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DISCOURSES 
 
 TYPICAL SUBJECTS 
 
 CONNECTED WITH 
 
 "^it patriarchal (SG^obEnants. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. THOMAS PAGE, M. A. 
 
 " The Old Testament is not contrary to the New : for both in the 
 Old and New Testament everlasting life isotfered to Mankind by Christ, 
 who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and 
 Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard which feign that the old 
 Fathers did look only for transitory promises." 
 
 Article vii. Church of England. 
 
 LONDON : 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 AND WIGHT, CHELTENHAM. 
 
MACINTOSH, FRINTFR, 
 mi EAT NEW STREET, LONDON. 
 
TO THE CONGREGATION 
 
 ASSEMBLING FOR 
 
 DIVINE WORSHIP 
 
 CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, CHELTENHAM 
 
 '• Dearly beloved in the Lord," 
 
 The Discourses contained in 
 the present volume were originally pre- 
 pared without any design beyond that of 
 delivering them from the pulpit for your 
 edification ; but I have been induced to 
 publish them in their present form, in 
 the hope that, — as my pastoral connexion 
 with you has since their delivery been 
 brought to a close, — they may serve as a 
 permanent memorial of my humble minis- 
 trations among you, and a silent remem- 
 
IV DEDICATION. 
 
 brancer of the momentous truths which 
 from my living voice you may hear no 
 more. 
 
 It is with much diffidence that I swell 
 with any contribution of mine, the stream 
 of sacred literature which is constantly 
 issuing from the press ; and I feel that it 
 will be wise to disarm my readers gene- 
 rally of the severity of criticism, by in- 
 forming them and reminding you, that 
 the labour of re-composing the following 
 Discourses from the notes with which I 
 was furnished when preaching them, has 
 been sustained during a season of much 
 physical indisposition, at intervals of ces- 
 sation from the regular duties of an 
 overwhelming charge, and when my 
 mind was much exercised by the pros- 
 pect of speedily closing a ministry among 
 you, to which you gave me so many affect- 
 ing proofs of attachment, and from which 
 — unworthy as it was of any such result — 
 the Father of lights had not withheld his 
 blessing. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 A slight difference in point of phrase- 
 ology and some of the ramifications from 
 the leading ideas, was, from the nature of 
 the case unavoidable : and I may also 
 mention that I have compressed into the 
 Discourses as now printed, the substance 
 of two, or perhaps of three, when orally 
 delivered ; from the impression that, al- 
 though by this arrangement they are 
 made unusually long, yet the subjects of 
 each in this single and separate form, will 
 be more easily comprehended, and the 
 disadvantage of length be amply repaid 
 by the advantages of uniformity and con- 
 nectedness. 
 
 I have not advocated in the following- 
 pages — at least I am not aware that I 
 have — any views or opinions which have 
 nothing but their novelty and originality 
 to recommend them. My object has been 
 to make the Word of God its own inter- 
 preter ; to show you the spiritual instruc- 
 tion which is to be found beneath the 
 surface of the letter of its contents, — the 
 
VUl DEDICATION. 
 
 and ignorances, and to endue us with 
 the grace of thy Holy Spirit, to amend 
 our lives according to thy holy word." 
 
 Now the God of peace that brought 
 again from the dead our Lord Jesus, 
 that great Shepherd of the sheep, through 
 the blood of the everlasting covenant, 
 make you perfect in every good work 
 to do his will, working in you that 
 which is well-pleasing in his sight, 
 through Jesus Christ ; to whom be glory 
 for ever and ever. Amen. 
 
 Believe me to remain, 
 Your's faithfully, in Christ Jesus, 
 
 THOMAS PAGE. 
 
 HiGHWOOD, 
 
 April 20, 1836. 
 
DISCOURSE I. 
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE. 
 
 " TO HIM THAT 0\ ERCOMETH WILL I GIVE TO EAT OF 
 THE TREE OF LIFE, WHICH IS IN THE MIDST OF 
 THE PARADISE OF GOD."-Rev. ii. 7. 
 
 The design of the entire volume of Di- 
 vine revelation is as simple and uniform 
 as it is grand and glorious. Like the 
 light of the material sun, it may have its 
 earliest dawning, its progressive unfold- 
 ing, its meridian splendour ; and may 
 produce a diversity of shades and colours 
 as it falls on objects differing in property 
 and form : — Like a complicated piece of 
 mechanism, it may have its counter- 
 movements and its minor wheels, which, 
 to the eye of an ignorant beholder, may 
 
 B 
 
DISCOURSE I. 
 
 seem rather to retard than to increase 
 its efficiency : but still the master-design 
 of the Bible is this, — to exhibit the mind 
 and purposes of God with regard to the 
 recovery of our lapsed and ruined race 
 from the consequences of the fall. What- 
 ever, therefore, is recorded upon its in- 
 spired pages, must have a bearing direct 
 or indirect upon this its all-predominat- 
 ing design; and, consequently, our main 
 object in all our studies of the Sacred 
 Volume should be, to trace up all its 
 constituent parts — whether its plain and 
 didactic statements, or its typical and 
 symbolical institutions — to that one 
 transcendent theme which may well ex- 
 cite the hallowed curiosity of angels, 
 and engage the noblest faculties of man, 
 ' ' the redemption of the world by the death 
 and jjcission of our Saviour Christ both 
 God and Man.'' 
 
 And as the design of the Bible is thus 
 one and the same, so does it comprise all 
 that is needful for the complete accom- 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 6 
 
 plishment of that design ; there is not a 
 single truth connected with man's re- 
 demption — essential at least for man to 
 know — but may be discovered either like 
 the beauteous objects of nature decorating 
 the surface, or, like her richest treasures, 
 to be found beneath it. It may maintain 
 a mysterious reserve as to what the state 
 of man was before he needed such a 
 redemption, and as to what will be his 
 state when that redemption is finally and 
 for ever consummated, but the stu- 
 pendous chain by which these wide ex- 
 tremes are united it exhibits in all its 
 vast and unparalleled extent ; nor is 
 there one of its connecting links which 
 the great charter of redemption fails to 
 supply. It is in every way worthy of its 
 Author, and, like all his other works, 
 bears the evident impress of his own per- 
 fection. 
 
 The Saviour's intelligible declaration, 
 when j'eferring his Jewish audience 
 to their own canonical Scriptures, that 
 
 b2 
 
4 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 " they testified of Him,'' is highly im- 
 portant, not only as establishing a con- 
 nexion between the legal and evangelical 
 dispensations, but as reflecting the me- 
 ridian brightness of the latter over all 
 that was dark, and ambiguous, and 
 symbolical, in the former ; it constitutes 
 the basis of that interpretation which I 
 purpose, in dependence on the illumin- 
 ating and gracious influences of the 
 eternal Spirit of God, to give to you, 
 the people of my charge, of some of 
 those types of Christ, and of the Chris- 
 tian economy, which are thickly scat- 
 tered over the ample range of Old 
 Testament revelation, with the hope of 
 showing you that Christianity is not 
 merely one of the subjects introduced 
 into the Sacred Volume, but its all-per- 
 vading, all-animating subject, like the 
 sap which gives life to every branch — 
 the blood which circulates to every ex- 
 tremity ; in a word, that the Gospel 
 was preached and revealed as certainly, 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 5 
 
 though not SO clearly, in the Old Testa- 
 ment as in the New ; and that the former 
 is the preparatory outline, the typical 
 foreshadowing of what the latter is the 
 finished embodying, the glorious de- 
 velopment. 
 
 A type, as a theological term, is con- 
 sidered to signify a person or thing 
 which, by the appointment of God, pre- 
 figures something relative to Jesus Christ, 
 or to the Christian Church. 
 
 The one which at present claims our 
 attention is the Tree of Life, which 
 it will be my aim to set forth to you 
 as an eminent type of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Of this tree, to which my text is an 
 evident allusion, we read in Genesis ii. 
 8, 9 : '^ And the Lord God planted a 
 garden eastward in Eden, and there he 
 put the man whom he had formed ; and 
 out of the ground made the Lord to 
 grow every tree that is good for food ; 
 the tree of life also in the midst of the 
 
O DISCOURSE I. 
 
 garden, and the tree of knowledge of 
 good and evil." The precise nature of 
 the trees of which the inspired historian 
 thus briefly infornris us, we have no 
 means of satisfactorily determining : the 
 most that we learn respecting them is 
 from their names — the latter, or the 
 '^ tree of knowledge of good and evil," 
 being probably so designated from the 
 circumstance that the fruit of this tree 
 was made the test of man's adherence to 
 that which is good, or his preference for 
 that which is evil; and by eating of 
 which in defiance of Jehovah's pro- 
 hibition and Jehovah's threatening, he 
 acquired so painful a knowledge of both, 
 — of good, by having rashly forfeited it ; 
 of evil, by having wilfully incurred it. 
 The name of the former, or the Tree 
 of Life, suggests the probability that, as 
 there was no prohibition to partake of 
 its fruits until subsequently to the fall 
 (Gen. iii. 22), it was appointed by God 
 to be the chief means of sustaining the 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 7 
 
 animal life of man so long as he retained 
 his primeval innocence ; and was more- 
 over a pledge of its eternal perpetuity, on 
 the condition of undeviating obedience 
 during his term of probation. 
 
 By original creation, I conceive that 
 the material frame as well as immaterial 
 spirit of man were endowed with im- 
 mortality, with this difference, that the 
 one being as it were an emanation from 
 God himself, was necessaiily so ; the 
 other, being the receptacle of the soul 
 and essential to its happiness, was so hy 
 divine ordination. And as the death and 
 disease of the body is every where at- 
 tributed to the entrance of sin, the in- 
 ference is, that if sin had not prepared 
 the way, death could have found no 
 entrance into our world — infirmity, dis- 
 ease, and pain, would have formed no 
 part of Adam's history ; the human 
 frame, though raised from the dust of 
 the ground, would have commingled 
 with it no more, but, like the inde- 
 
8 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 structible soul lodged within it, being 
 nourished by the fruits and refreshed 
 by the shade of the Tree of Life, would 
 have flourished from age to age in un- 
 drooping vigour, in unfading beauty, 
 and immortal youth. 
 
 But man, as endowed with intelli- 
 gence, was the subject of God's moral 
 government ; and as God could not pos- 
 sibly enjoin any thing inconsistent with 
 his own perfections and the happiness 
 of his creatures, it follows that obedience 
 to whatever He in his wisdom enjoined 
 as a test of submission to his govern- 
 ment, was not less the dictate of self- 
 interest than of moral obligation. 
 
 Men, indeed, have ever been disposed 
 to quarrel with the Most High, both for 
 instituting any test of obedience, and 
 also for not interposing his divine au- 
 thority to prevent the violation thereof, 
 losing sight, as it would seem, of the 
 important truth, that any such inter- 
 position on the part of God would at 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 9 
 
 once have defeated the very end of the 
 test, by destroying the freedom of mans 
 will ; for it must be plain to every 
 thinking mind, that if man had not been 
 permitted to fall into evil, his continu- 
 ance in a state of purity would have 
 been the effect of necessity, and not of 
 choice. 
 
 Let it be admitted, therefore, that it 
 was equitable in the Divine Being to 
 require some positive proof of homage 
 and subordination on the part of man, 
 whom he had created — not, indeed, with 
 a nature which was incapable of be- 
 coming disaffected towards his govern- 
 ment, for, in that case, to what purpose 
 would be any test of allegiance, or what 
 merit could attach to the most unwaver- 
 ing subjection ? — with a nature, however, 
 essentially upright, and with every 
 possible inducement to resist any en- 
 ticement to swerve from the path of 
 uprightness ; — let, I repeat, the equity 
 of appointing such a test of fealty and 
 
 B 5 
 
10 DISCOURSE 1. 
 
 obedience be admitted, and we may 
 challenge the most fertile imagination 
 to conceive one more singularly adapted 
 to the purpose, or which involves less 
 difficulty or self-denial, than the one 
 upon which the eternal blessing or bane 
 of Adam and his posterity were made 
 to depend. It was merely a prohibition 
 to partake of a certain fruit, which was 
 in no way essential to the completion 
 of his happiness ; serving by its very 
 insignificance at once to demonstrate 
 the absolute sovereignty of Him who 
 enforced submission, and also to afford 
 the strongest criterion of the principle 
 of submission, by setting up a prohibi- 
 tion which derived its whole weight 
 and authority simply from its Divine 
 appointment. "- The Lord God com- 
 manded the man, saying, Of every tree 
 of the garden thou mayest freely eat ; 
 but of the tree of knowledge of good 
 and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for 
 in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 11 
 
 surely die." The path of obedience thus 
 marked out was surely as easy as it 
 ought to have been pleasant. The awful 
 threatening of death mercifully hedged 
 it in on either side, while the implied 
 promise of life presented the most 
 powerful inducement to persevere there- 
 in, for, ^' in the way of righteousness 
 is life, and in the pathway thereof there 
 is no death." Around the mysterious 
 Tree of Life no barrier was erected on 
 the part of God ; and had the presump- 
 tuous hand not been stretched out to 
 take the fruit which God had forbidden, 
 never would that hand have been so 
 paralyzed by the guilty act as to be 
 thenceforward incapable of gathering 
 the produce of the Tree of Life. 
 
 But I enter not into all the recorded 
 particulars of that melancholy catas- 
 trophe which brought death into the 
 world, with all our woes ; suffice it to 
 say, that in the assumed form of a ser- 
 pent, the devil, having prevailed upon 
 
12 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 our first parents to listen to his dark 
 insinuations, followed up his success by 
 prompting to more open and daring 
 rebellion, first, by leading to a distrust 
 of the divine threatening — " Ye shall 
 not surely die;" and also by deluding 
 them with the fallacious prospect of 
 advantage — " Ye shall be as gods, know- 
 ing good and evil ;" thus infusing the 
 two elemental principles of all apostacy 
 from God — unbelief and pride. The 
 deathful poison thus imbibed spread 
 with awful rapidity through all the re- 
 gions of the inner and the outer man, 
 for the lust once conceived in the heart 
 soon enlisted the senses of the body, 
 making them at once inlets to tempta- 
 tion, and the instruments of sin. The 
 ears received the Tempter's flattering 
 suggestion, the eyes gazed upon the pro- 
 hibited fruit, the hand was stretched 
 forth to take it, and the tremendous 
 deed was done ! ' ' She took the fruit 
 of the tree, and did eat, and gave unto 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 13 
 
 her husband, and he did eat." Thus, 
 then, the covenant of life which God 
 had made with Adam was irremediably 
 broken ; the test of obedience was rudely 
 trampled upon ; the penalty of death in 
 all its breadth and depth incurred ; and 
 life and happiness forfeited for ever ! 
 But what was the immediate result ? 
 When the tree of knowledge of good 
 and evil had thus been criminally vio- 
 lated, did the Tree of Life wither before 
 the eye of the transgressor, to convince 
 him of the dire necessity of suffering 
 to its utmost extent the dreadful penalty 
 annexed to transgression ? No ; for He 
 who had permitted the evil had pre- 
 ordained the remedy ; and, therefore, 
 though Adam was no longer suffered to 
 approach it, the tree itself continued in 
 the midst of the Paradise which had been 
 polluted by his disobedience, unscathed 
 by the curse which that disobedience had 
 entailed upon himself and his offspring, 
 as if to cheer the midnight gloom which 
 
14 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 had now gathered upon his fallen spirit 
 with a faint beam of hope, that though life 
 was forfeited, death would still, in some 
 way or other, be averted. Life, however, 
 was forfeited for ever, and to convince 
 him of the forfeiture, exclusion from the 
 Tree of Life was the first act of God, 
 after that the guilty criminal had been 
 arraigned and condemned. " And the 
 Lord God said. Behold, the man is 
 become as one of us, to know good and 
 evil : and now, lest he put forth his 
 hand, and take also of the tree of life, 
 and eat and live for ever : therefore the 
 Lord God sent him forth from the gar- 
 den of Eden, to till the ground from 
 whence he was taken. So he drove out 
 the man ; and he placed at the east of 
 the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a 
 flaming sword which turned every way, 
 to keep the way of the tree of life." 
 (Gen. iii. 22—24.) 
 
 This expulsion of our guilty parents 
 from the earthly Paradise and its Tree 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 15 
 
 of Life, suggests several momentous 
 truths. 
 
 I. That Life, as the reward of any 
 obedience on the part of man, is no longer 
 attainable. The covenant of works was 
 in every respect adapted to a state of 
 unfallen purit}^, but it became exactly 
 the reverse, when man had cast himself 
 down from that moral elevation which 
 God created him to occupy, into a state 
 of deep depravity and abject helpless- 
 ness. His obligations, indeed, remained 
 the same ; the covenant itself was not 
 abolished by the act w^hich put it for 
 ever beyond the reach of the transgressor 
 as a covenant of life and peace : for it 
 was founded on the relation subsisting 
 between God and his intelligent creatures, 
 and consequently was as permanent and 
 unalterable as that relation. While, 
 therefore, this original law or standard 
 of moral rectitude continued to enjoin 
 perfect obedience, — which man as a 
 fallen being was wholly unable to pay. 
 
16 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 and consequently could never claim the 
 rewards it promises — it also demanded 
 an infinite satisfaction for the guilt of 
 disobedience, which, from the nature of 
 things, man, as a finite being, was un- 
 able to give. So that, like the cherubim 
 which Jehovah placed at the entrance of 
 Eden, it guarded with the flaming sword 
 of its inflexible demands which turned 
 every way — requiring at once universal 
 obedience and infinite satisfaction — 
 every avenue of approach to the Tree of 
 Life. 
 
