nant between me and thee, word of the LORD came and will multiply thee exceedunto Abram in a vision, saying,

Fear not, Abram: I am thy 3 And Abram fell on his shield, and thy exceeding great face: and God talked with him, reward. saying,

and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

9 ¶ And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations.

10 This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.

11 And it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.

12 He that is eight days old shall be circumcised.

15 And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.

16 And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her : yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.

19 And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.*

* Here we see the first step which God took towards separating for himself one peculiar people, through whom the great expectation of the promised deliverer might be constantly preserved.

He calls out Abraham from the rest of mankind, and promises a peculiar blessing to him and his descendants, promises that his family should greatly multiply and become a great nation, and that they should possess that land in which he was then a stranger, that they should be his (God's) peculiar people, over whom He would carry on an especial providence, and that He would be their God, that is, that while all other nations were sunk in idolatry, or the worshipping of false gods, they should know and worship Him the true God. This promise he graciously calls his covenant-which word signifies an agreement by which two or more parties are bound by certain promises made between themselves; it therefore expresses in the strongest manner the certainty of the fulfilment of the promise made by God, and at the same time the great and awful obligation by which they who are received into such a covenant, are bound to observe the conditions of it-which in this case were, that

the Israelites should worship and obey the true God, and as his peculiar people, keep themselves separate from all idolaters.

All this, then so far, relates to Abraham and his particular family; but it is evident, that in these last selections, beginning at chapter twelve, there is something that concerns us all. In the first place, the great promise made to Adam is here repeated to Abraham, (chap. xii. v. 3,) in plainer terms: "In

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thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed;" that is, among those that shall come of thy family shall be one by whom some great general blessing shall be obtained for mankind.” There is however much more than this bare promise, only it cannot be seen except by the light of the gospel, which declares to us what this promised salvation is. In order therefore that the reader may rightly understand and duly value this scripture concerning Abraham, and indeed all that is to follow, his attention must now be called to a brief exposition of the salvation made known to us by the gospel, and then he will perceive how clearly and how wonderfully that salvation (or in other words, the Christian religion) was foretold and exemplified, and (as it were) modelled, in these writings of Moses, which we know were written above 1400 years before the least dawn of it appeared in the world. In order then to take such a view of this salvation as may suffice for our present purpose, we may divide the subject under these four heads :

for us.

I. From what evils it is that a deliverance has been obtained, II. To what good it is that a way has been opened to us. III. By whom, and how, this happiness has been obtained for us. IV. What is necessary on our part in order to become partakers of this salvation.

I. The evils from which a deliverance has been obtained for us, are those evils to which (through our descent from Adam) we are born, and in which we naturally continue, till by the power and goodness of our great deliverer, a mighty change is wrought in us; and those evils are the following: A bad natural disposition, leading us to do whatever happens to please ourselves without the regard to the will of our Creator or the good of our neighbour; the most ungrateful and constant forgetful

ness of the great God, from whose goodness we receive life and every blessing; ignorance of the true happiness for which our souls were made, namely gratitude and love to God, with a perfect confidence in his presence and care of us, and a constant and strong inclination to seek enjoyment from those low earthly things which lead towards sin, having a powerful tendency to degrade and defile the soul, and fix it more and more in forgetfulness of God. Thus we are by nature, from our very birth, without the possibility of ever recovering ourselves from this miserable state, the objects of God's just wrath; liable to much present suffering, and totally unqualified to be received into these blessed regions, where there is no such thing as selfishness, but all love one another purely and fervently, and love God with all the love and gratitude they are capable of.

Now the good to which a way has been opened to us is—a general grant of full pardon from the free mercy of God- -a complete restoration to his favour and love, even to his paternal favour and love, being made his children by adoption—although by adoption, still as entirely his children-his beloved, accepted children, as if we had never been otherwise. A new disposition, according with this new relation to God, (described by St. Paul as "crying, Abba, Father,") a disposition to endeavour earnestly to please God and do good to our fellow creatures, keenly relishing the pleasures of knowing, loving, praising, and trusting in God; and this new disposition continually supported and strengthened by his Spirit against the old disposition which we had by nature, till at last, by death, we are delivered from the latter entirely, and for ever, and are made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in everlasting joy.

Now no reader will need to be told that he who obtained this most complete salvation for us, is that Being who is called in scripture the only begotten Son of God, which plainly tells us, that he is of the same nature with God the Father; but for fear we should mistake that expression, St. Paul tells us (Col. ii. 9) that" in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead." At that time then which infinite wisdom saw to be best, this divine Being came into this world in our nature, born of a wo

man, of that nation which sprang from Abraham, (see Romans ix. 5,) went through all the temptations of human nature and human life, endured the extreme of suffering and provocation, and an agonizing death without once falling into sin; thus he baffled and triumphed over the devil, and offered himself up to God the Father an acceptable sacrifice and satisfaction for the sins of the world—being a man in whom he was " well pleased" —a man who had accomplished a righteousness worthy to be presented to God, and paid a penalty more than equivalent to the guilt incurred by man. Having thus bruised the serpent's head and made atonement for sin, He rose from the dead, ascended " up where He was before," being now become something more than he was before, namely, a fit mediator between God and man, and having in himself fully accomplished all the righteousness, considered in the way of merit, necessary for our admittance to the eternal love and favour of God, He is exalted at the right hand of God, a Prince and a Saviour, to give that complete salvation above described. But to give it to whom? to every one that believeth. And this brings us to that last and very important part of the subject-What is necessary on our part in order to become partakers of this great salvation? This is that part of the subject for the sake of which this exposition has been introduced; because it is so necessary to be considered, in order to understand the true value and importance which St. Paul has taught us to attach to the history of God's dealings with Abraham, and which, in fact, is the very key to many of the most precious parts both of the Old and New Testaments. It is impossible to read the New Testament without perceiving how very often and how very plainly it is declared that the means on our part, by which alone we can become partakers of this salvation, is faith;—that those inestimable blessings before mentioned, as procured and bestowed by our Lord Jesus Christ, are given to every one that believes the gospel-to every one that believes that Jesus is the Son of God, and that all which He, (and his apostles from him,) have declared and foretold, is true, and will be fulfilled. It would be easy to fill pages with quotations to this effect if it were not too well known to need any.