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LECTURE X.

GENESIS XXi. 10.

SHE SAID UNTO ABRAHAM, CAST OUT THIS BONDWOMAN AND HER SON; FOR THE SON OF THIS BOND-WOMAN SHALL NOT BE HEIR WITH MY SON, EVEN WITH ISAAC."

"THE gifts and callings of God are without repentance," says the inspired word of the Most High. If it were otherwise, assuredly Abraham would never, after all his trials and all his difficulties, have been the progenitor of the promised seed. He had before sinned by equivocating with Pharaoh; he now sinned by equivocating with Abimelech; declaring again that Sarah was his sister, leaving it to be inferred that she was not his wife: and thus, from a base and cowardly distrust

of the divine guardianship and the divine protection, exposing her to the very danger from which, by a sinful evasion, he was endeavouring to shield her. Happy was it for Abraham, happy is it for ourselves," that the Lord is our keeper!" There is not a blessing which we enjoy, either in possession or in prospect, from the most common endowment of divine Providence to the richest, and most glorious, and most distinguished mercy of divine grace, which we could hope to retain now, or to inherit hereafter, if wholly dependent upon our own carefulness or watchfulness or caution. I say "if wholly dependent," because he who presumes to look to the Lord to keep him, without setting himself earnestly to strive, and watch, and pray, will as assuredly be disappointed, as the husbandman who should look to the Almighty in the day of harvest, after neglecting to work, and standing all the day idle in the season of seed-time.

Guarding the subject thus, as the word of God has thought it necessary and sufficient to guard it, I would repeat, thanks be to God, that his "gifts and callings are without repentance." Even the spiritual life of the soul, the richest gift in the treasury of heaven, would quickly perish from our grasp beneath the united efforts of the world, the flesh, and the devil, were it not for the faithfulness of Him "who has promised, who also will do it." Were it not that "our life is hid with Christ in God," so hidden that the craft of our spiritual enemies cannot search it out, that the darts of the wicked one cannot reach it, our enjoyment of this inestimable treasure would indeed be transitory and precarious. Adam himself, in the midst of all his innocency and all his happiness, could not retain the precious boon, though he had but one tempter and one temptation. You have ten thousand tempters, and ten thousand temptations, with a deceitful and desperately wicked heart within your bosom ready to listen to

and to love and to be beguiled by them all. How then could you hope to stand where he has fallen? You could not possess the remotest prospect of success, were it not from the unchangeableness of the Lord, who, if you are indeed among his followers, has made you what you are; and if you earnestly and faithfully seek Him, will keep you what you are, till time shall be no more, and sin, and temptation, and sorrow, shall have fled away for ever. Yes, my brethren, as it was with Abraham, so is it frequently with ourselves: while we by our carelessness, or guiltiness, or cowardice, are apparently frustrating the grace of God and rendering the promises of God of none effect, "the foundation of the Lord standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his;" and he is mercifully preparing a scourge for us, of our own procuring, to drive us back again into the fold from which we have so sinfully and guiltily wandered.

It was thus that when even Abraham,

"the friend of God," so far forgot his high calling as to prevaricate and falsify, the Almighty subjected him to be reproved by one far less distinguished than himself in the knowledge of the Most High, and to be publicly disgraced by Abimelech, before his assembled servants with a reproof which he was unable to answer: "Thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done." The Almighty, however, did not on this account deprive him of the promised blessing; Abraham was reproved, and Abraham repented, and received a pardon which he could not have deserved, for a sin which he could not have extenuated.

Such is the humbling history of the Christian's life; love, mercy, and pardon, on the part of God; sin, coldness, and forgetfulness, followed by a deep and heartfelt sorrow, contrition, and amendment, on the part of his people. O that while God, for his dear Son's sake, thus bears with us, my brethren; while all

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