 And I wish you, dear brethren, par- 
 ticularly to observe, that the Gospel, ^ — 
 the new covenant — termed in contra- 
 distinction to the one which was now no 
 longer available as a means of procuring 
 the divine favour " the covenant of 
 grace," — does not open afresh the way to 
 that Tree of Life which grew in the ter- 
 restrial Paradise, or show us a method 
 by which, through any doings or deserv- 
 ings of our own, we can fulfil the con- 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 17 
 
 ditions enforced, or attain the blessings 
 promised by the covenant of works. No : 
 but it reveals to us another Tree of Life, 
 and another and a better Paradise, of 
 which the earthly ones were types ; for 
 " now the righteousness of God without 
 the law is manifested, even the righteous- 
 ness which is by faith of Jesus Christ ; 
 whom God hath set forth to be a pro- 
 pitiation through faith in his blood for 
 the remission of sins that are past, 
 through the forbearance of God : to 
 declare, I say, at this time, his righteous- 
 ness, that he might be just, and the 
 justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." 
 (Rom. iii. 21—25.) 
 
 II. But the exclusion of Adam from 
 the Tree of Life, seems to give us a still 
 further insight into his apostate condition, 
 not only in the judgment of God, but 
 with regard to his own moral powers 
 and feelings — his spiritual and noblest 
 kind of existence; he was thenceforward, 
 like a condemned malefactor in legal 
 
18 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 phraseology, a dead man. Death natural 
 began its silent inroads on his body ; 
 death spiritual spread its winding-sheet 
 around his soul ; and these two kinds of 
 death, as connected with man's earthly 
 state, may together be termed, by way 
 of distinction, the first death ; being bat 
 the prelude to that part of the sentence 
 which remains to be executed in the 
 next : for, since the soul as well as the 
 body share in the consequences of sin, 
 those consequences are durable as its 
 own nature, and co-extensive with eter- 
 nity itself: wherefore, describing the 
 future condemnation and perdition of 
 those who are not written in the book of 
 life, the writer of the Apocalypse adds, 
 " This is the second death." 
 
 As it respects the first kind of death, 
 it is the destiny of ail men — nor from 
 this universal lot does even the covenant 
 of grace provide any exemption-— for it 
 was not till after the promise was given 
 that the seed of the woman should ac- 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 19 
 
 complish a deliverance from all the other 
 consequences of Adam's sin, that the 
 sentence was pronounced, "' Dust thou 
 art, and unto dust shalt thou return." 
 As it respects spiritual and eternal death, 
 however, the Gospel does provide an 
 adequate deliverance ; it opens the way 
 to a Tree of Life, of whose fruits we 
 may freely eat and live for ever. Do 
 you ask me what is the Tree of Life of 
 which I speak ? it is the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who is emphatically " the Life," 
 and quickeneth whom he will. And do 
 you further ask the way to this Tree of 
 Life ? it is by a living faith in Christ ; 
 for '^ God so loved the world as to o-ive 
 his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth on him should not perish, but 
 have everlasting life." 
 
 Now my text tells us where this Tree 
 of Life extends its branches, and yields 
 its fruit — ^' in the midst of the Paradise 
 of God;" and as the phrase, '^ kingdom 
 of heaven," is used to denote a state of 
 
22 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 jeoparded : the commandment, though 
 ordained to life, he found to be unto 
 death ; the covenant of works was to 
 him a covenant of condemnation ; the 
 flaming sword which turned every way, 
 made him recoil from every presump- 
 tuous effort to overpass the barrier which 
 disobedience had erected around the 
 symbolical Tree of Life; ^' when the 
 commandment came, sin revived and I 
 died." It was by thus stripping him of 
 all confidence in the flesh, that the Spirit 
 of God prepared him to rejoice in Christ 
 Jesus ; it was not till he felt the sentence 
 of death in himself, that the quickening 
 power of the new and better covenant 
 brought him forth into a new world of 
 thought, and principle, and enjoyment. 
 But no sooner did he thus pass from a 
 state of nature to a state of grace, than 
 he began to realize the meaning of the 
 Saviour's comprehensive declaration, " I 
 am come that they might have life." To 
 the opened eye of faith another Paradise 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE- 23 
 
 appeared mantled in unearthly verdure, 
 and another Tree of Life clustering with 
 the richest fruits of the covenant of re- 
 demption. There was, it is true, a gate 
 into this fresh discovered Paradise, but 
 as he approached it flew open to receive 
 him. No frowning cherubim with its 
 flaming sword affrighted his soul, but 
 the angel of the divine presence was 
 there to welcome him : he entered, with 
 a downcast look it may be, and a falter- 
 ing footstep, but the mysterious unseen 
 influence which had conducted him to it, 
 accompanied him into it; it enabled him 
 to surmount every impediment in his 
 way ; and as he drew nearer and nearer 
 to that better Tree of Life which spread 
 its branches in the midst, his heart be- 
 came more ravished by its beauties, and 
 more anxious to partake of the rich fruits 
 it yielded so abundantly; and then, when 
 enabled to trample beneath his feet all 
 his prejudices, and apprehensions, and 
 misgivings, and to appropriate to him- 
 
26 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 through righteousness unto eternal life 
 by Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. v. 21.) 
 Yes, dear brethren, not only life but 
 immortality are brought to light by the 
 Gospel ; spiritual life — a glorious immor- 
 tality ; the former being the germ on 
 earth, the other the full blossoming in 
 heaven ; and accordingly our text leads 
 on our minds beyond the brightest and 
 most perfect state of the Church while 
 exposed to the nipping blasts, and trying- 
 vicissitudes, and counteracting influences 
 of time, to a Paradise into which the 
 tempter can never enter, which shall 
 never be blighted by disobedience or 
 darkened with a curse — 
 
 *' Where everlasting spring abides, 
 And never withering flowers." 
 
 '' To him that overcometh will I give to 
 eat of the Tree of Life which is in the 
 midst of the paradise of God." ^* I," 
 says Christ, " am the resurrection and 
 the life ; he that believeth in me, though 
 he were dead, yet shall he live ; and who- 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 27 
 
 soever liveth and believeth in me, shall 
 never die ; " so that Christ is not only 
 the life of the believer now, but the life 
 received from him is the sure promise 
 and foretaste of eternal life ; yea, more, 
 the very life of Christ himself is made a 
 pledge to the believer of the perpetuity 
 of that life which He imparts—'' because 
 I live, ye shall live also." 
 
 To physical dissolution, indeed, as I 
 have already intimated, the believer 
 must submit as well as the unbeliever ; 
 for *' it is appointed unto all men once to 
 die ; " the difference, however, between 
 the two consists in this — the believer 
 has to die the first deaths for he was in 
 Adam, as his federal head, driven from 
 the terrestrial paradise, and excluded 
 from that Tree of Life which, before the 
 fall, was both to the body and the soul a 
 pledge of immortality ; the dissolution of 
 the body, moreover, is needful to im- 
 press, even on the minds of the re- 
 deemed, the fearful malignity of sin, and 
 c2 
 
28 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 the faithfulness of God to his threaten- 
 ings as well as his promises ; while, at 
 the same time, by reason of their union to 
 the second Adam, death, like a serpent 
 bereft of his sting, has lost its power to 
 destroy either soul or body ; and the 
 grave, through which the Saviour passed 
 before them, leading captivity captive, is 
 but the dark and cheerless passage to a 
 bright and happy immortality : so that, 
 while the body of the believer is still 
 under the sentence that consigns it for 
 a while — like the seed to its furrow — to 
 the cold bosom of its parent dust, his 
 spirit is identified with the conquests of 
 that adorable Lamb who, by living a 
 spotless life and dying a sacrificial death 
 as its substitute, set it free from all the 
 bitter pains of the second and eternal 
 death : which opens the deep meaning of 
 the apostle's words, " If Christ be in 
 you, the body is dead because of sin, 
 but the spirit is life because of righteous- 
 ness." 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 29 
 
 But how fearfully different is the case 
 with the unbeliever ; — he is exposed to 
 all the direst consequences of the first 
 Adam's transgression, without any in- 
 terest in the mediation of the second ; — 
 he has been driven from the paradise 
 below, and is without any passport of 
 admission into the one above ; — he is, 
 in short, still obnoxious to the original 
 threatening in all its overwhelming im- 
 port and extent — '^ dying thou shaltdie ;" 
 he dies legally — he dies spiritually — he 
 dies everlastingly; — for ^^ if ye believe 
 not that I am He " — the Messiah of God 
 ' — the Saviour of a guilty world — the 
 object of a sinner's trust — the sole author 
 and finisher of a sinner's salvation — '^ ye 
 shall die in your sins." Natural death, 
 therefore, is not necessarily the forerun- 
 ner of eternal death ; but spiritual death, 
 if we are not aroused from its torpor in 
 this world, is and must ever be ; because 
 it implies a total absence of every feeling, 
 affection, and principle, from the soul, 
 
30 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 which can qualify it for the enjoyment of 
 the future portion of the blessed : hence 
 the importance of the Saviour's words — 
 "- He that over comet h.'' The bands of this 
 spiritual death must be broken — the 
 lethargy, and blindness, and coldness, 
 and stony-heartedness, which are its 
 conspicuous features, must be overcome ; 
 and how ? — by the power, the Spirit, the 
 all-subduing, all-enlightening, all-trans- 
 forming word of Christ; '' being born 
 again, not of corruptible seed but of in- 
 corruptible, by the word of God which 
 liveth and abideth for ever." No crea- 
 ture power can kindle in the dead soul of 
 man this spiritual and divine life ; and 
 when kindled, no creature power can 
 extinguish it ; — the wickedness of the 
 wicked may distress, but cannot ruin 
 it ; — the principalities of darkness may 
 assail, but cannot conquer it ; — the 
 terrors of death may daunt, but cannot 
 annihilate it ; — the jaws of the grave 
 may arrest, but cannot detain it; — the 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 31 
 
 convulsions of an expiring universe may 
 shake, but cannot overwhelm it ; — the 
 solemnities of final judgment may awe, 
 but cannot condemn it. ^' All things 
 are yours — life, death, things present, 
 things to come — all are yours, for ye are 
 Christ's, and Christ is God's. 
 
 And what mortal man's imaginings 
 shall fully grasp the future, finished, and 
 eternal portion of them that are Christ's 
 at his coming? — it is a *' joy unspeak- 
 able." Even if, like the favoured apos- 
 tle, we had been caught up into the third 
 heavens, and had seen the light of that 
 sun which never goes down, and heard 
 the harpings of the redeemed swelling 
 the chorus of that song which no man 
 can know but them that join therein ; 
 still when returned to the soul-deadening 
 atmosphere of this lower world, we should 
 find no language capable of conveying to 
 our fellow men that which we had seen 
 or heard. No ; if we could concentrate 
 all the rays of earthly happiness into one 
 
3s mscouRsfi I. 
 
 focus, the spot they would brighten 
 would still be cloudy and dark compared 
 with the glories which mantle the para- 
 dise of God. Could we blend all the 
 images of sublunary joy which ever pen 
 indited or thought conceived, in one 
 mighty effort to realize the rapture which 
 thrills the bosom and illumines the coun- 
 tenance of every glorified follower of 
 Christ, it would be as much beneath the 
 reality as is the star of midnight con- 
 trasted with the blaze of day ! Indeed, 
 the book of God itself, which reveals the 
 way to heaven, reveals not the full extent 
 of heavenly joys ; if, through the teles- 
 cope of faith, we are favoured with a 
 glimpse as we gain the eminences of the 
 road which leads us thither, it is at best as 
 *' through a glass darkly; now we know 
 but in part, hereafter we shall know even 
 as we are known." '' He that over- 
 cometh shall inherit all things, and I 
 will be his God and he shall be my son/' 
 Blessed, blessed privilege ! Now are we 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 33 
 
 the sons of God, the faithful followers of 
 the Lamb may say, but it doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be ; thus much is 
 all we know — we shall then see him — we 
 shall then be like him — and throughout 
 eternity abide in that city which hath 
 foundations, whose builder and maker is 
 God — that city which borrows its light 
 and receives its blessedness from Christ ; 
 for thus it is written, " In the midst of 
 the street of it, and on either side of the 
 river, was there the Tree of Life, which 
 bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded 
 her fruit every month ;" representing the 
 superabundance and ever-during nature 
 of those joys which the spirits of just 
 men made perfect receive in and from the 
 presence of their exalted Lord — " and 
 the leaves of the tree were for the heal- 
 ing of the nations " — providing a full 
 and everlasting deliverance from all the 
 penal consequences of that first trans- 
 gression which overspread this lower 
 world with misery, disease, and death ; 
 c 5 
 
34 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 and also securing from the possibility of 
 being again brought within the power of 
 those influences, by the successful opera- 
 tion of which the ruin of man was 
 accomplished, and the very ground he 
 trod cursed for his sake, for it is em- 
 phatically added, "and there shall be 
 no more curse." 
 
 Let me, in conclusion, draw your se- 
 rious attention to a few points which 
 the expressions in the text obviously 
 suggest. 
 
 First, We learn from it, that he who 
 would win the crown must engage and 
 persevere in the conflict — " he that over- 
 Cometh.'' — And do you ask me to name the 
 enemies which withstand your progress 
 towards the attainment of those exalted 
 and eternal blessings of which I have 
 been speaking? I mention then, first, 
 the same mighty adversary by whom our 
 first parents were deceived and betrayed. 
 This daring rebel against God, and 
 deadly foe to man, has been following 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 35 
 
 up liis first conquest by perpetual and 
 equally successful assaults; as ^' a roar- 
 ing lion " he is said to be going about 
 "^ seeking whom he may devour; " by 
 every secret artifice and by every spe- 
 cious promise he aims to beguile the 
 sons and daughters of men, either by 
 alluring them into heart-corrupting in- 
 dulgences, or seducing them into soul- 
 destroying errors. He is for ever acting 
 the same part with all their offspring as 
 he did with our first progenitors ; he 
 makes sin dwindle down into insignifi- 
 cance ; removes from their remembrance 
 the threatened penalty ; suggests pre- 
 sumptuous and blasphemous thoughts of 
 Him whose very nature and name is 
 Love ; and undermines their belief in 
 those awful threatenings by which he 
 guards the path of holiness and peace. 
 Do you ask, how it is possible effectually 
 to resist so powerful an adversary ? Oh ! 
 not by any creature aid, or self-resolution 
 and prowess — no ; but by bringing to 
 
36 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 the conflict a power which is still greater 
 than that of our antagonist — the power 
 of Christ — ''whom resist stedfast in the 
 faith." Take unto you the whole armour 
 of God ; — as your weapon of defence, 
 take the shield of faith — faith in the suc- 
 cour, the promises, the power of God, 
 wherewith ye shall be able to quench all 
 the fiery darts of the wicked ; and as 
 your aggressive w^eapon, take the one with 
 which Christ met and vanquished him 
 before you and for you, '' the sword of 
 the Spirit, which is the Word of God." 
 
 And moreover we have, if possible, 
 a still more formidable adversary to our 
 salvation — inasmuch as a traitor within 
 the camp is more to be dreaded than the 
 foe without — I mean a deceitful and cor- 
 rupted heart, that perversely '' puts evil 
 for good and good for evil ; bitter for 
 sweet and sweet for bitter ; light for 
 darkness and darkness for light;"— tram- 
 ples upon all creature obligations ; braves 
 the vengeance of the Most High, and 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 37 
 
 hates the character of the Most Holy. 
 Until this enemy be vanquished, that is, 
 until the heart be changed, till the nature 
 be sanctified, till its primeval bias both 
 of will and affection be restored, till, in 
 short, every thought is brought into cap- 
 tivity to the obedience of Christ, we have 
 no title or claim to that Tree of Life 
 which is in the midst of the paradise of 
 God ; for '' if any man be in Christ he is 
 a new creature," and '' he that hath not 
 the Son shall not see life, but the wrath 
 of God abideth on him." 
 
