strong was his faith in the faithfulness of God, that he speaks of the thing yet to be done as if it were already done.

Before Jacob had travelled beyond the land of Canaan, the land of covenant; before the sun had arisen invoking him with cheering beams to prosecute his second day's journey to a land of safety, much more than a paternal blessing had been vouchsafed to him; he had received more to comfort his heart and sustain his soul than his earthly father, great and pious as he might be, had to bestow, even upon a favourite son. The God of Abraham and Isaac appeared to him, giving him ample assurance that he was also his God. For while the stones which he gathered after the sun had gone down were his pillow, the earth his bed, and the far spreading star-spangled sky his curtain, he, from whom the twelve tribes of Israel were appointed to spring, received, upon his solitary angel-guarded couch, the promise that all that land, the land wherein he lay, which was the land of Canaan, should be theirs. For thus said the Lord, from the top of the ladder where he stood, "I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father; and the God of Isaac; the land wherein thou liest to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee, and in thy seed, shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xxviii. 13, 14).

Jacob, or Israel, as he was afterwards called, most firmly believed all this, though the promise had not been fulfilled either to his father or grandfather, though neither of them had possessed or inherited the land. He believed it all because he had it from the lips of Jehovah, who cannot lie, and who will not deceive; and hence he charged his sons, and even made his beloved Joseph swear, that he would not bury him in the land of Egypt, the land of the heathen, believing that he had to die before he could inherit the land of promise; but carry him into the land of Canaan, to the burying-place of his fathers, in the land given to them and him, and to his children, by God, in an everlasting covenant. And Joseph also took an oath from the children of Israel, binding them to do the same thing for him, to carry him into Canaan and bury him there. And the reason of all this was, because he and all that people believed the word and covenant of God making that land theirs; and because they believed, according to these, the time would come when it would be theirs by actual and everlasting possession, when they would inherit it as God's free and peculiar gift to them.

This promise and covenant of the faithful God have not yet been fulfilled, but are waiting the advent of "the times which the Father hath put in his own power" for their literal fulfilment. They were not fulfilled at the return of Israel from their long oppressive Egyptian bondage, for the patriarchs with whom

they were made, and their offspring who died in that land of servitude, and during their punitive journeyings in the wilderness, were not with those privileged individuals whom Joshua led over Jordan's divided stream; nor did they with them take possession of the land. When they crossed Jordan, and joyfully entered Canaan, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were slumbering in the grave," prisoners of hope," waiting for God to call and they will answer him-arise and take possession of the land. Nor is this all, but the people who by miracle after miracle were led into that land did not, according to the tenor of promise and covenant, take possession of it; nor have they inherited it for ever; nor is it in the possession of their descendants in the present day, though they are to possess it for ever; and consequently this covenant and promise have not yet been fulfilled to these men, highly favoured and greatly beloved of God; yet no doubt can be entertained of their fulfilment to the very letter, for the God who made them is faithful to all his engagements. And that God will fulfil his covenant to these men and their seed, Stephen argued clearly and conclusively, in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. "For," says he, "then came he (Abraham) out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran; and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into the land wherein ye now dwell. And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet he promised that he

would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child." That land Abraham as yet never had for an inheritance, but according to this it shall be his; and the fact of his descendants possessing it temporarily at the time when Stephen uttered these words was another divine evidence of the fulfilment of this covenant.

That the covenant and promise were made with Abraham, that he and his posterity should possess, and for ever inherit the land of Canaan, cannot be denied. It is equally true that they have not as yet inherited the land according to covenant and promise; but as God who has promised to give them this land is a God of truth, who will certainly fulfil all his promises, it follows, as a matter equally certain, that they shall possess and inherit the land. This they must, this they shall do, unless God proves faithless to his solemn engagements. But this is an alternative too repugnant to be entertained for a single moment. As no good reason exists or can exist, as no insurmountable obstacle stands in the way or can stand in the way, why God should not fulfil this covenant with Abraham and his seed, the obvious and certain conclusion is, he will do it. The preparations have been advancing since the day the covenant was made; they are going forward now, and when they have been completed, the divinely chosen and appointed heirs will enter upon their possession.

But before this everlasting covenant, so full of great

and precious blessings, can be fulfilled, before Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants, can inherit the land, theirs by divine gift and covenant, theirs by heavenly deed, it is evident they must be raised up out of their graves and restored to life; and those scattered to the four winds of heaven in the retributive justice of God, in answer to the fearful invocation of the guilt of the crucifixion of the Son of God being upon their heads, when they said, "His blood be upon us and our children," must be gathered. And all this, marvellous as it may seem, and incredible withal, even to many who are professedly diligent students of the word of God, according to the glorious predictions contained in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, shall be done. And to the fulfilment of that covenant, as presented in that chapter, it may be important to look.

While Ezekiel sat, a grief-stricken captive, far from Shiloh's hallowed brook, which flowed fast by the oracle of God, on Chebar's dismal heathen banks, the hand of the Lord God came upon him, and filled him with the Spirit's influence, with prophetic inspiration. Under these strong, mighty influences and supernatural agency he was carried out into a valley where was scattered, in wild and warlike confusion, as if the wreck of many battles, and piled up in seeming disorder, very many, vast heaps of human bones. As he walked around and gazed upon these remains of the dead which had lived and acted in the busy scenes of