in the world's wide desert, and they that had drunk from broken cisterns, or dropped down by the way, are refreshed, and journey on. In this instance, such was the inhospitality of the heathen inhabitants, that they went and stopped up the wells which Abraham's and Isaac's servants had digged; that is, they did not make use of them themselves, which one could understand, but they put an end to them by filling them with earth, lest others should profit by them. So the Pope neither reads the Bible himself, nor allows others to do so. People are in the world who are so envious of another's blessings, that they would extinguish them, and so careless of their own profit that they deprive themselves that others may also be deprived. Isaac, however, did not fight about the wells; but, as they stopped up one, he just went and dug another. He did not quarrel about any particular well, but went and instantly. prepared another, willing, as long as there was room and provision for him and his, as much as lay in him, to live peaceably with all men. "Isaac builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there." Now, it is proper here to observe, that, whilst Isaac copied a bad precedent in his father's life, he was not insensible to his good, his bright, and holy acts and examples also. You remember we read in a previous chapter that, wherever Abraham pitched his tent, there he built an altar. Isaac has caught this beautiful trait, and so, where he pitched his tent, there he raised his altar. Wherever the tent is spread, there the altar should be built. Wherever there is a home, there there ought to be the recognition of God. Wherever there is a family, there there ought to be family worship. The tent will be more beautiful; its stakes will be more strong, because the God in whom we live and move, and have our being, and from whom our blessings come, is recognized, and worshipped, and looked to beneath its shadow. Is there an altar in my tent? Have I a God, adored and loved, and recognized, in my home? Religion, my dear friends, is not a thing for the four consecrated walls of a sanctuary only, but an element suitable and serviceable for every home. It is more beautiful in homes, the first churches, than in churches so called. No matins or vespers in a church should be substituted for family worship. In the home, the father is the priest, the head of his family, and he ought to have the altar raised where God has allowed him to pitch his tent. We read that the inhabitants saw, in the next place, that Isaac and his family were getting strong, and therefore they asked him to enter into a compact with them, to spare them, which he readily did. God's blessing made him rich and strong, and the people saw it. Esau, who was rejected, and had sold his birthright, begins here to develop all the traits of that character that that first act indicated; for "he was forty years old when he took to wife Judith," not, as Isaac took Rebekah, a child of God, but "the daughter of Beeri the Hittite ;" and, not satisfied with one, he married also "Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite," both of the colonies and tribes of the heathen Canaan, not yet cast out. He sinned twice, by bigamy, and by marrying idolaters. And then it is added, with exquisite eloquence and touching pathos, which signify more than the words seem to express, "which were a grief of mind unto" the pious "Isaac and to" the Christian " Rebekah," found still in many a household, and painfully disturbing many a happy family. a fact THE PROMISED REWARD. "And the Lord appeared unto Isaac the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father; fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake."- - GENESIS XXVI. 24. ISAAC seems to have been of a desponding temper of mind. God, therefore, apparently in condescension to his weakness, frequently renews his promise of a gracious presence, and encourages him, by cheering exhortations, to go on and accomplish the great mission which had been assigned him. He appears to him in the commencement of the chapter, when he said, "Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; and I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Paul tells us what seed this was: "Not unto seeds as of many, but unto one seed, that is, Christ, were the promises made." Abraham and Isaac were selected to be the progenitors of Jesus, according to the flesh, in whom alone the promises are yea and amen; and by his spiritual, not natural, offspring are these promises to be realized. To be Abraham's children according to the flesh, is worth little; to be Abraham's children by faith in Christ, is to be the children of God, joint heirs with Christ, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. To Isaac desponding, then, and depressed by the trials, the controversies, and the disputes he had gone through with Abimelech and others, God renews the consolatory exhortation or promise, "Fear not, for I am with thee." God's people have their times of fear, as well as Isaac. No man looks into the future without fears; few can anticipate a month, a year, much less the rest of life, without misgivings, doubts, perplexities, sinful they may be, but real. It is to those, then, who fear, that is, to the children of Abraham - by faith, yet more truly than to the children of Abraham according to the flesh, that the promise is made, "Fear not, for I am with thee." The basis of not fearing is the promise, "I am with thee. You may fear, if you look into the future without God's promise; but hearing in it the music of that promise, and assured of the certainty of its fulfilment, you may look into the darkest future, and yet not be afraid. This promise is the staff and the rod with which we go into the valley of the shadow of death, and fear no evil. Try to realize the presence of God as the presence of a personal and actual Being. We are too apt to think, when we pray, that we shoot words into the skies, or speak to empty space. We think of God as the God of the earth, the God of the stars, the God of fixed laws, and the God of uniformity; and we so mix him up with what philosophers call laws and second causes, and what the eye sees to be nature, that we lose a sense of his personality as our very Father, our very Friend, our very Guide. We may feel, respecting God's presence, if we be his, as if his hand were laid upon every shoulder, as if the sunshine of his presence illuminated every footstep, and as if we heard him with the outer ear, as Isaac heard him in the stillness of the night, saying to me, to thee, to each, to all, "Fear not, for I". not a law of nature, but a living, personal Friend and Father 66 am with thee." But is not God with everybody, whether he be a child of Abraham or not? Is not the 139th Psalm true, whether we be Christians or not? Is it not true of every man, "If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me?" That is his essential presence, and in that sense he is as much present with the apostate church, as he is with the apostolic church; he is as much present with the fiends in hell, as with his friends and worshippers on earth. As far as God's essential presence is concerned, he is everywhere; for there is no place where he is not. But the presence that is here promised, is that which Moses described when he said, "If thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence." It is a special presence, a paternal presence, a providential and a protecting presence, the presence of a Father with a child, not of a foe with a foe; the presence of a Father to protect us, of a Sun to enlighten us; the presence of God, in all his attributes of power, of omnipresence, omniscience, goodness, mercy, grace, love. In all these respects God is with his people, and with them even to the end. This presence, which belongs to the people of God as contradistinguished from that presence which fills all space, is with them, in all its beneficent influences, as truly as God's omnipresence is with all creation in physical and ceaseless contact. In all places God is present with his people, — in the closet, in the family, in the sanctuary, in the tents of Mesech, and in the tabernacles of Kedar; on Pisgah, on Sinai, —wherever they are, wherever God's providence may carry them, wherever the arrangements of the world may necessitate their going; on the field of battle, on the ocean's bosom, in the cradle, in the sepulchre, forever and everywhere,— God is present with his people. This is not a conjecture, but |