 But if the sinfulness of man be an 
 enemy to his salvation, perhaps his self- 
 righteousness is a greater still. The pride 
 which first paved the way for man's apos- 
 tacy confirms and perpetuates him in it ; 
 and that pride ever presents a brazen 
 front of opposition to the self-renouncing 
 and spirit-humbling doctrines of the 
 cross ; therefore it is that the natural 
 man loves to linger among the wrecks of 
 the covenant of works, to spend a short 
 
38 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 life in the vain attempt to repair and 
 reconstruct it ; to seek, in short, the 
 living among the dead, and aim of 
 himself to do that which Christ alone 
 can do—that which Christ already has 
 done. And, strange to say, this is an 
 enemy not only to be found among 
 '' them that are without," but it in- 
 sinuates itself even into the sanctuary 
 of the spiritual Church, and consequently 
 is an enemy with which even the child 
 of God must vigorously contend ; other- 
 wise it will produce upon his character 
 and experience the very same effects 
 which it introduced into that Church to 
 which the Epistle of which my text is a 
 part was addressed ; it will damp the 
 ardour of first love ; it will corrupt the 
 simplicity of our earliest views, and aims, 
 and endeavours in the divine life ; it will 
 check our spiritual growth, curtail our 
 spiritual enjoyments, darken our spiritual 
 skies, and entangle our souls again in a 
 yoke of bondage. 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 39 
 
 Lastly, I observe, that the reward 
 promised in my text to those who 
 *^ overcome " these spiritual adversaries, 
 is, after all, not of debt, but of grace ; 
 " to him that overcometh will I give to 
 eat of the Tree of Life ; " and there is no 
 one principle which the faithful minister 
 of Christ has more need to insist on 
 strongly and constantly than the one of 
 which we are thus reminded — that sal- 
 vation, from first to last, is all of grace. 
 Little more would the covenant of re- 
 demption be suited to the circumstances 
 and necessities of mankind than the cove- 
 nant of works, if its blessings were dis- 
 pensed only according to the degree of 
 worthiness in the subject. For to say 
 nothing of that moral law, which, as the 
 transcript of Jehovah's character, could 
 never compromise its own eternal purity 
 and majesty, in order to meet the obli- 
 quity of those who, as his creatures, were 
 still the subjects of its authority ; the 
 Gospel itself would bring no glad tidings 
 
40 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 to our souls, if it had not respect to the 
 motive rather than the perfection of obe- 
 dience ; and if its holy precepts were not 
 enjoined as tests of the efficacy of its own 
 gracious principles, rather than the con- 
 ditions of eternal salvation. " The Son 
 of Man came to seek and to save that 
 which was lost," and the benefits and 
 blessings which his salvation comprises 
 must be freely bestowed, or the end of his 
 coming will be defeated ; and as no truth 
 is more evident than this to all who are 
 taught of God, so none can be more wel- 
 come; ^^ now we have received not the 
 spirit of the world, but the Spirit which 
 is of God, that w^e may know the things 
 which 'dre freelj/ given us of God." Never- 
 theless it is a truth which the faithful 
 minister must loudly proclaim, that 
 Christ is the author of eternal salvation 
 to those only who obei/ him. The glory 
 of the Gospel consists not in lowering 
 the standard of duty, or in setting aside 
 the obligation of obedience, but in effect- 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 41 
 
 ing such a change in the mind, as to 
 assimilate its very nature to that stan- 
 dard, and supply it with powers and with 
 motives, and with impulses conformable 
 to those obligations ; accordingly, we 
 generally find exhortations to evangelical 
 practice associated with some truth which 
 incontestibly proves that the power of act- 
 ing up to those exhortations, is as plainly 
 to be referred to the divine sovereignty, 
 as the rewards by which believers are 
 stimulated to exert it; e. g. "Work out 
 your own salvation with fear and trem- 
 bling, for it is God which worketh in you 
 to will and to do of his good pleasure." 
 And it is worthy of observation, that the 
 sacred writings, by presenting the same 
 fundamental truths in various aspects and 
 in different connexions, give us a much 
 more comprehensive view of their real 
 scope and bearing than we could other- 
 wise acquire. This is strikingly the case 
 in the manner in which St. Paul and 
 St. James treat the subject of faith — that 
 
42 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 principle on the possession or the absence 
 of which our future destiny depends ; — 
 by the former we are taught the doctrine 
 itself, that it is by Faith in the merits and 
 mercies of Christ only that any sinner 
 can be justified ; the latter guards the 
 doctrine from abuse, by showing the 
 nature, effects, and operations of that 
 faith, which secures an interest in the 
 gospel method of justification through 
 the blood and righteousness of this 
 Divine substitute. So again with regard 
 to the principle of charity or love — in 
 his matchless chapter on the subject in 
 the first Epistle to the Corinthians, the 
 Apostle Paul utterly repudiates all out- 
 w^ard acts of a charitable kind which do 
 not proceed from the inward principle of 
 love ; while the Saviour, in his descrip- 
 tion of the solemnities of future judgment, 
 seems to make the final decision to turn 
 upon the outward acts and offices of cha- 
 rity. There is not, however, the small- 
 est discrepancy in this. The apostle knew 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE. 43 
 
 full well that the inward principle could 
 not exist in the soul without some out- 
 ward expression ; and a cursory glance 
 at the whole passage will suffice to con- 
 vince us, that the importance which our 
 Lord attaches to outward deeds of cha- 
 rity is not for their own sake, but as in- 
 dications or evidences of that genuine love 
 to him from which alone disinterested 
 love to man can spring, and by which 
 alone the human character can be ele- 
 vated to any proximity to his own. But 
 neither of its outward displays, nor yet 
 of the inward principle of love, does the 
 Saviour speak as possessing any intrinsic 
 merit, or as furnishing any claim to eter- 
 nal rewards ; for in the plaudit he pro- 
 nounces upon those in whom his love is 
 clearly proved to have existed as an ope- 
 rative and transforming principle ; he 
 welcomes them to a kingdom "^ pre- 
 pared for them from before the foun- 
 dation of the world," and consequently, 
 before they had done any thing to 
 
44 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 deserve it ; which agrees with another 
 of his declarations in the days of his flesh, 
 '^ Fear not, little flock ; it is your Father's 
 good pleasure to give yoa the kingdom/' 
 While, therefore, dear brethren, you make 
 it your steady aim to live up to the re- 
 quirements, and to secure the promises 
 of the Gospel covenant ; never forget that 
 the grace which enables you to love that 
 which God commands, must enrich you 
 with that which he promises. While you 
 set eternal life as the prize which you 
 spend your whole lives in the arduous 
 struggle to win, never forget that you 
 might as well attempt to travel from star 
 to star till you come to the dwelling-place 
 of God, as hope to merit, by your holiest 
 doings and most vigorous strivings, so in- 
 estimable a prize. " This is the record 
 that God hath given unto us eternal life, 
 and this life is in his Son." 
 
45 
 
 DISCOURSE 11. 
 
 NOAH'S ARK. 
 
 " BY FAITH NOAH BEING WARNED OF GOD OF THINGS 
 NOT SEEN AS YET, MOVED WITH FEAR PREPARED 
 AN ARK TO THE SAVING OF HIS HOUSE, BY WHICH 
 HE CONDEMNED THE WORLD, AND BECAME HEIR 
 OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH IS BY FAITH." — 
 Heb. xi. 7. 
 
 Much difficulty has been felt in endea- 
 vouring to interpret the t^^pes of the Old 
 Testament, arising partly from the need 
 of so great a multiplicity, in order to con- 
 vey any adequate outline of the Gospel 
 system ; and partly from the circumstance, 
 that in order to present some of its funda- 
 mental truths in their various aspects and 
 connexions, it frequently happens that the 
 same type has a reference at once to the 
 Author and the blessings of the Christian 
 
46 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 dispensation, as well as to those for whom 
 its blessings are intended, and by whom 
 they are realized. And since among 
 expositors of the most simple statements 
 of holy writ we meet with any thing 
 but unanimity, we can scarcely be sur- 
 prised that among interpreters of its 
 typical contents, which must ever be 
 invested with more or less obscurity, a 
 variety of opinions should exist. Such 
 accordingly is the case wdth regard to 
 the type we have now to consider. Some 
 are of opinion that it is an emblem of 
 Christ, as the Saviour of sinners, while 
 others have chosen rather to regard it as 
 typical of the Church of Christ, within 
 the pale of which alone can salvation be 
 found : the difference between them, 
 however, would be well nigh reconciled, 
 by regarding it as one of that class of 
 types which, I have just stated, are at- 
 tended with that difficulty of interpre- 
 tation, which is, in fact, the occasion of 
 their difference. It is, perhaps, one of 
 
noah's ark. 47 
 
 the most comprehensive types with which 
 the Old Testament Scriptures are fur- 
 nished, and the truths which it is so cal- 
 culated to impress upon our minds will, 
 I think, be best unfolded by considering 
 the ark itself as a type of Christ ; Noah 
 and his family as representing the Church 
 of Christ ; and their preservation in the 
 ark from that fearful deluge by which 
 all others were overwhelmed, as typical 
 of the salvation of the Church of Christ 
 from that burst of righteous retribution 
 which awaits the finally impenitent and 
 ungodly. Laying this then as the basis 
 of interpretation, I proceed to point out 
 some of the great evangelical truths, 
 which this unparalleled intervention of 
 God on behalf of Noah and his family 
 seems to me obviously to suggest ; clas- 
 sifying my remarks under the following 
 heads : — 
 
 First, The occasion of the Ark. 
 Secondly, The appointment of the Ark. 
 
48 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 Thirdly, The construction of the Ark. 
 Fourthly, The adequacy/ of the Ark, 
 
 I. '^ And Adam," we read in Genesis 
 V. 6, *' lived an hundred and thirty 
 years, and begat a son in his own like- 
 ness after his image : " and there is 
 nothing sad, and dark, and degrading in 
 the history of mankind, which may not be 
 traced to the truth thus briefly stated ; a 
 truth which is recognised in every page 
 of the revealed volume, and is strongly 
 maintained in the Ninth Article of our 
 Scriptural Church, that '^ through the 
 fault and corruption of the nature of every 
 man that is naturally engendered of the 
 offspring of Adam, he is very far gone — 
 gone, as far as possible — from original 
 righteousness, and is of his own nature 
 inclined to evil." Adam begat a son — 
 not as he was himself created, in the 
 image of God, nor even in his own like- 
 ness, as he existed by original creation ; 
 but in his own likeness and image when 
 
noah's ark. 49 
 
 sin had tainted, corrupted, and ruined 
 alike his body and his spirit, and defaced 
 every feature which bore a resemblance 
 to the purity and perfection of the divine 
 nature. Nor could it possibly have been 
 otherwise, ** for who can bring a clean 
 thing out of an unclean? Not one." The 
 human nature, therefore, having an ex- 
 clusive lodgment in that first-formed 
 couple who had both been parties to the 
 guilty act by which it was radically de- 
 praved, — could not but be communicated 
 from them to the fruit of their bodies 
 with that entail of obliquity and defect, 
 which they by transgression had identified 
 with it. Of this, most fearful evidence 
 was afforded in the immediate family of 
 Adam ; the murderous enmity of Cain 
 was but the unrestrained outbreaking of 
 feelings which are interwoven into the 
 very constitution of man's fallen nature, 
 and which are depicted in such awful 
 terms by the Apostle Paul (Romans 
 iii. 11 — 18.) Nor must it be forgotten, 
 
50 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 that the act of disobedience by which 
 human nature was corrupted, implanted 
 therein the seeds of most entire estrange- 
 ment from God : that it not only de- 
 prived men of the Divine favour and 
 presence, but was followed by an utter 
 disregard for the blessings thus forfeited 
 for ever. ^^ They did not like to retain 
 God in their knowledge." (Rom. i. 28.) 
 And accordingly, by tracing the stream 
 of humanity as it flowed on through 
 successive generations, we find that it 
 took a direction as widely as possible 
 from God ; so that at length not only 
 were the laws of God openly and da- 
 ringly defied, but God himself ceased 
 to be known and worshipped. 
 
 I will not dwell upon the incidental 
 proofs of this w^iich are furnished by the 
 pen of the inspired historian ; I would 
 rather tell the sad story of the utter 
 wickedness and apostacy of the ante- 
 diluvian world in his own comprehen- 
 sive statements, " The earth was corrupt 
 
noah's ark. 51 
 
 before God;" " The earth was filled with 
 violence; " ^' All flesh had corrupted his 
 way upon the earth." 
 
 And where, amidst all this grossness 
 of idolatry and reign of iniquity, where 
 was the rod of judgment, the thunder- 
 bolt of vengeance, the sceptre of moral 
 government? Was the Lord slack con- 
 cerning his threatenings, as short-sighted 
 men count slackness ? Was he an un- 
 moved spectator of this rampant ungod- 
 liness and universal depravity ? No : it 
 was not hidden from him ; it was no 
 matter of indifference to him; '' for his 
 eyes are upon the ways of man, and he 
 seeth all his goings. There is no dark- 
 ness nor shadow of death where the 
 workers of iniquity may hide themselves. " 
 (Job xxxiv. 21, 22.) And to show us 
 how deep and broad was the insult off'ered 
 thereby to every attribute of his nature, 
 with a marvellous condescension to our 
 limited conceptions, he speaks of himself 
 as repenting that he had ever created 
 
 d2 
 
52 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 the beings who had thus sold themselves 
 to work wickedness, like some deeply 
 wounded parent sorrowing that he had 
 given existence to his rebellious and 
 abandoned child : ^^ And God saw that 
 the wickedness of man was great in the 
 earth, and that every imagination of 
 the thoughts of his heart" — not only his 
 outward conduct, but all his inward 
 feelings, principles, and springs of action, 
 — " were only evil continually. And it 
 repented the Lord that he had made 
 man on the earth, and it grieved him 
 at his heart. And the Lord said, I will 
 destroy man whom I have created, from 
 the face of the earth, both man and 
 beast, and the creeping thing, and the 
 fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that 
 I have made them." (Gen. vi. 5 — 7.) 
 
 But, amidst the moral desert thus 
 overspreading the earth, was there not 
 one smiling flower ? Amidst the pre- 
 valent impiety of the children of men, 
 was there no heart among them where 
 
noah's ark. 53 
 
 the Spirit did not strive in vain — where 
 the grace of God maintained its sanc- 
 tifying influence ? Yes ; for never in 
 the history of our world has God left 
 himself without witness, or suffered 
 " the holy seed," entirely to cease from 
 among the children of men. Adam 
 himself, we have strong reasons for be- 
 lieving, was, through the mediation of 
 the promised Saviour, reconciled to the 
 God he had so deeply offended, as a 
 pledge of the sufficiency of the anti- 
 cipated atonement of the second Adam : 
 and the nine hundred and thirty years 
 of his earthly pilgrimage had not all 
 rolled away, before that Enoch was 
 walking with God ; whose miraculous 
 translation must have nearly synchronised 
 with the birth of Noah, who was raised 
 up by God to be a monument of his 
 distinguishing " grace," a witness for 
 him in an apostate world, and a preacher 
 of righteousness to his abandoned ge- 
 neration. Like the far-seen beacon light 
 
54 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 when it beams through the pitchy dark- 
 ness of a tempestuous night upon the 
 dashing billows of the troubled deep, — 
 he stood forth amidst the wild tossings 
 of human passions, and the deathful 
 gloom of human depravity, at once to 
 warn mankind of the rocks upon which 
 they were splitting, and to guide them 
 in the track of safety. But they in their 
 madness refused to listen to his warning 
 voice ; because sentence against their 
 evil doings was not executed speedily, 
 therefore their hearts were thoroughly 
 set in them to do evil : the long-suffer- 
 ing of the Lord only afforded more ample 
 opportunity for the development of those 
 roots of bitterness which spread their 
 fibres through every part of our nature : 
 the very goodness of God led them, not 
 to repentance, but to presumptuous and 
 daring continuance in sin; till at length 
 the measure of their iniquities was full, 
 and so was the cup of Jehovah's fury ! 
 and accordingly intimation was given to 
 
noah's ark. 55 
 
 Noah, that the clay of righteous retri- 
 bution was at hand ; ^ ' And God said unto 
 INoah, the end of all flesh is come before 
 me, for the earth is filled with violence 
 through them : and behold I will destroy 
 them with the earth." (Gen. vi. 16.) 
 
 But some may be ready to inquire, as 
 Abraham on one occasion did, '' Wilt 
 thou also destroy the righteous with the 
 wicked ?" to which we suggest the reply 
 which the patriarch's faith did to him : 
 ^^ That is far from God to do after this 
 manner, to slay the righteous with the 
 wicked ; and that the righteous be as 
 the wicked that is far from him. Shall 
 not the Judge of all the earth do right ?" 
 And this brings us to the second point 
 we have to consider, viz. : — 
 
 II. The appointment of the Ark. Had 
 the whole race of mankind perished in 
 this general overthrow, the covenant be- 
 fore confirmed of God in Christ w^ould 
 have been annulled. The threat de- 
 nounced against the serpent, and which 
 
56 DISCOURSE IT. 
 
 implied a promise of deliverance to the 
 victim of his infernal cunning — that the 
 seed of the woman should bruise his head 
 — not having as yet received its accom- 
 plishment, it was necessary that some 
 individuals should be preserved from the 
 wreck of human kind, otherwise the 
 gracious designs of God with regard to 
 the predicted Saviour would have been 
 frustrated. But Satan could not be per- 
 mitted thus to defeat the counsels of 
 eternity ; nor was the unbelief and im- 
 piety of man allowed to make the pro- 
 mise of God of none effect ; therefore, 
 while all the world besides were sunk 
 into irreligion or idolatry,— in one family 
 at least the knowledge, and the fear, 
 and the worship of the true God was 
 maintained. '^ Noah," we are told, 
 ^' was a just man, and perfect in his 
 generations : and Noah walked with 
 God." As far, indeed, as his own na- 
 ture was concerned, Noah was no ex- 
 ception to the awful statement, that '^ all 
 
noah's ark. 57 
 
 flesh had corrupted its way upon the 
 earth," the difference between him and 
 others w^as not owing to any thing de- 
 rivable from Adam, it originated en- 
 tirely in a source to which all that even 
 approximates to that which is pure, and 
 perfect, and godly, in the character of 
 any who are of the stock and lineage 
 of Adam, must be solely attributed — the 
 free, unmerited, unpurchased, grace of 
 God. Wherefore the very first insight 
 which the sacred historian gives into the 
 character of Noah is furnished in these 
 few but emphatic words : — '' Noah found 
 grace in the sight of the Lord." He 
 was a chosen vessel of mercy, and there- 
 fore in immediate connexion with the 
 revelation of that overwhelming scourge 
 by which the iniquity of the world was 
 to be avenged, and of which he was 
 commissioned to forewarn its guilty in- 
 habitants, intimations of mercy to him- 
 self and his house were graciously given 
 — '' But with thee will I establish my 
 
 d3 
 
58 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 covenant," — a covenant of deliverance 
 from the impending deluge, of redemp- 
 tion from the destroying curse. 
 
 And as it was owing to the previous 
 purpose of Jehovah that this promise 
 of safety was given, so was it for Him 
 alone to devise an expedient whereby 
 the promise might be fulfilled. " Make 
 thee an ark of gopher wood;" '' and 
 thou shalt come into the ark, thou and 
 thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' 
 wives with thee." 
 
