ter of Abraham. How often do we find still, on the Royal Exchange, that the merchant who does not pretend to Christianity has a keen and delicate sense of honor and integrity, that ought to make professing Christian men blush beside it! How often do we find an honor, a manliness, an integrity, in unconverted men, that are not displayed by many who make very loud professions, wear a very solemn countenance, and go three times a day to the house of God! I do not mean to say that this proves that those excellent men of high-toned integrity do not want Christianity; it only proves that if we be Christians we should not come behind them. Excellent as these traits are, yet, in order to be saved, they need to be taught not to lean upon them, as they too probably do, but upon Him in whom the greatest saint and the greatest sinner, must equally and altogether trust for mercy, sanctification and forgiveness. Abimelech addressed Abraham in language extremely quiet, courteous, affectionate, almost Christian. He might have been exasperated at the deception practised upon him. He might have spoken to Abraham in language of severe recrimination and unmitigated reproach; but he did not do so,-he restrained his anger; and I have no doubt that Abraham felt most deeply humbled by seeing so mild, so beautiful, so forbearing a response to so sinful, so wicked, and so unjustifiable a prevarication.

This reiterated sin, as I have said already, seems to have been adopted by Abraham as deliberate policy; but, although it occurred for the second time, it does not occur again. No doubt he was brought to see it in its right light, and probably by the rebuke administered by Abimelech he was made re.pentant for it. And Abimelech, too, reproached Sarah in a very delicate but sharp way. He said, "Behold, I have given thy brother" - therein was the sarcasm. "You, Sarah, connived at Abraham's sin, by calling yourself his sister, and you called him your brother. Well, Sarah, I have given thy brother

a thousand pieces of silver; behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes unto all that are with thee, and with all other; that is, "you are safe enough now." And it is added very truly, "thus she was reproved." He did not say one word of reproof more than, "thy brother." He thus showed her that he saw through the deception she had attempted; and he wished to show at the same time that she, a professing Christian, was thus capable of deceiving one who made no pretensions to Christianity; and thus the least enlightened rebuked the loudest professor, and Abraham and Sarah went home humbler persons that night than when they left their dwelling in the morning.

May we have the faith without the faults of Abraham. May the Spirit so sanctify and enlighten us, that we may learn to discriminate, and follow Abraham as far as he followed him who said, "Before Abraham was, I am."

MISSAL OF HAGARISHMAEL'S THIRST― GOD IN THE DESERTGROVES AND CATHEDRALS.

We now come to the actual history of the fulfilment of an ancient promise made to Abraham, often renewed, and in circumstances of great and impressive solemnity. We learn, from what the historian records as fact, how faithful God ever is, and ever has been, to the least and greatest of the promises which he himself has given. These promises seem to involve impossibilities; but, just because they were promises, nothing can be impossible for God to do, or improbable to expect, which, in his own blessed word, he has actually made promise of. He said that Sarah in old age should have a son; and that son, in the fulness of the time, was born unto her, and his name, we are told, was called Isaac; that is, laughter, merriment, or joy; or it may be called good news, as if it were an anticipatory accent of that real good news which, in the fulness of the times, sounded from the skies, when angels sang, "Unto you is born this day a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord."

Abraham took Isaac, and admitted him, by an outward rite, into what we believe was the outward and visible communion of the people of God, or enrolled his name amid the worshippers of God by a rite or ceremony which I have ever felt corresponded in that dispensation in its application to the cercmony, or sacrament, or rite, of baptism in the Christian Church.

We read again, in the fifth verse, that Abraham was a hundred years old when this child was born unto him. The child, then, was not the offspring of nature, according to the laws of nature, but the unexpected child of grace, and the exponent of the fulfilment of a promise, given by the God of grace to Abraham.

Sarah says, in the sixth verse, "God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me." You recollect that when the promise was made, Sarah, in her tent, overheard the promise, and laughed at it. The thing was so incredible to her, that she laughed at the very announcement of it, as impossible and absurd; and she now says, with great emphasis, referring to her laughter, "With incredulity,” she says, "I laughed, in unbelief; but God has made me to laugh in reality. I find that my laughter before was the laughter of unbelief; my laughter or my joy now is that of delight, and gratitude, and faith in God, for he has made even me, incredulous as I am and was, -God has made me to laugh and be glad, as well as Abraham, the father of the child."

She next exclaimed, "Who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have borne him a son in his old age,”—repeating the cause of her laughter, and explaining how remarkable it was, and how truly it became her to recognize this son Isaac, not as nature's gift, but as grace's special and peculiar boon; as a fact above nature, and therefore a miracle.

Ishmael persecuted Isaac. Ishmael was the son of the bondwoman, or the secondary wife of Abraham; for you must recollect that Hagar was as truly Abraham's wife as was Sarah, being then what was called a secondary wife, publicly recognized, and married to Abraham under a state and a dispensation in which, according to the language of our Lord, this was tolerated for the hardness of their hearts. Things

were permitted in the infancy of society which have been prohibited or stopped in its maturity. In fact, society in the mass has been very much like the individual; things are permitted or overlooked in childhood, which are neither permitted nor overlooked in maturer years; and it is quite plain, from reading this book, which gives us the biography of humanity, as a whole, that arrangements were tolerated, if not applauded, in the earliest stages of society, which were not so in its riper, and its maturer years. In this matter of Abraham's marriage to two wives, it was God who tolerated it. It is the law of God that makes it sin now; and when the great Legislator speaks, all dispute or doubt about the morality or immorality of an action is put an end to. Ishmael, it is said, mocked at Isaac. Thus, whilst God states the fact of polygamy, he states the consequences, the perplexities, the ills of it. Here Ishmael, who was then about fourteen years of age, found that he was likely to be supplanted, and Hagar saw that she might not now occupy the prominent place which she thought she had secured in preference to Sarah. Conflict, antagonism, envy, jealousy, broke out. Ishmael naturally vindicated and took the part of his mother Hagar, who had probably been despised by Sarah, whose temper was not of the happiest kind constitutionally. The son of the bondwoman, seeing his mother Hagar not treated kindly, mocked at Isaac, the son of promise; and the consèquence was, that Sarah came and said, "Cast out the bondwoman." If Abraham had been an unsanctified man, he would have said, "Sarah, you were the person who recommended her introduction; why should you now advise her being cast out? If she has been unkind to you, you ought to remember that you proposed her admittance; and, therefore, you must put up with the results that follow from my having done what you recommended at the beginning." But she saw her fault, the inconveniences, the practical incon