"She said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." Abraham equivocates with Abimelech―The birth of Isaac-Abraham makes a great feast the day LECTURES. LECTURE I. GENESIS xii. 1. "NOW THE LORD HAD SAID UNTO ABRAM, GET THEE OUT OF THY COUNTRY, AND FROM THY KINDRED, AND FROM THY FATHER'S HOUSE, UNTO A LAND THAT I WILL SHEW THEE." THE history of Abraham is, on many accounts, one of the most interesting and instructive which the pencil of inspiration has ever drawn. The sacred historian has entered more into detail, has appeared to dwell longer upon the prominent features of the character, and has given us more pictures of the domestic life and manners of this patriarch than of any other. He B has indeed occupied a larger portion of the sacred volume upon this single narrative, than upon the whole history of the world, from the creation to the time of Abraham. Nor shall we be surprised at the remarkable pre-eminence thus afforded to the subject of our present consideration, if we remember that Abraham was selected by the Almighty in an especial manner, and for an especial purpose; no less indeed than to be the progenitor of a people to whom God should peculiarly reveal himself, whom he should invest with knowledge and privileges far above all other nations, to whom alone, he should, for a series of ages, commit the divine oracles, and of whom, "as concerning the flesh," the Messiah of God should come. The life of so remarkable a person, therefore, as related to us by Moses, cannot but be an object of interest to all-to the literary man as the only authentic history of a great and powerful prince, the fabulous accounts of whom he meets with in the early literature of almost every nation of antiquity; for' the ancient Persians, the Hindoos, the Jews, the Lacedemonians, and the Arabians, all unite with ourselves in celebrating the name of Abraham;-to the Christian as a minute and circumstantial history of a man of God who was honoured with the closest and most wonderful intercourse with the great Jehovah, whose life was regulated by that principle of living and influential faith, which he desires to be the one constraining principle within his own bosom, and who has obtained a portion so near the throne of the Most High, that to lie in Abraham's bosom," is only another term for heavenly happiness and eternal bliss. The first mention, which is made of Abram in holy writ, is in the 11th chap 1 See Townsend's Chronological Arrangement, &c., in loco. |