 Passing, however, from the type to 
 the great anti-type, we are reminded 
 in all this, that the method hy which 
 sinners are saved from the wrath to come 
 originated in the infinite wisdom and sove- 
 reign purpose of God, '* Who," — writes 
 the Apostle Paul to Timothy, his own son 
 in the faith, — '' who hath saved us, and 
 called us with a holy calling; not ac- 
 cording to our works, but according to 
 his own purpose and grace, which was 
 given us in Christ Jesus before the 
 
noah's ark. 59 
 
 world began." Noah, although firmly 
 persuaded from the prevalent ungodli- 
 ness of his generation, that the judg- 
 ments of heaven were fast ripening, 
 could not have foreseen the precise 
 manner in which they would be in- 
 flicted ; and even if forewarned that a 
 deluge of waters would be the instru- 
 ment of vengeance, it is altogether un- 
 reasonable to suppose that his own 
 sagacity would ever have devised the 
 method of escaping it which Jehovah 
 graciously pointed out to him. Even 
 so, beloved brethren, that plan of salva- 
 tion from the dominion and the penalty 
 of sin, which it is the grand design of 
 the whole Bible to reveal, is one which 
 infinite wisdom appointed, and which 
 nothing short of infinite wisdom would 
 ever have conceived. So far from being 
 a scheme which commends itself at once 
 to the judgment and the feelings of man- 
 kind ; to all those among them who 
 have not been made partakers of that 
 
60 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 vital faith which, as being the special 
 '^ gift of God," produces an assimilation 
 of views and feelings to His will and 
 purposes, it is as much a subject of dis- 
 like and contempt as the ark — which 
 Noah, under the influence of faith, and 
 being moved with fear, prepared in obe- 
 dience to the command of God — was to 
 the faithless and reckless sinners among 
 whom he delivered in vain his solemn 
 and righteous testimony. Hence, says one 
 of that band of Apostles which was first 
 commissioned to make it known to every 
 creature, '' we preach Christ crucified ; 
 to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to 
 the Greeks foolishness." And surely if 
 any statement may be fearlessly ad- 
 vanced it is this : that if God had left 
 it to mankind to discover a way of sal- 
 vation from the curse annexed to trans- 
 gression, beneath the full weight of that 
 curse the whole human race would have 
 been doomed to groan for ever. " He 
 looked, and there was no man, and won- 
 
noah's ark. 61 
 
 dered that there was no intercessor : 
 wherefore his own arm brought salva- 
 vation." 
 
 And moreover, since the ark was ap- 
 pointed by God himself as the means 
 of safety to Noah and his family, it is 
 obvious that any other means which 
 they might adopt in preference would 
 have been insufficient for the purpose. 
 The declaration of Jeremiah would have 
 applied to their case, as it did to Israel 
 subsequently, as it does to each of us 
 now : ' ' Truly in vain is salvation hoped 
 for from the hills, and from the mul- 
 titude of mountains : truly in the Lord 
 our God is the salvation of his people." 
 And the remark applies with a tenfold 
 force to that wondrous scheme of re- 
 demption the ark was intended to pre- 
 figure, — the origin, the authority, and 
 the efficacy of which are all Divine. 
 There can be no other way of outriding 
 the billows of righteous judgment, of 
 overpassing the gulph of endless per- 
 
62 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 dition, of fleeing from the wrath to 
 come. '' Neither is there salvation in 
 any other ; for there is none other name 
 under heaven given among men whereby 
 we must be saved." (Acts iv. 12.) Man- 
 kind, indeed, so long as the natural 
 heart is unbroken and unconquered, will 
 ever quarrel with this method of sal- 
 vation ; it offers violence to their preju- 
 dices, and casts contempt upon their 
 pride. They have no adequate sense of 
 the danger, and therefore feel not the 
 need of such an unparalleled interven- 
 tion of Divine power and mercy for 
 their deliverance. They readily enough 
 admit that they are offenders, and they 
 are not without some misgivings and 
 apprehensions about the consequences 
 of being such : and when they hear the 
 denunciations of fiery indignation to be 
 poured out upon the wicked hereafter, 
 they are moved with fear — not such a 
 fear as Noah's was, the offspring of 
 faith, moving him to adopt the divinely- 
 
noah's ark. 63 
 
 appointed means of salvation — not that 
 fear of the Lord which is to hate evil, 
 and which shrinks from the contamina- 
 tion as much as from the consequence of 
 guilt, — but a mere instinctive and selfish 
 dread of those pains and penalties which 
 are the natural fruits of disobedience, 
 and the eternal doom of the finally dis- 
 obedient. By this feeling they are sti- 
 mulated to take some steps towards 
 securing an adequate hiding-place : the 
 faithful ambassadors of Christ direct 
 them to his cross as the only place of 
 shelter from impending ruin ; but, like 
 the antediluvian sinners, and the Pha- 
 risees of a later age, they reject the 
 counsel of God against themselves, they 
 love darkness rather than light, and 
 choose to devise some method of their 
 own whereby they may attain to ever- 
 lasting life, rather than receive it as the 
 free, unmerited, unbought " gift of God 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ." In- 
 deed, brethren, you may receive it as 
 
64 DISCOUUSE II. 
 
 an unquestionable truth, that so long 
 as men are unhumbled, unenlightened, 
 unchanged by the Spirit of God, they 
 are either altogether indifferent about 
 the threatened judgments of heaven, or 
 else they are seeking to avert them by 
 some other method than that which Hea* 
 ven has appointed : they do not, — either 
 from the love of unrighteousness, or else 
 from a vain self-righteousness — they do 
 not, and they will not, and they cannot, 
 submit themselves to the righteousness 
 of Christ ; so that the very means of 
 salvation become the aggravation of 
 their ruin, even as the prophet predicted 
 concerning the promised Saviour : " He 
 shall be for a sanctuary " — that is, to 
 those who betake themselves to him for 
 refuge, " and a stone of stumbling and a 
 rock of offence"* — that is, to all who 
 despise and reject Him. And the faith- 
 ful steward of the mysteries connected 
 with that salvation of which He is the 
 * Isaiah viii. 14, 
 
noah's ark. 65 
 
 Alpha and the Omega, the beginning 
 and the end, — like Noah, the preacher 
 of righteousness, condemns and will be 
 a swift witness against all those who, 
 from any supposable cause, trample 
 under foot the Son of God and do 
 despite to the Spirit of grace. '' We 
 are unto God a sweet savour of Christ in 
 them that are saved, and in them that 
 perish," &c.* To say that no other 
 method of saving a lost world could 
 have been devised we are not called 
 upon to do : it becomes us not to cir- 
 cumscribe wisdom which is unbounded, 
 and power which is omnipotent. God, 
 to whom all things are possible, was 
 doubtless able to save Noah and his 
 family in any other way that he saw 
 fit ; but we know that no other way 
 was appointed : the ark, and the ark 
 alone, survived the overpowering flood. 
 Just so, it would be the height of folly 
 to waste our time in speculating whether 
 
 * 2 Cor. ii. 15, 16. 
 
6(3 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 God could or could not have saved our 
 sinful race in any other way than by the 
 substitution of his Son ; it is enough to 
 know that he has past his own unalter- 
 able word for the certainty that salvation 
 is not attainable by any sinner beneath 
 the canopy of heaven, whether his sins 
 be many or few, aggravated or trivial, 
 save by a living faith in the atoning 
 death, and justifying righteousness, and 
 sanctifying grace, and prevailing inter- 
 cession of his own co-equal and co- 
 eternal Son. '' He that hath the Son 
 hath life, and he that hath not the Son 
 shall not see life, but the wrath of God 
 abideth on him." 
 
 III. Proceed we now to speak of the 
 construction of the Ark. '' Make thee an 
 ark of gopher wood ; " such was the Di- 
 vine command to Noah ; ^^ and he," says 
 the apostle, " being moved with fear, 
 prepared an ark to the saving of his 
 house." But why was Noah called upon 
 to prepare the ark, since God had pre- 
 
NOAH S ARK. 67 
 
 viously covenanted to save him from the 
 overflowing flood ? why were not the 
 means of safety made ready to his hand 
 without any pains or endeavours on his 
 part, as w^ell as the promise of safety 
 freely and graciously given on the part 
 of God? Surely, brethren, you will an- 
 ticipate the reply ; it was to furnish the 
 patriarch with a test of his faith, alike in 
 the threatenings and the promises of 
 God. Unbelief is equally regardless of 
 both, and therefore the unbeliever makes 
 no determined effort either to avert the 
 one or to secure the other. Unbelief, 
 moreover, measures by the standard of 
 reason, or of human probability, the de- 
 crees and purposes of God ; but faith 
 makes every rule and every principle 
 bend to the simple axiom that with God 
 all things are right and possible. Un- 
 belief would have been staggered at the 
 unlikelihood of weathering, in so perish- 
 able a vessel, a storm by which all the 
 world was to be destroyed, and would 
 
68 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 have suggested a thousand difficulties, 
 about the cost of such a pile of materials, 
 the length of time which would be con- 
 sumed in constructing them, and, above 
 all, the probable necessity of employing 
 some who held the whole scheme in con- 
 tempt, in order to its completion. But 
 Noah, by faith, triumphed over all these 
 difficulties, and every cavil and every 
 doubt was silenced by a reference to the 
 Divine command, " Thussaith the Lord, 
 make thee an ark of gopher wood." Ob- 
 vious, therefore, as it must be that no ark 
 of Noah's construction could be adequate 
 to the dreadful emergency unless by the 
 express appointment of God, it must 
 surely be equally obvious that if Noah 
 had neglected the part assigned to him, 
 had refused to prepare the ark which 
 God had appointed as the means of 
 deliverance, he would have perished in 
 the universal overthrow. 
 
 And what, dear brethren, is the mo- 
 mentous truth which all this represents 
 
noah's ark. 69 
 
 to our minds ? surely that in the scheme 
 of salvation which is revealed in the 
 Gospel, while works are necessarily ex- 
 cluded on the ground of merit, they are 
 not excluded as tests of character and of 
 principle ; that while all the meritorious- 
 ness and all the efficacy of this great 
 salvation arises from the dignity and 
 sovereignty and grace of Him who de- 
 signed, and executed, and revealed it — 
 yet it is so ordered and so revealed as to 
 afford ample scope for the exercise of 
 both an active and a passive submission 
 to its Divine Author ; both of unhesitat- 
 ing obedience and of unmurmuring en- 
 durance ; together with that superhuman 
 combination of graces and principles with 
 which it supplies all those who become 
 vitally interested in its blessings ; hence 
 the solemn admonition of St. Paul, 
 " work out your own salvation with fear 
 and trembling," coupled as it is with the 
 blessed assurance which makes so practi- 
 cable what would otherwise be so impos- 
 
70 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 sible, ^' it is God who worketh in you 
 both to will and to do of his good plea- 
 sure ; " and genuine faith will ever take 
 in both and ever connect them together ; 
 and the believer, like Noah, will ever be 
 characterised by his loving that which 
 God commands, as well as desiring 
 that which he promises; like him, too, 
 being moved with fear, he will unite and 
 consolidate, in his own experience, the 
 several parts of the Gospel method of 
 salvation ; what Christ has done in his 
 own person for his people — what by His 
 Spirit he does in them — and what, through 
 the legitimate effects of his Gospel re- 
 ceived into their hearts. He does hy 
 them; — and thus, like Noah, also, become 
 an " heir of the righteousness which is 
 by faith." " Ye, therefore, beloved, 
 building up yourselves on your most holy 
 faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep 
 yourselves in the love of God, looking 
 for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 unto eternal life." (Jude 20, 21.) 
 
noah's ark. 71 
 
 The ark, however, which Noah, in 
 obedience to the Divine command, pre- 
 pared, was very peculiar in its construc- 
 tion. It was to consist of many rooms 
 (in the margin nests), being intended 
 for the preservation not only of the holy 
 seed by whom the earth was to be re- 
 peopled when the waters of the flood 
 should subside, but also of those inferior 
 creatures which were essential to their 
 comfort and subsistence. Thus Christ is 
 the source from whence we receive tem- 
 poral as well as spiritual good ; events 
 and circumstances, in themselves most 
 opposite in their character, are, by rea- 
 son of their union to him, so overruled as 
 to work together for the good of his 
 people ; dispositions, too, naturally most 
 wild and untameable, are, by his restrain- 
 ing grace, overawed by the presence and 
 made submissive to the control of di- 
 vinely-implanted principles ; and thus 
 the glowing language of prophecy is ful- 
 filled, '' the wolf is made to dwell with 
 
72 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 the lamb, and the leopard to lie down 
 with the kid, and the calf and the yoang 
 lion and the fatling together." There is 
 also another deeply interesting fact which 
 is suggested if not typified by this pre- 
 servation of both man and beast in the 
 same ark, viz., that the body as well as 
 the soul is interested in the redemption 
 of Christ, that both wdll survive the last 
 dread overthrow, and at the great and 
 notable day of the adoption* will, in 
 blissful re-union, be admitted into that 
 new heavens and new earth w^herein 
 righteousness will everlastingly dwell. 
 
 Again : the ark was to consist of three 
 stories^ which some have thought to be 
 emblematical of the several stages of the 
 Christian Church, the lower story an- 
 swering to the visible or professing 
 church ; the second to the invisible or 
 spiritual church ; the third, or upper 
 story, to the church triumphant in hea- 
 ven : but I am more disposed to consider 
 
 * Rom. viii. 23. 
 
noah's ark. 73 
 
 it as emblematical of the several dispen- 
 sations of the covenant of redemption by- 
 Christ Jesus — the Patriarchal, the Mo- 
 saical, and the Evangelical dispensations, 
 each resting on the same basis — each 
 suited to the state and circumstances of 
 those who were the subjects of them — 
 and each transcending the one preceding 
 in the loftiness of its character and the 
 range of its discoveries. " For even that 
 which was made glorious had no glory 
 in this respect, by reason of the glory that 
 excelleth." 
 
 Into the ark, however, there was to be 
 but one door of admission, nor is there 
 more than one mode of obtaining a real 
 and solid footing within the pale of salva- 
 tion; it is not by moral doings or by 
 religious duties ; it is not by external 
 professions or by intellectual acquire- 
 ments; it is by spiritual regeneration ; for 
 '' except a man be born of water and of 
 the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom 
 of God." And oh, my beloved hearers, 
 
 £ 
 
74 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 in that awful day when God shall again 
 arise to shake terribly the earth — to dis- 
 cern between the righteous and the 
 wicked — to comjDlete the redemption of 
 the one, and to execute vengeance upon 
 the other — man}^ in that day shall seek to 
 enter in and shall not be able ; and take 
 heed, I solemnly beseech you, that such 
 be not the case with you ; for " when once 
 the master of the house is risen up, and 
 hath shut to the door, and ye begin to 
 stand without and to knock at the door, 
 saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us, and 
 he shall answer and say unto you, I know 
 you not whence ye are ; depart from me, 
 all ye workers of iniquity. There shall 
 be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when 
 ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and 
 Jacob, and all the prophets, in the king- 
 dom of God, and ye yourselves thrust 
 
 out." 
 
 Once more : the ark was to be pitched 
 icithin and ivithout ; and this may remind 
 us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has 
 
.noah's ark. 75 
 
 reference to the state of the heart as well 
 as to the safety of the soul ; that if it be 
 true that only those who believe are 
 justified before God and set free from 
 the penalty of sin — it is equally true 
 that '' without holiness no man shall see 
 the Lord ; " so that sanctification is as 
 much a part of a sinner's salvation as 
 justification ; like the two great powers 
 by the counter influence of which the 
 mighty mechanism of the material hea- 
 vens preserves the order and harmony of 
 its movements — these two grand and all 
 essential truths must ever be associated 
 in the creed, and in the experience of all 
 those, who are truly ' ' elect according to 
 the foreknowledge of God the Father, 
 through sanctification of the Spirit unto 
 obedience and sprinkling of the blood of 
 Jesus." (1 Pet. i. 2.) 
 
 IV. But I hasten to speak of the ade- 
 quacy of the Ark, which Noah, according 
 to the divine model, constructed. And 
 surely it was no common trial of strength 
 
 e2 
 
76 DISCOURSE ir. 
 
 and sufficiency to which it was to be ex- 
 posed. '' Come, see the w^orks of the 
 Lord ; he is terrible in his doings toward 
 the children of men ; " and yet they, in 
 their deep infatuation, live as if he were 
 a ^' God all mercy," altogether incapable 
 of exerting any sterner and severer attri- 
 bute ; they, therefore, give the reins to 
 their lusts, and they press on in the eager 
 chase after guilty and forbidden plea- 
 sures, and they say, ^' How doth God 
 know ? can he judge through the dark 
 cloud ? thick clouds are a covering to him 
 that he seeth not, and he walketh in the 
 circuit of heaven;" thus they persuade 
 themselves either that the Lord does not 
 perceive their iniquities, or that, if he 
 does, he is too indulgent to punish them. 
 So thought the sinners before the flood, 
 and when Noah talked of coming judg- 
 ments they deemed it but the ravings of 
 a morose and disordered imagination ; 
 they looked upon the beauteous earth 
 around them and the smiling heavens 
 
NOAH S ARK. // 
 
 above them, and they would not be per- 
 suaded that the unvarying laws of nature 
 would be suspended, in order to avenge 
 the insults which their crimes were offer- 
 ing to creation's Lord. But were the at- 
 tributes of the eternal God thus made to 
 pander to the unhallowed lusts and car- 
 nal propensities of the children of men ? 
 No ! in the language at once of holy in- 
 dignation and incensed justice, and yet 
 withal of infinite forbearance, Jehovah is 
 introduced as saying, '^ My Spirit shall 
 not always strive with man, for that he 
 also (of certainly) is flesh," that is, sen- 
 sual and corrupt, according to the full 
 meaning of the word as used by St. Paul, 
 '' if ye live after the flesh ye shall die ; " 
 and ^^ yet," to demonstrate, at once, my 
 own long suffering and man's inveterate 
 depravity, ^'his days" of respite, of pro- 
 bation, of suspended judgments and 
 prolonged opportunities for repentance, 
 *' shall be an hundred and twenty years." 
 But though, as St. Peter writes, " the 
 
78 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 long-suffering of God waited in the days 
 of Noah while the ark was a preparing," 
 though warning after warning was given 
 by him as '' a preacher of righteousness," 
 though many a gathering cloud gave 
 fearful presage of the approaching storm, 
 ^ ' they were eating and drinking, marry- 
 ing and giving in marriage, until the 
 day that Noah entered into the ark, and 
 knew not till the flood came and took 
 them all away." 
 
