showed it to him, and thus assured him that it was so. 66 a What a beautiful chapter, now, is this we have read! What a specimen of courtesy in Abraham's conduct! What proof of Christian meekness! What evidence that when the heart is right in the sight of God, the life will be all courtesy in reference to mankind! If we be Christ's, we are also Abraham's children and heirs of the promises. O Lord, our heavenly Father, make us thy sons by adoption; and, if sons, heirs - heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, through Jesus. May we look above all carnal, rational, and earthly elements, and seek communion with thyself, and endeavor to see and estimate all as thou dost. Amen. CHAPTER XIV. ANCIENT KINGS-WAR- INVASION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH-THE ROMISH MASS JEWISH TRANSLATION. THOSE who are described as kings of different nations, were not similar to, or identified with, the kings of modern European nations. A king in those days was like a Highland chief, or an Arab sheik - the head of a clan, or band of followers, who were his subjects, and more than subjects — earnest friends, in virtue of the patriarchal arrangement. We are informed that war broke out among these nations one with another. Strange it is, that, after the judgments of the flood, God's past retributive dealings should be so utterly forgotten, and man's obligations to him should have so soon passed away from their minds, as to have left them at war with each other. But, as long as man is in a state of war with God, so long he will be found in a state of war with his fellows; and the only way to put an end to war in modern times, just as it was the only way in ancient times, is, not to beat the sword into the ploughshare, or the spear into the pruninghook - not to destroy the army, or to burn the navy, or annihilate weapons of war; but to spread those divine principles of truth and love, and joy, which, like seeds cast into a nation's heart, will grow up into harvests of lasting and real peace. War originated in the ambition of princes, and in the restlessness of the people; and the issue of it was, what it always is, and has been, where not warranted disaster and misery. We read, next, of the invasion of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah, we gather from a previous chapter, were two prosperous commercial capitals. You recollect that Lot chose the plain of Sodom because it was well watered, fruitful in its soil, numerous streams to turn the busy millwheels, as they swept onward to the ocean; and he selected it, not on account of its religion, but its commercial advantages and its agricultural value. Those kings could see the same advantages that Lot saw; and they resolved to make war upon Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of the precious spoils that they contained. We find that Lot was in the midst of Sodom. He chose it, in spite of its wickedness, because of its riches; and the issue of a choice, made in the face of the will of God, was, that he lost his religion and lost his property and capital together. He is an illustration of that maxim, by contrast, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added." Reverse that, seek the other things first, and the kingdom of God next, and the probability is that you will lose both. Lot went there with his capital to make more, and he lost his labor, lost his property, and, in addition, grieved and vexed his God, and became a captive amid the heathen nations. -- Now, mark the generosity of Abraham on this occasion. Just recollect what Lot had done when there was a quarrel between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's herdsmen. The senior, that is, the uncle, Abraham, who might have made his choice, gave way; and, with exquisite courtesy, as well as Christian principle, said to Lot, "Let there be no quarrel between us if you will go to the right, I will go to the left; if you will to the left, I will go to the right — take your go choice only let us have peace, at the sacrifice of any preference, while it is not at the sacrifice of vital principle." Lot did not defer to Abraham as he ought to have done, subdued by his great kindness; but he instantly snatched at the advantage, seized the offer, turned to Sodom and Gomorrah, entered into this capital, because the plains were well watered, and the place was prosperous in his sight. Abraham, when he heard that Lot was taken captive, might have said, "He made his bed, and he may lie in it; he took the choice, and he must take the consequences of it; he went to Sodom against what right principle dictated, let him now reap the bitter fruits of what he has done." That was man's way, but that was not Abraham's way; for the instant he heard that his ungrateful nephew, Lot, was taken captive, that instant, unsolicited and forgetful of his past conduct, he determined, at all hazards, to rescue him. He summoned together the patriarchal militia, according to his own taste, and in his own way, there being then no opposition or other parliamentary obstruction, and marched three hundred, that being the whole force he could gather together, in order that he might rescue his ungrateful nephew, Lot, from the hands of the Canaanites, and those who had taken him captive. Now, some would say that Abraham ought not to have done so; that he ought to have tried, first, diplomatic arrangements-protocols - with these Canaanite nations; but these Canaanite nations would have struck first, and diplomatized afterwards. And if Abraham had done so, he would have lost the magnanimous memorial that he has left in the sequel. War was warranted by the circumstances; it was in one sense aggressive, and yet in another respect it was justifiable. Savages had taken his nephew, and he was bound to deal with those savages just as one would deal with wild beasts - do the best he could to rescue a precious life from their fangs. And the very instincts of nature, instead of being outraged, all concur in saying that there was nothing unjustifiable or improper in Abraham's snatching the means that were within his reach, and rescuing his nephew, Lot, who had been taken from him. |