 '' And it came to pass after seven 
 days" — which must have been a still fur- 
 ther reprieve appended to the hundred 
 and twenty years, most probably with 
 the benevolent intention that if the dis- 
 tance of the period fixed in the former 
 warning made them reckless about it, 
 they may be aroused to a sense of their 
 guilt and danger by the assurance that 
 behold, the Judge was standing at the 
 door, but which additional forewarning 
 on the part of God only served to 
 shut up their hearts in more resolute 
 
noah's ark. 79 
 
 defiance of his threatenings — '^ in the 
 six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the 
 second month, the same day, were all the 
 fountains of the great deep broken up, 
 and the windows (margin, floodgates) of 
 heaven were opened " — in other words, 
 that law of restraint which the Creator 
 imposed when he first gathered the waters 
 under the heaven unto one place, and 
 made the dry land to appear,* being sus- 
 pended, and the waters, which probably 
 were confined within the central recesses 
 of the globe, t bursting forth unrestrained 
 again, as previous to the creation, over- 
 spread its surface ; while the firmament 
 above, or the atmosphere, which receives 
 its moisture by the process of evaporation, 
 being thus surcharged, the waters, as 
 from suddenly-opened sluices, descended 
 in unbroken masses; and by the joint 
 operation of these causes, the deluge so 
 fearfully increased, that all the high hills 
 that were under the whole heaven were 
 
 * Gen. i. 9. "j" Ps. xxxiii. 7. 
 
80 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 covered — though the highest is not less 
 than 27,000 feet above the level of the 
 sea — '^ and all flesh died that moved 
 upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle, 
 and of beast, and of every creeping thing 
 that creepeth upon the earth, and every 
 man, all in vs^hose nostrils was the breath 
 of life, of all that was in the dry land 
 died." (Gen. vii. 21, 22.) 
 
 But amidst this wide- wasting deluge, 
 what is the fate of the ark and the few 
 souls that were in it ? Jehovah had been 
 faithful to his denunciations, was he also 
 to his promises ? — Yes ! Though sinful 
 men had scoffed at it; though the all- 
 conquering floods assail it ; though the 
 wildest powers of nature seem in league 
 to engulph it ; — lo ! the ark, which con- 
 tained the covenant-people of Jehovah, 
 rides in triumphant security above the 
 raging waves, and bids proud defiance to 
 the dreadful storm. While the guilty and 
 wretched inhabitants of the world are 
 driven from refuge to refuge, and from 
 
noah's ark. 81 
 
 mountain to mountain, till the whole face 
 of creation disappears — the Ark, and that 
 alone, survives! 
 
 Even so, brethren, it is with the Ark 
 of our salvation ; for, as the apostle has 
 said of another t^^pe, we may say of this 
 — '^ that Ark was Christ," who verily for 
 our sakes was exposed to the dreadful 
 floods of divine wrath, and the violent 
 tempests of infernal malice ; upon him 
 the broken law opened the flood-gates of 
 its vengeance, and the overflowings of 
 ungodliness dashed the surges of its 
 enmity against his immaculate nature — 
 but in vain; he suffered by the storm, 
 but he perished not in it ; the machina- 
 tions of earth and of hell seemed success- 
 fully to prevail against him ; but their 
 very success was their ruin ; and at 
 length, when sin and death, the grave 
 and hell, had done their uttermost, then 
 the deluge abated, and the overcoming 
 Saviour rested upon the mountain of his 
 mediatorial exaltation, having obtained 
 
 E 5 
 
82 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 eternal redemption for us I And as it 
 was with Christ so shall it be with all 
 who are in Christ ; they have in him a 
 covert from every tempest, a hiding 
 place from every storm ; floods of tribu- 
 lation may swell around it, billows of 
 temptation may dash against it, but the 
 ark in which the Lord hath shut the 
 whole body of his believing people must 
 itself perish, before any that are really in 
 it can be cast away — '' they shall never 
 perish, neither shall any thing pluck 
 them out of his hand." 
 
 And now, brethren, what remains but 
 for me solemnly to enquire of each one 
 who hears me — have you entered into 
 the Ark of which I have been discours- 
 ing? — have you fled for refuge to lay 
 hold of the hope set before you in the 
 Gospel ? — have you taken shelter from 
 the curse of the law you have broken in 
 the covenant of grace ? — in a word, is 
 your life hid with Christ in God ? Re- 
 member, I pray you, any thing short of 
 
noah's ark. 83 
 
 this will avail you nothing " when the 
 blast of the terrible ones is as a storm 
 against the wall." Profession and head- 
 knowledge may answer your purpose 
 now, but it will be no security from the 
 terrors of the wrath to come ; ^^ for in 
 Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth 
 any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new 
 creature." No matter what the ante- 
 diluvian sinners thought of the ark — if 
 they were not in it they were swept away 
 into hopeless perdition. No matter what 
 your opinions about Christ may be — if 
 you are not in Him you perish ; for it is 
 as infallibly certain that there is no sal- 
 vation to those who are not in Christ 
 Jesus, as that there is no condemnation 
 to them that are ; and if an}^ man be in 
 Christ Jesus he is a new creature. 
 
 And remember too, that this is not an 
 enquiry w^hich may be safely deferred : 
 for the fearful deluge which came upon 
 the sinners of old is but an emblem of a 
 still more fearful visitation in the " day 
 
84 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 of judgment and perdition of ungodly 
 men/'' And this is no fanciful parallel 
 drawn by the preacher's own imagination; 
 read it in the impressive words which 
 the pen of inspiration has recorded, — 
 ''' The world that then was being over- 
 flowed with water, perished ; but the 
 heavens and the earth which now are, 
 are reserved unto fire against the day of 
 judgment."* There is truly a most un- 
 accountable fatuity and a most destructive 
 apathy resting on the minds of men in 
 general with reference to the second 
 advent of the Son of Man to judge the 
 world in righteousness ; many a dark 
 and portentous sign is afforded of its 
 near approach, but they will not see; 
 they eat, they drink, they build, they 
 plant, they marry, and are given in 
 marriage ; in short, they are as absorbed 
 in the fugitive concerns, or the intox- 
 icating frivolities of life, as if they were 
 the only things worth any sacrifice to 
 * 2 Pet. iii. 7. 
 
noah's ark. 85 
 
 obtain, or, as if the promise of the 
 Saviour's coming, and the joys of a 
 future heaven, v^ere all a day dream ! 
 Oh, brethren, be not ye thus regardless 
 of your highest interests — blind to the 
 lowerings of the gathering storm — deaf 
 to the exhortations of a long-suffering 
 God ; the door of the Ark is not yet 
 shut ; Come unto me, is still the burden 
 of that messao:e we are commissioned to 
 deliver — reject it not — prefer not your 
 sins to your safety. ^' If the righteous 
 scarcely be saved, where shall the un- 
 godly and the sinner appear?" '^ The 
 Lord is not slack concerning his promise, 
 but is long-suffering to usward,not willing 
 that any should perish, but that all should 
 come to repentance." 
 
86 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 THE RAINBOW. 
 
 " AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS WHEN I BRING A CLOLD 
 OVER THE EARTH, THAT THE BOW SHALL BE SEEN IN 
 THE CLOUD, AND I WILL REMEMBER MY COVENANT 
 WHICH IS BETWEEN ME AND YOU, AND EVERY 
 LIVING CREATURE OF ALL FLESH, AND THE WATERS 
 SHALL NO MORE BECOME A FLOOD TO DESTROY ALL 
 FLESH."— Gen. ix. 14, 15. 
 
 My last Discourse was truly like David's 
 song, " of mercy and of judgment'' — of 
 covenant mercy to the righteous — of 
 overwhelming judgment to the wicked. 
 Abundant evidence had been furnished 
 in the history of the antediluvian world 
 to the truth that '' the Lord is slow to 
 anger;" but the result of their abuse of 
 his long-suffering affords a fearfully in- 
 telligible comment upon the declaration 
 
THE RAINBOW. 87' 
 
 connected therewith, that he will by no 
 means "clear the guilty:" and that 
 result, all-terrible as it was, may warn 
 those among us, who, to this day, have 
 been taxing the divine forbearance, 
 neither awed by his threatenings, nor 
 won by his expostulations, nor softened 
 by his unfailing compassions, that God 
 has attributes dark and severe prepared 
 to avenge the insult which unrepented 
 sin offers to those which are mild and 
 gracious. " Because I have called and 
 ye refused, I have stretched out my 
 hand, and no man regarded ; but ye 
 have set at nought all my counsel, and 
 would none of my reproof: I also will 
 laugh at your calamity, I will mock when 
 your fear cometh." 
 
 The sweeping visitations of God's 
 avenging rod are, indeed, ordinarily 
 withheld in this present life, out of re- 
 gard for his faithful servants, few as their 
 number may be. If among the inhabit- 
 ants of the guilty cities of the plain, at 
 
88 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 whose hideous crimes even our fallen 
 humanity turns pale, only ten had been 
 numbered, in whose breasts the prin- 
 ciples of God's moral government were 
 recognised and honoured, the avenging 
 fires of heaven would, for their sakes, 
 have been restrained : and little aware 
 are the ^^ children of disobedience," by 
 whom the faithful followers of the Lamb 
 have ever been persecuted and des- 
 pised^ — how much they are indebted to 
 the objects of their enmity and scorn, 
 for the continued enjoyment of those 
 very blessings which, though entirely 
 connected with the life that now is, con- 
 stitute the only portion they really value ; 
 for to his Church the language of the 
 Saviour applies in a literal as well as a 
 moral point of view, "• Ye are the salt 
 of the earth," the conservative element 
 which preserves it from entire corruption 
 and judicial abandonment. 
 
 There are periods, however, when the 
 wickedness of men attains to such a 
 
THE RAINBOW. 89 
 
 gigantic height, that even the voice of 
 divine mercy ceases to plead, and the 
 truth and the righteousness of God un- 
 sheath the sword of his justice, and 
 then, though Noah, David, or Daniel 
 may stand in the way, they cannot pre- 
 vent the strong; arm of the Lord from 
 arresting the daring rebels against his 
 righteous administration, and vindicating 
 the outraged majesty of his holy law. 
 Such a period was that when the aveng- 
 ing waters bursting from above, and 
 heaving from beneath, engulphed in one 
 common ruin, the devoted generation, 
 who had outreached the limits to which 
 even divine forbearance extends. 
 
 And yet, in the period of his fiercest 
 indignation, when the proud and the 
 wicked are destroyed root and branch, 
 God will, in some palpable manner, 
 discern between him that serveth Him 
 and him that serveth Him not ; and make 
 the day of most tremendous judgment 
 to the one, the day of most distinguished 
 
90 DISCOURSE III, 
 
 mercy to the other. How strikingly is 
 this consolatory truth set forth by the 
 prophet Nahum, who introduces, in the 
 midst of a series of most awful denun- 
 ciations of wrath upon all the Lord's 
 adversaries, a passage of an opposite 
 description to those who trust in him, 
 which beams forth like a short interval of 
 sunshine in a day of clouds and storms ; 
 or, rather, like the beautiful phenomenon 
 we are about more particularly to 
 consider, which expands its brilliant 
 arch across the darkened heavens. 
 (Nahum i. 5 — 8.) And an instance 
 precisely similar is given in connexion 
 with the subject of our last Discourse : 
 '' Behold I, even I, do bring a flood 
 of waters upon the earth to destroy 
 all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, 
 from under heaven, and every thing that 
 is in the earth shall die. But with thee 
 will I establish my covenant, and thou 
 shalt come into the ark, thou and thy 
 sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives 
 
THE RAINBOW. 91 
 
 with thee."* This gracious assurance we 
 have seen most fully verified ; we have 
 seen, that when the wide-wasting element 
 had swept before it all the boasted glories 
 of mankind, and made the harvest of 
 their guilty pleasures " a heap in the 
 day of grief and desperate sorrow," the 
 ark which contained the Church of God 
 was only carried the nearer heaven by 
 the very judgments in which all others 
 miserably perished. 
 
 The situation of Noah in the ark, 
 however, bears some analogy to the 
 state of the Christian during his term of 
 probation on earth ; it was a state of 
 security but not of rest : and, as the 
 Christian, though it be his duty patiently 
 to wait until his change come, may, 
 nevertheless, like St. Paul, be willing 
 rather to depart and to be with Christ, 
 so was it lawful for Noah, not only to 
 believe implicitly that God in the set 
 time would deliver him, but to ascertain 
 * Gen. vi. 17, 18. 
 
92 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 as far as he had the means of doing, 
 whether that time of deliverance were at 
 hand. For this purpose, at the end of 
 forty days he sent forth first a raven, 
 and then a dove : the former, '' going 
 forth and returning," until the waters 
 were dried up from the earth ; the latter 
 finding no rest for the sole of her foot, 
 therefore returning, not only like the 
 raven, to rest upon the outside of the 
 ark, but to be received into it. 
 
 Who does not see in this raven, an 
 emblem of the Christian professor, who 
 has just enough religion to attach him 
 to the outward cause of Christ, while 
 the secret bent of his mind is still going 
 out after those very things from which 
 he can only reap corruption. And who 
 does not see in the dove, an emblem 
 of the ^^ new creature in Christ Jesus," 
 who, though he may be sometimes 
 tempted to stray from the divine Noah, 
 in the inordinate quest of earthly good, 
 can find no satisfaction in any thing 
 
THE RAINBOW. 93 
 
 short of communion with Christ, and is 
 a stranger to all heart-repose and con- 
 science-peace, till his fluttering, tremb- 
 ling, contrite spirit is welcomed again 
 to His all-compassionate bosom. 
 
 After repeating the experiment on three 
 successive Sabbaths, and receiving from 
 each repetition still stronger evidence 
 that Jehovah, having eased himself of 
 his adversaries, was again reconciled to 
 the world they had polluted, Noah was 
 induced at length to remove the covering 
 of the ark, in order to survey the altered 
 aspect of the earth's surface, which, when 
 last he looked upon it, had been arrayed 
 in all the charms of nature's loveliness. 
 But though the face of the ground was 
 dry, and the patriarch probably could 
 see no longer a necessity for remaining 
 in the ark, yet for reasons not assigned, 
 God — who exercises the faith of his 
 people as much by withholding and re- 
 straining, as by commanding and chast- 
 ening them — suffered nearly two months 
 
94 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 to elapse before he gave the final com- 
 mand to the creatures he had so marvel- 
 lousl}^ preserved to come forth from their 
 confinement, that they might build the 
 old wastes, and raise up the former 
 desolations. (Gen. viii. 14 — 19.) 
 
 Having shown already that the co- 
 venant with Noah, which had reference 
 to the ark, and which, in the circumstances 
 we have enlarged upon, we have seen so 
 accurately fulfilled, was typical of that 
 covenant of grace wdiich has reference to 
 Christ and the salvation of sinners in him, 
 we are not surprised that the first act of the 
 grateful patriarch in the new world which 
 he was destined to re-people, should be 
 an act of propitiatory sacrifice, by which, 
 from the first intimation of divine mercy 
 in Eden, to its final development on Cal- 
 vary, the Gospel was preached. ^' And 
 Noah builded an altar unto the Lord, 
 and took of every clean beast, and of 
 every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offer- 
 ings on the altar." 
 
THE RAINBOW. 95 
 
 So grateful to Jehovah was this pro- 
 pitiation as typical of the atonement of 
 the predicted " seed of the woman," 
 that scarce was the solemn act of worship 
 concluded, when another covenant was 
 established with Noah, comprising se- 
 veral particulars peculiarly suited to his 
 existing circumstances ; such as the un- 
 varying succession of the seasons — the 
 permission to eat animal food — the ad- 
 ministration of justice by human hands — 
 the rapid multiplication of his offspring — 
 and the exemption of the earth from a 
 similar devastation. To this latter ar- 
 ticle of the covenant, I shall, however, 
 confine myself, ^' And the Lord smelled 
 a sweet savour ; and the Lord said in his 
 heart, I will not again curse the ground 
 anymore for man's sake, for," or rather, 
 although, '' the imagination of man's 
 heart is evil from his youth ; neither will 
 I again smite anymore every thing living, 
 as I have done." (Gen. viii. 21.) The 
 same gracious assurance is given in terms 
 
96 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 still more unequivocal in the eleventh 
 verse of the following chapter, '^ And 
 I will establish my covenant with you ; 
 neither shall all flesh be cut off" any 
 more by the waters of a flood, neither 
 shall there any more be a flood to destroy 
 the earth." Of this covenant, which pre- 
 eminently typified the covenant of mercy 
 confirmed of God in Christ, the Rainhow 
 was made the beautiful and significant 
 token. '^ And God said. This is the 
 token of the covenant which I make 
 between me and you, and every living 
 creature that is with you, for perpetual 
 generations, I do set" (or, rather, as I 
 conceive, I have set) '^ my bow in the 
 clouds ; " — for as when Moses, in the 
 matter of gathering the manna in the 
 wilderness makes the first positive men- 
 tion of the Sabbath since the time that 
 God appointed it, he proceeds upon the 
 assumption, that his auditors were fa- 
 miliar with the fact of its standing obli- 
 gation — so when God pointed out the 
 
THE RAINBOW. 97 
 
 rainbow to Noah as a sign or token of the 
 covenant He established with him, we need 
 not suppose that it was for the first time 
 visible ; for as we know that the causes 
 by which it is produced existed previous 
 to the flood, we may reasonably infer 
 from this the existence of the effect, " I 
 have set my bow in the cloud, and it 
 shall be for a token of a covenant between 
 me and the earth." And the propriety 
 and suitability of the token will abun- 
 dantly appear, if we remember, that 
 though the flood had washed from the 
 surface of the earth its guilty inhabit- 
 ants, it had not washed away its guilt ; 
 that even the family so graciously rescued 
 from the general overthrow were par- 
 takers of the corrupted nature of Adam, 
 having " a law in their members warring 
 against the law of their minds, and 
 bringing them into captivity to the law 
 of sin." Since, therefore, they could 
 not transmit their own nature to their 
 offspring without its hereditary prin- 
 
98 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 ciples of depravity — and as the operation 
 of these principles could not fail to pro- 
 duce among mankind evils and crimes 
 similar to those which had disgraced 
 and ruined the old world — and, more- 
 over, as the natural causes still existed, 
 by which its destruction had been so 
 fearfully accomplished — there was special 
 mercy in appointing some token con- 
 nected with these very causes to be the 
 seasonable pledge to Noah, and his fa- 
 mily, and to all successive generations, 
 that though clouds may overshadow, and 
 tempests beat upon our earth ; though 
 the waters of the sea roar and be troubled, 
 and the mountains shake at the swelling 
 thereof — the same mighty power which 
 had made them instruments of vengeance 
 before, would henceforth so effectually 
 restrain them, that the earth should not 
 be again destroyed by the same means ; 
 in order that it might be the grand 
 platform whereon to develop at once the 
 awful depravity of mankind, and his 
 
THE RAINBOW. 99 
 
 own transcendent scheme of mercy for 
 their salvation. '^ For this" — said God 
 himself, by the mouth of his prophet, 
 when speaking of the divine purposes 
 towards his Church, through all the 
 changes of time, and terminating in an 
 unchanging eternity, — " For this is as 
 the waters of Noah unto me; for as I 
 have sworn that the waters of Noah 
 should no more go over the earth, so 
 have I sworn that I would not be wroth 
 with thee nor rebuke thee : for the moun- 
 tains shall depart and the hills be re- 
 moved, but my kindness shall not depart 
 from thee, neither shall the covenant of 
 my peace be removed, saith the Lord 
 that hath mercy on thee." 
 
 I proceed, then, to show, how the 
 Rainbow may be made to exhibit and 
 illustrate the spiritual blessings of the 
 Christian covenant — the covenant which 
 secures to every genuine believer in 
 Christ support under the darkest tri- 
 bulations of this world, and exemption 
 
 F 2 
 
100 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 from the everlasting perdition of the world 
 to come. And in order to this, it will 
 be necessary briefly to consider two par- 
 ticulars with regard to this most beau- 
 tiful phenomenon. 
 
 I. The causes of its production ; and, 
 XL The season of its appearance. 
 The Rainbow is the natural eifect of 
 the refraction of the sun's rays as they fall 
 upon drops of rain ; and without aiming 
 at a more scientific description, which 
 would be quite foreign to my present pur- 
 pose, I would simply observe, in the first 
 place, that as there cannot be a rainbow 
 without the sun, so could there be no cove- 
 nant of grace between a righteous God and 
 guilty man without Christ. Christ is there- 
 fore, throughout the sacred volume, repre- 
 sented as occupying the same place in the 
 spiritual world, which the sun does in the 
 natural world. In the Psalms, concerning 
 Christ, it is written, '' The Lord God is 
 a sun and shield." Of him the prophet 
 Malachi subsequently spake as the Sun 
 
THE RAINBOW. 101 
 
 of Righteousness ; and the object of his 
 coming was like that of the sun when 
 he Cometh out of his chamber '^ to give 
 light to them that sat in darkness, and 
 in the shadow of death ; " and the evan- 
 gelical prophet, foretelling the future 
 glory and triumph of the Church, speaks 
 of Christ in the same character — '' Thy 
 sun shall no more go down ; for the 
 Lord shall be thy everlasting light, and 
 thy God thy glory ; " hence the gracious 
 words of the Redeemer himself, " I am 
 the light of the world ; he that believeth 
 on me shall not walk in darkness, but 
 shall have the light of life." 
 
 And as Christ is the only Sun from 
 whence spiritual light and life can pro- 
 ceed, so in the covenant of his grace — the 
 gospel attested by his power, and sealed 
 with his blood, and unfolded in his word 
 — we are favoured with the richest and 
 brightest reflexion of his uncreated glo- 
 ries, especially as manifested in the work 
 he has undertaken and executed, of re- 
 
102 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 deeming ''those that were lost" from 
 the tremendous penalties annexed to 
 transgression. And therefore, with es- 
 pecial reference to this very covenant, 
 the author of the Apocalypse represents 
 the exalted Saviour as having a rainbow 
 upon his head, teaching us that it is not 
 only the hope, the security, the triumph 
 of the faithful on earth, but that it 
 is worn as a diadem of beauty and of 
 glory by the Eternal Son of God, while 
 seated on the throne of his mediatorial 
 exaltation — a truth stated in less meta- 
 phorical language in Heb. ii. 9, " We 
 see Jesus, who was made a little lower 
 than the angels for the suffering of death, 
 crowned with glory and honour." 
 
 But the Rainbow is not produced 
 unless, by passing through some refract- 
 ing medium, the rays of the sun are 
 broken up into the several colours of 
 which they are composed. Even so, be- 
 loved brethren, we have no inward wit- 
 ness to the truth of God's everlasting 
 
THE RAINBOW. 103 
 
 covenant — styled, by way of distinction, 
 '' the covenant of grace" — unless we have 
 not only general views of the Christian 
 scheme, but, by its being brought into 
 contact with our own individual expe- 
 rience, we are taught to apprehend 
 the diversified blessings which it com- 
 prises. It is true that the salvation of a 
 sinner is all of grace — but as the rays of 
 light are decomposed when they fall 
 upon refracting surfaces, so is Divine 
 grace refracted or broken up by the 
 varying stages of the experience of God's 
 people : — there is converting grace, pre- 
 venting grace, restraining grace, suc- 
 couring grace, enlightening grace, sanc- 
 tifying grace, and glorifying grace : 
 which, if the analogy may not be too 
 fanciful, answer to the seven primary 
 colours of which the light of the sun is 
 compounded — 
 
 " Grace first contriv'd the way 
 To save rebellious man ; — 
 And all the steps that grace display 
 Which drew the wondrous plan." 
 
104 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 II. But let us now hasten to enquire 
 at what season this striking phenomenon 
 makes its appearance in the heavens. 
 Is it when the vaulted sky is clear and 
 cloudless, and no apprehensions need be 
 entertained of a gathering storm ? No : 
 but when the atmosphere is charged 
 with moisture, and the rain-drops are 
 fast falling to the ground. And when, 
 we may ask, was the covenant of grace 
 established with man ? Was it when the 
 sun of Divine favour shone full on his 
 unfallen spirit, and all the moral atmos- 
 phere around him was bright as the 
 unclouded firmament ? No : but when 
 the threatened penalty of sin, like a 
 heavy thunder cloud, had overshadowed 
 his soul ; and sorrow, disease, and death, 
 like showers of beating rain, began to 
 fall thick and fast upon it ; — it was then 
 that Divine mercy interposed, and in the 
 first promise of a Saviour, the Sun of 
 Righteousness arose with healing on his 
 wings. 
 
THE RAINBOW. * 105 
 
 And so, brethren, it is with indivi- 
 duals : — when are men taught to dis- 
 cover the beauties and embrace the 
 benefits of the Gospel-covenant ? Is it 
 when pleasure is beaming all around 
 them, and scarce a sigh or a pain inter- 
 rupts the gaiety of their minds ? No : 
 but when affliction is pressing heavy on 
 their frame, or conviction of sin is 
 spreading darkness and terror through 
 their mind — when no earthly hand can 
 wipe away their tears, and no earthly joy 
 can chase away their sadness — oh ! it is 
 then that the Gospel breaks in upon 
 their soul like the sun in a stormy day, 
 and the covenant of unmerited love 
 stretches its animating bow across their 
 heaviest and their darkest sorrows. 
 
 And, moreover, as the rainbow does 
 not appear when the sky is without a 
 cloud, so does it not, on the other hand, 
 when the clouds so entirely cover its 
 whole expanse that the rays of the sun 
 can no where penetrate it. And when, 
 
 F 5 
 
106 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 we may ask, does the covenant of re- 
 deeming grace shine forth upon the 
 soul ? — not surely in the season when 
 upon all the circumstances of this life, 
 and all the prospects of the next, there 
 rests one impervious cloud of gloominess 
 and despondency. It is most true, that 
 if we feel no compunction for sin, no 
 apprehension of deserved wrath, we can- 
 not feel our need of that amazing inter- 
 position of mercy which the Gospel sets 
 forth — nor should we be able to rejoice 
 in its fulness and its splendour, just as 
 sunshine without rain cannot produce 
 the rainbow ; but if, on the other hand, 
 our convictions of sin are so deep and so 
 overwhelming as wholly to exclude the 
 exercise of faith in the promises and 
 provisions of the Gospel, the bright 
 Rainbow of scriptural hope is altogether 
 intercepted, and we behold nothing as 
 we look onwards to a future state, but the 
 darkness of Divine indignation, or the 
 flashings of eternal woe. 
 
THE RAINBOAV. 
 
 107 
 
 How admirably adapted, therefore, as 
 well as solely intended, is the covenant of 
 grace for man in his state of probation 
 on earth — a state in which mercy is 
 blended with judgment, and judgment is 
 tempered with mercy. Indeed, it is 
 only upon earth that this admixture can 
 be found ; — it is not found in heaven, 
 for there sin can infuse no particle of 
 bitterness into its cup of unalloyed en- 
 joyment: — neither is it found in hell, for 
 there, to use the words of Milton — 
 
 peace 
 
 And rest can never dwell — hope never comes 
 That comes to all — but torture without end 
 Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed 
 With ever-burning sulphur, unconsum'd." 
 
 In the present world, however, both are 
 blended together, the one to deter us 
 from presuming upon God's forbearance, 
 — the other to preserve us from the 
 paralysing dread of his wrath. Yea, 
 the very miseries which man, by his 
 transgression, has brought upon himself, 
 
108 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 have been so overruled by the operation 
 of the mighty mystery of redemption, 
 as to be made the means of more fully 
 unfolding the harmonious perfections and 
 attributes of the Divine nature, just as 
 the falling rain-drops break up and un- 
 fold as it were the diversified colours of 
 which every sunbeam is compounded. 
 Man before the fall was fully able to 
 rejoice in the Divine benevolence, but 
 he could have no adequate conceptions 
 of the inflexibility of Divine justice ; 
 and man, abandoned to the threatened 
 consequences of disobedience, would for 
 ever have agonized beneath the strokes of 
 insulted justice, without any experience 
 of the sweetness of the alleviating hope 
 of mercy, — but in the Gospel plan all the 
 seemingly opposite attributes of God are 
 so made to blend and harmonize as to 
 exhibit to our admiring view " the God- 
 head entire." " Sing, O ye heavens, 
 for the Lord hath done it ; break forth 
 into singing, ye mountains, O forest, 
 
THE RAINBOW. 109 
 
 and every tree therein/' for — in the per- 
 son and the work of Immanuel, God with 
 ns, — ^' mercy and truth are met together, 
 righteousness and peace have embraced 
 each other/' 
 
 The exiled Apostle, in his mysterious 
 Book of Revelation, informs us that, in a 
 vision, a door was opened in heaven, and 
 a voice issued therefrom like the sound 
 of a trumpet, inviting him to a confer- 
 ence, and promising to show him things 
 which must be hereafter. ^' And im- 
 mediately," he adds, " I was in the 
 spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in 
 heaven, and one sat on the throne. And 
 he that sat was to look upon like a 
 jasper and a sardine stone : and there 
 was a rainbow round about the throne, 
 in sight like unto an emerald." And 
 glorious is the view which this sublime 
 passage gives us of that covenant of 
 grace which constitutes the sole founda- 
 tion for a sinner's trust : it teaches us 
 that it is identified with the majesty and 
 
110 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 the dominion of Him who is King of 
 kings and Lord of lords— that heaven 
 and earth may pass away rather than 
 its provisions be suffered to fail in 
 the case of any single soul w4io im- 
 plicitly relies upon it— that as the rain- 
 bow is round about the throne, so it 
 must ever be in the sight of Him who 
 sits thereon,- — and that, as in the case of 
 the type we have considered, God, by 
 looking upon it, has his everlasting cove- 
 nant in remembrance : and it teaches 
 us also, on our part, that we cannot by 
 faith see him who is invisible, without 
 remembering, to our endless comfort, 
 that holy covenant by which Jehovah is 
 pledged to pardon, to accept, to renew 
 by his Spirit, and to enrich with his 
 favour, all who embrace, by a living 
 faith, the mediation of his everlasting 
 Son. Even Ezekiel was permitted, in 
 prophetic vision, to behold this glorious 
 object which intervenes between the 
 sinner and his God. ^' As the appear- 
 
THE RAINBOW. Ill 
 
 ance of the bow that is in the cloud in 
 the day of rain, so was the appearance 
 of the brightness round about. This 
 was the appearance of the likeness of the 
 glory of the Lord." (Ezek. i. 28.) And 
 never, my Christian brethren, never 
 shall this rainbow, the brilliant hues of 
 which are borrowed from Deity itself, 
 cease to encircle the throne of heaven, 
 till Christ shall have ^^ accomplished the 
 number of his elect," and received his 
 ransomed people to sit down with him 
 upon his throne, even as he has sat 
 down on his Father's throne. And then 
 they will no longer need a rainbow to 
 remind them of the faithfulness and 
 goodness of Jehovah — the sweet as- 
 surance and enjoyment of both will be 
 their portion for ever. In that happy 
 world there will be no clouds of sorrow 
 like those upon whose falling drops the 
 rays of divine mercy are reflected ; the 
 firmament of heaven will be undarkened 
 by a shadow — the felicity of heaven will 
 
112 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 be '^ imsaddened by a tear ;" the cove- 
 nant of which Christ is the Mediator will 
 then be ended — in the complete salvation 
 of his people, or the complete destruc- 
 tion of his enemies ; for he must reign 
 till he hath put all enemies under his 
 feet : and when all things shall be sub- 
 dued unto him, then shall he resign his 
 mediatorial kingdom, around the throne 
 of which the rainbow of the Apocalypse 
 was expanded ; and in the beams of the 
 full-orbed majesty and glory which he 
 had with his Father before the world 
 was — the light whereof would eclipse ten 
 thousand suns — the myriads of the blessed 
 shall walk and rejoice so long as the 
 ages of a glorious immortality are run- 
 ning their everlasting course. 
 
 In conclusion, then, let me solemnly 
 remind you of this great truth, that 
 there is but one Mediator between God 
 and man — the man Christ Jesus ; and 
 that as it is only in him that God can 
 be reconciled to the world, so for any 
 
THE RAINBOW. 113 
 
 sinner to attempt to draw near to the 
 throne of grace in any other way, or 
 trusting to any other grounds of accept- 
 ance, is to cast dishonour alike upon the 
 Father and the Son ; for, saith Christ, 
 " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, 
 no man cometh unto the Father but by 
 me." A his ! there are too many even of 
 those who assume the garb of a Chris- 
 tian profession, who have never seen by 
 faith the rainbow which is revealed to 
 all who are born of God ; they trust 
 to themselves that they are righteous, 
 and therefore safe : their prayers, their 
 penitence, their deeds of charity and 
 duties of piety, these are the things on 
 which they rely. And can these things 
 ever recommend an apostate soul to 
 God ? No, brethren ; for none of these 
 things can be relied upon in the matter 
 of our justification before God, without 
 virtually rejecting that Christian scheme 
 whereby alone God can be just and the 
 
114 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 justifier of the ungodly.* And what 
 shall be the issue ? When the surges of 
 the deluge swept over our guilty world, 
 no other shelter, save the ark in which 
 Noah was enclosed, could preserve the 
 antediluvian sinners from the righteous 
 vengeance of God : though they made 
 the clefts of the rocks their dwelling, 
 and the heights of the hills their re- 
 fuge, — though they made their nest as 
 high as the eagle's, from thence did the 
 avenging arm of the Almighty bring 
 them down." And so, believe me, dear 
 brethren, when the waves of sorrow beat 
 over our hearts now, and when the 
 tempests of threatened anger shall de- 
 scend upon the impenitent hereafter, 
 there can be no solid comfort in that 
 sorrow, no substantial hiding-place from 
 those tempests, but in Christ. And for- 
 get not, I beseech you, that he who re- 
 ceives Christ must receive him as the 
 
 * Rom. iv. 5, 
 
THE RAINBOW. 115 
 
 Scriptures exhibit him ; that a genuine 
 and a saving reliance upon him must 
 spring from the death of every human 
 trust ; that he must be the author and 
 the finisher of a believer's faith— the 
 Alpha and Omega of a sinner's salvation. 
 " To whom, O Lord Jesus, shall we go ? 
 thou hast the words of eternal life." 
 
116 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 ABRAM'S VOCATION. 
 
 •' 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."-Gen. xii. 1. 
 
 How touching and how true is the saying 
 of St. Paul, '' Here we have no continu- 
 ing city ; " our whole existence upon 
 earth is but a constant succession of 
 changes ; and these changes form an 
 essential part of that system of moral 
 probation and discipline, by which the 
 present state of being becomes to the 
 people of God the vestibule of heaven; 
 without them, the objects of earthly en- 
 dearment would entwine themselves so 
 
ABRAM's VOCATION. 117 
 
 closely around our hearts as to become 
 prejudicial to iheir highest interests, like 
 the clasping ivy when it mantles the 
 trunk and insinuates itself among the 
 branches of a forest tree, so as not only 
 thereby to check its fertility and growth, 
 but to endanger its very existence. Such 
 vicissitudes, therefore, in our relative po- 
 sitions in the present life, effect a similar 
 benefit to our mind, if we are really trees 
 of the Lord's own planting, which the 
 tearing away, root and tendril, of the 
 exuberant ivy would to the sturdy oak, or 
 the graceful elm around which it has en- 
 wreathed itself — they loosen the bonds 
 of undue earthly attachments — they cause 
 the sap, b}^ which the life of God in the 
 soul is sustained, to extend itself more 
 freely to every part of the inner and the 
 outer man ; and while they bring most 
 affectingly to remembrance the precept 
 of the Divine Word, they also show 
 most convincingly the wisdom of obeying 
 it, '^ Set your affection — your mind — 
 
118 DlSCOUltSE IV. 
 
 on things above, and not on things of 
 the earth." 
 
 The remark is suggested by my text, 
 which brings before us a notable circum- 
 stance in the Patriarch Abram's eventful 
 history, and which, invoking the aid of 
 the Spirit of all truth, I propose to con- 
 sider as a typical illustration of the 
 Christian's high and holy vocation to be 
 separate in spirit and affection from the 
 present sinful world, and to seek a better 
 country, that is, a heavenly. 
 
 The history of this illustrious friend of 
 God commences towards the close of the 
 preceding chapter, from the 27th verse 
 of which we learn that his father's name 
 was Terah, and that the place of his 
 birth was Ur of the Chaldees. Awful 
 evidence was given by those who re- 
 peopled the world after the universal 
 deluge, that though judgments without 
 may paralyze for a season the wickedness 
 of the wicked, only the influence of Di- 
 vine grace predominating icithin, so as to 
 
abram's vocation. 119 
 
 effect a thorough renovation of the spirit 
 of their minds, can make the impressions 
 they produce either salutary or abiding. 
 The stream of human depravity — like the 
 current of a mighty river, that, after 
 a temporary obstruction, rushes on- 
 wards again in the same channel, and 
 with added impetuosity — seemed to ac- 
 quire a darker and a wilder character, 
 when the dreadful visitations of insulted 
 heaven, which had awhile arrested its 
 course, were graciously suspended. At 
 the very time when Jehovah conde- 
 scended to establish his covenant with 
 Noah, that the waters should not be suf- 
 fered again to deluge the world, he re- 
 minds him that this was not on account of 
 any renovation in the nature of man, for 
 after as well as before the flood, he declares 
 that the imaginations of the thoughts of 
 man's heart are evil — ^evil continually — 
 evil from his youth. And the evil thus 
 ingrafted into the very constitution of 
 our fallen nature, soon began to disclose 
 
120 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 itself in the immediate family of Noah, 
 and to advance to its awful maturity in 
 the complete apostacy of their descend- 
 ants from the knowledge and the worship 
 of the Creator blessed for ever. Accord- 
 ingly we find, that within the lapse of a 
 few generations after the flood, not only 
 the offspring of Ham and Japheth, but 
 even the posterit}^ of Shem, from whose 
 line the promised Saviour was to spring, 
 had sunk into the deepest and grossest 
 idolatry ; for in Joshua xxiv. 2, it is 
 recorded concerning Terah, the father of 
 Abram, that he '^ served other gods." 
 Abram, however, like a solitary star that 
 beams upon the gloom of night, was 
 chosen of God to be the means of pre- 
 serving some traces of Himself in a dark 
 and wicked world ; not on account of any 
 thing inherent in the patriarch — for all 
 the purposes of mercy on the part of 
 God, either to individuals or communi- 
 ties of our fallen race, originate in mo- 
 tives drawn from his own character, and 
 
abram's vocation. 121 
 
 not in the slightest degree from theirs — 
 a truth which the Lord, by the Prophet 
 Isaiah, presses upon the descendants of 
 the very patriarch whose history we are 
 now considering, and who were ever so 
 forward to presume upon their lineage, 
 '' Look unto the rock w^hence ye are 
 hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence 
 ye are digged ; look unto Abraham your 
 father, and unto Sarah that bare you, 
 for I called him alone, and blessed him 
 and increased him." (Isa. li. 1, 2.) It 
 was possibly in consequence of some sort 
 of divine intimation or impulse that 
 Terah was induced to leave the land of 
 his forefathers with the intention of set- 
 tling in the land of Canaan, concerning 
 w^hich we read in the 31st verse of the 
 foregoing chapter, " And Terah took 
 Abram his son, and Lot the son of 
 Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his 
 daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife ; 
 and they went forth with them from Ur 
 of the Chaldees to go into the land of 
 
 G 
 
122 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 Canaan ; and they came unto Haran, 
 and dwelt there." As we are not told 
 the precise date when this migratory 
 family was thus established in Haran, we 
 cannot tell precisely the length of time 
 it was permitted to rest there undis- 
 turbed by that king of terrors, who, when 
 their appointed hour is come, removes 
 the children of men from the stage of 
 mortal being, and causes the loveliest 
 scene of domestic endearment, like the 
 roll of the prophet, to be written within 
 and without with '* lamentations, and 
 mourning, and woe ; " thus much we 
 know, that Terah dwelt there till he 
 died, and that after his death no disposi- 
 tion was exhibited by those who survived 
 him to resume the journey towards the 
 land of Canaan, w^hich he had prevailed 
 upon them to undertake with him, but 
 which, either from the failure of physical 
 energy or mental resolution, he lived not 
 to complete. The land of Canaan, how- 
 ever, was to be the grand scene of the 
 
abram's vocation. 123 
 
 progressive development of those pur- 
 poses and promises of Jehovah which 
 had reference to the coming Messiah ; 
 and as in the counsels of eternity it had 
 been predetermined that, in order to 
 rescue our fallen nature from the curse 
 which transgression had fastened upon it, 
 the everlasting Son of God should take 
 upon him " the seed of Abraham;" this 
 distinguished progenitor of '' the desire 
 of all nations," was not permitted to lin- 
 ger between the land of idolatry and the 
 land of promise ; but immediately, on 
 the decease of his aged parent, received 
 a special call from God to separate him- 
 self — not only from the idol-worshipping 
 inhabitants of Chaldea, but also from his 
 halting, unbelieving kindred, who were 
 still beneath the delusion and the spells, 
 with which birth, and education, and 
 habit, had so powerfully affected them — 
 and to travel onwards to a land which he 
 had never seen, and throughout the 
 length and breadth of which he had not a 
 
 g2 
 
124 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 friend, or a spot of ground to call his 
 own. Surely, brethren, obedience to 
 such a call was no unequivocal evidence 
 that Abram walked by faith, and not by 
 sight. '' What! " his kinsmen and neigh- 
 bours might have urged, when his deter- 
 mination was first declared, " leave 
 all your earthly friends — snap all the 
 bonds of consanguinity — abandon all 
 your relative duties and all your worldly 
 prospects — in the visionary pursuit of an 
 inheritance of which you are ignorant, 
 and have no rational prospect of ever 
 attaining? " 
 
 Some such remonstrances we can ea- 
 sily conceive the patriarch would have to 
 struggle with, and to surmount, before 
 he could tear himself away from the 
 enticements and endearments of his 
 " father's house." But he had higher 
 principles at work within his breast than 
 any that nature can originate — he was 
 taught to bow to the supreme authority 
 of God ; and from the most implicit con- 
 
abram's vocation. 125 
 
 fidence in his faithfulness, to count all 
 things else but loss for the excellency of 
 that good land which the Lord his God 
 had promised him. To the eye of sense 
 his prospects were indeed the reverse of 
 bright or animating ; and as he bade a 
 last farewell to those he loved, and cast 
 a lingering look upon scenes of former 
 enjoyment, some secret misgivings pos- 
 sibly arose in his mind, palsying for a 
 moment the vigour of his resolution : the 
 feeling, however, was but momentary ; 
 for while to the *' old man" within him 
 all he most valued was receding for ever, 
 to the '* new man" prospects unspeak- 
 ably more rich, and attractive, and glo- 
 rious, were opening upon his view ; 
 therefore, says St. Paul, " By faith 
 Abraham when he was called to go into 
 a place which he should after receive for 
 an inheritance obeyed, and he went out 
 not knowing whither he went." 
 
 I now proceed to point out the corres- 
 pondence which all this bears to the 
 
126 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 Christian's call to separate himself from 
 a world of folly, and vanity, and sin, in 
 order to secure a better inheritance ; and 
 to this end, I shall consider four par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 I. The authoritative nature of this 
 call. 
 
 II. The purport and extent of it. 
 
 III. The difficulties in the way of obey- 
 ing it ; and, 
 
 IV. The advantages which obeying it 
 will secure. 
 
 *' The Lord said unto Abram "— He 
 whose air we breathe, whose world we 
 inhabit, on whose bounty we exist ; — He 
 who '' doeth as He will," and has an 
 absolute and independent right so to 
 do ''in the armies of heaven and among 
 the inhabitants of the earth," He it was 
 who said to Abram, " Get thee out of 
 thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father's house, unto a land 
 that I will show thee." It was not, 
 therefore, a point of duty, which was 
 
abram's vocation. 127 
 
 left to the patriarch's own discretion ; 
 obedience was imperative ; nor coidd he 
 on any supposeable ground have refused 
 to obey, without not only debarring 
 himself of the inheritance he was called 
 to possess — but also incurring the guilt of 
 running counter to the divine will, and 
 rebelling against the divine authority. 
 
 And do you ask me, brethren, by 
 whom the command is given '' to every 
 one w^ho names the name of Christ," 
 and professes attachment to his cause, to 
 " depart from iniquity " — to come out 
 and be separate — to be not conformed to 
 this world, but to be transformed by the 
 renewing of their minds — to be not of 
 the world as Christ was not— to live on 
 earth as pilgrims and strangers, seeking 
 a better country, that is, a heavenly — to 
 set their affections on things above, not 
 on things of the earth ? we answer, 
 these are the commands of Him whom 
 all creatures ought to obey, and whom 
 all his regenerated people love to obey. 
 
128 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 So that it is impossible for us to choose 
 the present world as our resting-place, 
 and to linger among the fashions, and 
 pleasures, and idolatries, and sins which 
 crowd the path of life, without not only 
 foregoing the purer and more satisfying 
 enjoyments of religion, but also acting 
 in direct opposition to the commands, 
 and defiance of the displeasure of Him, 
 whose smile is heaven, and whose frown 
 is hell ! Hence the strong language of 
 St. James, " Know ye not that the friend- 
 ship of the world is enmity with God ? 
 whosoever, therefore, will be the friend 
 of the world is the enemy of God," And 
 yet how often is the minister or the 
 private Christian, who enforces the duty 
 of separation from an irreligious world, 
 rebuked as a foe to all innocent recre- 
 ation — a disturber of the relative obli- 
 gations of society — a self-righteous, or a 
 monkish claimant of the reputation of 
 being more holy than his neighbours. 
 As if the separation in question were a 
 
abram's vocation. 129 
 
 mere matter of personal feeling, or left 
 to individual discretion, and not a duty 
 invested with the authority of Him whose 
 will is the all -predominating law of 
 human or angelic intelligences ; the same 
 authority, in fact, which separated Abram 
 from his kindred and his father's house, 
 preparatory to his being enriched with 
 a better inheritance — '^ wherefore come 
 out from among them, and be ye se- 
 parate, saith the Lord, and touch not 
 the unclean thing, and I will receive you, 
 and will be a Father unto you, and ye 
 shall be my sons and daughters, saith 
 the Lord Almighty." (2 Cor. vi. 17, 18.) 
 IL But we have next to consider. 
 The purport and extent of this call — what 
 it involves with regard to individual con- 
 duct. By referring to the history of 
 Abraham, we are reminded that it en- 
 joins a separation from idolatry; a term 
 which, in its literal meaning, signifies 
 paying divine honours to any other object 
 or being than the supreme Jehovah ; 
 
 G 5 
 
130 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 whether it be the bloody and debasing 
 sacrifices which the most besotted of the 
 heathen offer to their gods of wood and 
 of stone ; or the more refined worship 
 which the polished Hindoo pays to his 
 images as incarnations or representa- 
 tions of invisible deities ; or the yet 
 sublimer idolatry of those, who, from 
 observing his constant and majestic 
 movements — his genial and fertilizing 
 influences — his dazzling and unparalleled 
 brightness, fall down and worship the 
 golden orb of day. In that holy volume, 
 however, every word of which is pure 
 and significant, the term idolatry has a 
 metaphorical as well as a literal inter- 
 pretation. St. Paul tells us, that co- 
 vetousness — which signifies both an 
 unlawful desire for what we do not, 
 and an inordinate attachment to what 
 we do possess — that this disposition 
 of the mind is idolatry ; because it 
 cannot be indulged, whether its object 
 be a fellow- worm, or any earthly pos- 
 
abram's vocation. 131 
 
 session, without making either what we 
 have, or what we wish to have, superior 
 to the will of God ; whereby the supre- 
 macy of God is superseded — the wisdom 
 and goodness of God impugned — and 
 the consuming jealousy of God aroused, 
 who will not give his glory to another. 
 The man whose whole heart is bent upon 
 acquiring a certain portion of earthly 
 wealth, who rises up early, and late 
 takes rest, and eats the bread of care- 
 fulness, and is so entirely absorbed in 
 his various secular schemes and interests, 
 as to have no time or thought to bestow 
 upon the far higher duty of seeking the 
 kingdom of God and his righteousness — 
 what is he but an idolator ? Or the man 
 who prostrates himself before the shrine 
 of worldly ambition, and who covets no 
 higher and nobler bliss than that which 
 arises from acquiring the laurels of human 
 applause, or the insignia of earth-born 
 dignity — what is he but an idolator? 
 Or the man who invests some fellow- 
 
132 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 creature with perfections to which no 
 fallen being can lay claim, and who 
 offers to the object of his adoration the 
 incense of his dreaming and his wakeful 
 thoughts — what is he but an idolator ? 
 Or the man who proclaims himself the 
 ardent votary of pleasure, who dwells 
 upon her showy charms by day, and 
 listens to her syren voice by night, 
 treads the gay circle of fashion, sips 
 every cup of carnal delight, and upon 
 the altar of sensual indulgence sacrifices 
 the remonstrances of conscience, the 
 interests of his soul, and the fear of 
 God — what is he but an idolator? 
 
 Yea, brethren, from the sweeping 
 charge of idolatry — which surely by this 
 time you begin to discover is part and 
 parcel of our depraved nature — many 
 who profess to be living above all these 
 things, and to be the devotees of religion 
 — are by no means exempt ; the form 
 of their idolatry is, indeed, different from 
 the others I have mentioned, but it springs 
 
abram's vocation. 133 
 
 from the same source, and leads to the 
 same results, a substitution of sometJiing 
 else for God : and who that attentively 
 studies His character and perfections as 
 they are depicted in the volume his Spirit 
 hath revealed, and thinks of what he is in 
 himself, and what he requires of us, and 
 the infinite disproportion that there is 
 between our highest attainments and his 
 divine requirements, will refuse to ac- 
 knowledge that many who are strenuous 
 advocates of morality and religion, are not 
 the worshippers of that God, who is to be 
 approached only through the mediation of 
 his Son, and pleased only with the sa- 
 crifices of a broken and a contrite heart, 
 and worshipped only in Spirit and in 
 truth — but of some creature of their own 
 imagination, which they dress up with 
 certain qualities conformable to their 
 own earthly conceptions, to which they 
 present the sacrifice of outward form and 
 ceremony, and from which they claim 
 the highest rewards which a creature 
 
134 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 can expect, and to which they think 
 their own faultless services entitled — 
 what then are such but idolaters ? 
 
 " For whatever passes as a cloud between 
 The mental eye of Faith and things unseen, — 
 Causing that better world to disappear, 
 To seem less lovely, and its hope less dear, — 
 Such is our world — our idol — though it wear 
 Affection's impress, or devotion's air." 
 
 To be separated outwardly, however, 
 from the things which constitute the 
 portion and call forth the idolatry of the 
 children of this world, will avail us but 
 little, if the bias of the mind does not 
 receive a contrary direction ; the latter 
 is far from being necessarily involved 
 in the former. Terah left a land of 
 idolaters, but, for all we know to the 
 contrary, continued an idolater still. 
 And much is it to be feared that there 
 is a counterpart to this in the case of 
 many half-hearted religionists in our 
 own day, who have light enough to 
 discover the narrow way, but not for- 
 
abram's vocation. 135 
 
 titucle and decision enough to pursue 
 it — who have the head and the con- 
 science acknowledging the supremacy of 
 God ; but the unmortified lusts of a heart, 
 which the pen of inspiration has pro- 
 nounced to be deceitful above all things, 
 and desperately wicked, still secretly 
 enlisted on the side of mammon ; — 
 who renounce, perhaps, the grosser 
 immoralities, and the more dissipating 
 frivolities of the world, while they con- 
 tinue to indulge, in the deep recesses of 
 their bosom — into which no eye but that 
 of God can penetrate — those very feel- 
 ings, and dispositions, and affections, 
 which make the pleasures of the world 
 they have professedly renounced, so 
 offensive in his sight ; who are, in short, 
 like the father of Abram, not far from 
 the promised land, and yet stopping 
 short of it. And can any greater proof 
 be required of the infatuation and per- 
 verseness of the human character than 
 this — that the very things which, in the 
 
136 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 deliberate exercise of our reason we must 
 confess to be vanity and vexation of spirit, 
 should, nevertheless, be able to maintain 
 so powerful an influence over our desires 
 and habits. To know the right is, alas ! 
 quite compatible with a steady persisting 
 in that which is wrong : to perceive most 
 clearly where our highest interests lie, is 
 not of itself suflicient to induce us to se- 
 cure them there ; we must have a power 
 imparted from above, which is no consti- 
 tuent of our fallen humanity ; a power to 
 choose the good, as well as to renounce 
 the evil ; a power not only to discover 
 the path of rectitude and of wisdom, but 
 to overleap every impediment to our ob- 
 taining the joys which God calls us 
 thereby to inherit ; and to repeat over 
 the ruins of all the idols by which our 
 peace and our salvation have ever been 
 endangered the appropriate language of 
 the prophet, " O Lord our God, other 
 lords beside thee have had dominion over 
 us ; but by thee only will we make men- 
 
abram's vocation. 137 
 
 tion of thy name : they are dead, they 
 shall not live ; they are deceased, they 
 shall not rise ; for therefore hast thou 
 visited and destroyed them, and made 
 all their memory to perish ! " 
 
 It was thus with Abram : he was not 
 suffered, like some of his undecided 
 kindred, to go down to his grave in 
 Haran — to content himself with being 
 on the threshold of his future inherit- 
 ance — to halt between two opinions : 
 the grace which first led him out of a 
 land of idolatry, still urged him onwards, 
 till his eye surveyed, and his foot tra- 
 versed the fertile and attractive plains of 
 Canaan. And such, brethren, must be 
 the case with you and with me, if we 
 would not go down to perdition, with 
 the miserable consolation of having been 
 '' not far from the kingdom of heaven." 
 Such was the case in the primitive ages 
 of Christianity. '^ Lo," said the first 
 disciples of the despised Nazarene, and 
 they with truth could say it, '' we have 
 
138 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 left all, and followed thee." Such was 
 pre-eminently the case with Saul of Tar- 
 sus ; the treasures of human learning, 
 which it was his privilege to acquire at 
 the feet of Gamaliel — the extensive in- 
 fluence which he possessed as an accre- 
 dited agent of the Jewish sanhedrim — of 
 what account did he regard either the 
 one or the other, when that faith which 
 is the substance of things hoped for, the 
 evidence of things not seen, was brought 
 into exercise? Let him answer for him- 
 self; '' What things were gain to me, 
 those I counted loss for Christ ; yea, 
 doubtless, and I count all things but loss 
 for the excellency of the knowledge of 
 Christ Jesus my Lord." And instances 
 somewhat similar, have in all ages of the 
 Church been witnessed — as illustrations 
 more eloquent than words, of the great 
 Christian duty of holding every thing 
 second to the commands, and the glory, 
 and the cause of God : but I know not 
 one more touching than that of the late 
 
abram's vocation. 139 
 
 Henry Martyn, whom the fairest pros- 
 pects of worldly eminence, and the ten- 
 derest ties of creature-love, could not 
 induce to swerve from the difficult and 
 dangerous path by which his heavenly 
 Father was leading him to a better 
 country ; and who, at that affecting 
 moment, when his tear-dimmed eyes 
 could no longer trace in shadowy out- 
 line the receding shores of the land of 
 his birth, which contained all that as 
 man he valued and loved — was enabled 
 to express the feelings which animated 
 and supported him, by reciting the ap- 
 propriate stanza, 
 
 " The God of Abraham praise, 
 At whose supreme command 
 From earth I rise to seek the joys 
 
 At his right hand. 
 I all on earth forsake, 
 
 Its riches, pomp, and power. 
 
 And Him my only portion make. 
 
 My shield and tower." 
 
 III. We have now, then, seen the 
 authority, purport, and extent of that 
 
140 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 command, which bids the genuine Chris- 
 tian to be separate from the world ; but 
 is it an easy matter to forego the tempt- 
 ing promises of earth, in order to secure 
 the invisible and spiritual joys of heaven ? 
 Is it easy thus to walk by faith, while 
 surrounded and assailed on every hand 
 by the alluring objects of sense ? Are 
 there no impediments to be mastered — 
 no bonds to be broken — no natural feel- 
 ings, affections, and propensities to which 
 some violence must be done — before, like 
 Abram, we can set out in good earnest 
 in that narrow way which leadeth unto 
 life ? Alas, brethren, every soul that 
 has ever made any progress in that way, 
 will bear testimony, that so far from 
 being able so much as to plant one's 
 foot upon it without painful opposition, 
 there are no principles inherent in our 
 nature, no sentiments which have weight 
 with mankind in general, which do not 
 present a bold and menacing front against 
 the man who turns his back upon the 
 
abram's vocation. 141 
 
 fleeting objects of sense, and fixes his 
 supreme regard on things unseen and 
 eternal. The in-born and deeply-rooted 
 propensity of our very nature to cull the 
 forbidden fruits which the enemy causes 
 to luxuriate in the garden of sensual 
 delight ; that inward shrinking from the 
 frown, and that insatiable desire for 
 the approbation of the world, which is 
 common to man — all concur in lulling 
 the soul into indifference about an in- 
 heritance beyond the bounds of time and 
 sense, and in dissuading from the vi- 
 gorous efforts needful in order to obtain 
 it. Nor is it unfrequently the case, that 
 the individual who rises superior to these 
 internal obstacles, will have to contend 
 with opposition, if not downright per- 
 secution, from those who perhaps love 
 them for every thing else but their wise 
 determination to win eternal joys. — 
 '' Think not," said Christ, '' that I am 
 come to send peace on the earth ; I am 
 not come to send peace but a sword, and 
 
142 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 a man's foes shall be they of his own 
 household." I need hardly say, that in 
 this passage the Saviour is not telling us 
 the object of his coming, but predicting 
 its consequences, and the truth of the 
 prediction the subsequent history of the 
 Church has awfully confirmed : and 
 what proof more terrible can be given 
 of the extent of man's alienation from 
 God, than the bitter persecution which 
 is often drawn forth by the conversion 
 of a relative. The very change which 
 adds a new impulse to the joy of angels, 
 calls forth in many a human breast the 
 most implacable enmity of which it is 
 capable ! And the more firm and un- 
 wavering the young convert continues 
 in his adherence to the precepts and 
 preference for the blessings of vital Chris- 
 tianity, the more abundant cause will 
 he have to conclude, that if he finally 
 attains the glorious prize of his high and 
 heavenly calling, he must not love father 
 or mother, relative or friend, houses or 
 
abram's vocation. 143 
 
 lands, more than Christ. Of Him — the 
 Master he serves — the Captain under 
 whose banner he is enlisted — the Saviour 
 whose cross is at once his refuge and his 
 glory — it was said, '* He came unto his 
 own, and his own received him not;" 
 and of all who track his footsteps, it hath 
 been said from the beginning, " Ye 
 know that it hated me before it hated 
 you : if ye were of the world, the world 
 would love its own ; but because ye are 
 not of the world, but I have chosen you 
 out of the world, therefore the world 
 hateth you." 
 
 Yes, brethren, if religion be any thing 
 more than a name — if it be of the ope- 
 ration of God's Spirit — if it produces 
 conformity to the example of Christ — it 
 will infallibly be opposed among men, 
 whose practices and enjoyments it con- 
 demns ; but to the conflict, painful as it 
 is, there can be but one issue : the true 
 follower of Christ will obey God rather 
 than man ; he will secure the one thing 
 
144 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 needful, at whatever expense of earthly 
 comforts and advantages ; and though 
 the father he deeply reveres, and the 
 mother he tenderly loves, and the bro- 
 ther, the sister, the friend whose history 
 has. been almost identified with his own, 
 may be found among his strongest op- 
 ponents ; — like Abram w^ith the land of 
 Canaan in prospect, if he cannot disarm 
 them of their prejudices, and persuade 
 them to accompany him on his pilgrim- 
 age, he will leave them all behind — he 
 will hold all earthly bonds of endear- 
 ment inferior to the claims of that 
 '' friend that sticketh closer than a bro- 
 ther" — he will not indeed withdraw from 
 them the warm affection of his heart, for 
 this would be to contravene the dictates 
 of nature and the laws of God ; nor 
 will he cease to intercede in their be- 
 half in the hallowed season of private 
 devotion — even when forbidden in 
 more public exercises to mingle his 
 supplications with theirs — but in their 
 
abram's vocation. 145 
 
 principles, their sources of enjoyment, 
 and objects of pursuit, he can have no 
 fellowship : he is brought within the 
 sphere of higher impulses, and called 
 to be the heir-expectant of a nobler 
 destiny. '' Get thee from thy country, 
 and from thy kindred, and from thy 
 father's house, unto a land that I will 
 shew thee." And, blessed be God, the 
 Gospel does not require him thus to act 
 without providing him an external force, 
 — a lever of moral powder — a principle of 
 divine efficacy, to raise the mind above 
 all human counteractions and stumbling- 
 blocks ; it does not tell the worm Jacob 
 to thresh the mountains wdthout furnish- 
 ing an instrument wherewith he may ac- 
 complish the task. Do you ask me what 
 this force, this lever, this principle, or 
 instrument is ? It h faith — a faith which 
 is the special " gift of God" — a faith 
 like that by the exercise of which Abram 
 was enabled to obey the Divine call, and 
 by the power of which the saints of old 
 
 H 
 
146 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 '' subdued kingdoms, wrought righte- 
 ousness, obtained promises, stopped the 
 mouths of lions, quenched the violence 
 of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, 
 out of weakness were made strong, 
 waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight 
 the armies of the aliens ;" and it is only 
 by a faith whose Author, and nature, 
 and fruits, are the same as theirs, that 
 any one among us can ever be induced 
 to forego the things of time for the joys 
 of eternity — the smile of the world for 
 the favour of God — the sensualities of 
 earth for the spiritualities of heaven ; 
 " for this is the victory that overcometh 
 the world, even our faith." 
 
 IV. But I must hasten to the con- 
 cluding division of my subject, and in- 
 quire what are the advantages which 
 the Christian secures by preferring, like 
 Abram, the promised Canaan to his 
 father's house in Haran — like Moses, to 
 suffer affliction with the people of God, 
 rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin 
 
abram's vocation. 147 
 
 for a season — like Mary, to choose the one 
 thing needful, rather than to bestow in- 
 ordinate anxiety upon many things of 
 momentary importance. And surely it is 
 not in the power of language to set forth 
 his superior advantages ; for, says the 
 prophet, eye hath not seen, ear hath not 
 heard, heart hath not conceived, yea, 
 God alone can fully know or appreciate 
 the blessings which He hath prepared 
 for them that wait for him. (Isa. Ixvi. 4.) 
 Take on the other hand an impartial 
 survey of all the delectable things which 
 the natural man is so eager to obtain 
 and so ready to idolize, and say where, 
 amongst them all, may an immortal 
 spirit find a portion equal to its own 
 vast and capacious longings ? Can the 
 wealth of the world purchase happiness ? 
 Can the applause of the world pacify 
 a stinging conscience ? Can the plea- 
 sures of the world blunt the edge of 
 sorrow, or brighten the darkness of af- 
 fliction, or quell the terrors which hang 
 
 H 2 
 
148 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 around the last hour of mortal existence ? 
 It is impossible ! and yet, though men 
 are ever receiving the stone of disap- 
 pointment instead of the promised bread 
 of satisfaction, they obstinately attribute 
 their want of success to some unpro- 
 pitious circumstances, rather than to the 
 utter inability of the objects and pursuits 
 to which they attach themselves ever to 
 yield it : like the silly child that gazes 
 in admiration upon the rainbow, and 
 marks the very spot where the beautiful 
 arch touches the ground, and then fancies 
 if he can only reach that spot, he shall 
 be encircled by the glowing colours 
 which so much delight him, but finds 
 that the object of pursuit recedes, in 
 exact proportion as he advances — just so 
 is it with the natural man in pursuit of 
 earth-born happiness ; he fancies he 
 beholds the imaginary good, he hastens 
 to the spot, but the shadow is not there : 
 he still thinks, however, it is only a 
 little in advance, and he thus wastes a 
 
abram's vocation. 149 
 
 short life, in pursuing that which he can 
 never overtake ! I may safely appeal to 
 the experience of all who hear me, and 
 ask, if the world has ever satisfied you 
 — if the most flattering of its promises 
 have not deceived you — if even success 
 itself has not lost all its charms, and 
 tints, and attractions, which beguiled and 
 enchanted you before its attainment ? 
 thus compelling you to feel that upon the 
 brightest joys of life, as well as on its 
 heaviest sorrows, the inscription is graven 
 in characters which nothing earthly can 
 erase, " Vanity and vexation of spirit;" 
 "■ This is not your rest, because it is pol- 
 luted ; it shall destroy you with a sore 
 destruction." 
 
 How welcome, then, brethren, ought 
 that voice of divine compassion to be, 
 which bids us " arise and depart," and 
 which, by withdrawing our regard from 
 the unsatisfying joys and fugitive con- 
 cerns of this present life, teaches us to 
 fix our supreme regards on things un- 
 
150 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 seen and eternal. And let the loss which 
 a man will be called to sustain in obeying 
 this divine mandate be estimated at the 
 very utmost, yet, what is it compared to 
 the gain ? Suppose that he has literally 
 to suffer the loss of all things, to endure 
 the scorn and persecution of those whom 
 most he loves, yea, to pass through 
 penury, privation, and calumny to the 
 grave — yet who shall say, that such a 
 man does not carry beneath the garb of 
 outward woe a lighter heart than the 
 proudest, and most pampered votary 
 of Mammon ? Oh ! what does it avail 
 that we have the means of procuring 
 the luxuries, and dignities, and posses- 
 sions of life, if we still have not what 
 the wealth of the Indies cannot pur- 
 chase, the power of enjoying them? What 
 does it avail that all be smiling and 
 enviable without, if there be sorrow, and 
 bitterness, and vexation within ? 
 
 But, on the other hand, when con- 
 science is pacified, and the heart is 
 
abram's vocation. 151 
 
 submissive, and the heavens above are 
 without a cloud, and their serenity is 
 reflected as from the bosom of a tranquil 
 lake from the breast within, O then how 
 little can all the world bestows increase 
 its happiness — and how little can the 
 absence of all the world bestows diminish 
 it ! The delights of the worldling, what- 
 ever their number or degree may be, 
 can only be enjoyed when least he needs 
 them — in the elastic season of youth and 
 health ; the joys of the believer, on the 
 contrary, are never so sweet or so solid 
 as in the time of deepest need : they 
 are his, indeed, in the calm — but he 
 realizes most of their value in the storm. 
 The purest happiness, moreover, which 
 earth can give is fitful and evanescent ; 
 it is a flower which only blossoms in the 
 sunbeam of prosperity — it opens with its 
 rising, and shuts with its decline : the 
 happiness which vital religion yields, 
 on the contrary, is a flower which, 
 though chilled and sullied here, will 
 
152 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 soon be transplanted to a more congenial 
 soil to expand its immortal beauties in 
 the unclouded shinings and fostering at- 
 mosphere of heaven. 
 
 Let not, then, O tried and fainting 
 believer, — 'Met not thine heart envy 
 sinners ; but be thou in the fear of the 
 Lord all the day long ; for surely there 
 is an end, and thine expectation shall 
 not be cut off." And if Hannibal could 
 inspirit his wearied troops when crossing 
 the rugged Alps by pointing them to the 
 fruitful plains of Italy which they had 
 left their homes and were on their march 
 to conquer and possess — how should the 
 followers of Christ be animated by com- 
 paring the difficulties of the way with 
 the triumphant prospect ? '^ for I reckon 
 that the sufferings of this present time are 
 not worthy to be compared with the glory 
 which shall be revealed in us." In your 
 patience, then, possess your soul — he that 
 endureth to the end shall be saved — we 
 are made partakers of Christ if we hold 
 
ABRAMS VOCATION. 153 
 
 the beginning of our confidence steadfast 
 to the end : like the devoted apostle of 
 the Gentiles, forget the things that are 
 behind, and reach forward to the things 
 which are before, till able to break the 
 silence of your dying moments with his 
 triumphant exclamation, '* I have fought 
 a good fight; I have finished my course; 
 I have kept the faith ; henceforth there 
 is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
 ness," yea, " an inheritance incorrupti- 
 ble, undefiled, and that fadeth not 
 away." 
 
 h5 
 
154 
 
 DISCOURSE V, 
 
 MELCHISEDEC. 
 
 " FOR THIS MELCHISEDEC, KING OF SALE\f, PRIEST OF 
 THE MOST HIGH GOD, WHO MET ABRAHAM RETURN- 
 ING FROM THE SLAUGHTER OF THE KINGS AND 
 BLESSED HIM; TO WHOM ALSO ABRAHAM GAVE A 
 TENTH PART OF ALL; FIRST BEING BY INTERPRE- 
 TATION KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND AFTER THAT 
 ALSO KING OF SALEM, WHICH IS KING OF PEACE; 
 WITHOUT FATHER, WITHOUT MOTHER, WITHOUT 
 DESCENT, HAVING NEITHER BEGINNING OF DAYS 
 NOR END OF LIFE; BUT MADE LIKE UNTO THE SON 
 OF GOD, ABIDETH A PRIEST CONTINUALLY."— Hebrews 
 VII. 1—3. 
 
 A VOLUME professing to be a revelation 
 from God, and yet free from all ambiguity 
 and mystery, would want those dis- 
 tinguishing marks by which its original 
 may be traced to that same divine hand 
 which conducts the operations of nature, 
 and impels the machinery of Providence. 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 155 
 
 It may be a volume lofty in its style, 
 splendid in its imagery, diversified and 
 important in its subjects — but if to those 
 of its contents, which are written so 
 plain, " that he may run that readeth 
 them," there be not superadded mys- 
 teries too deep for man to fathom, too 
 high for man to scale, too long and too 
 broad for man to compass — then we may 
 be sure that it has man and not God 
 for its author. For when the men of 
 Hezekiah, king of Judah, were employed 
 by their royal master to transcribe some 
 of the Proverbs of Solomon for the use 
 of his subjects — the first they selected, as 
 if to intimate their conviction of its high 
 importance, and also to draw universal 
 attention to the sublime truth which it 
 embodies, was this, '^ It is the glory of 
 God to conceal a thing." How, then, 
 if this be true, can any individual who 
 shrinks from the hopeless task '^ of mea- 
 suring the waters in the hollow of his 
 hand, and meting out heaven with 
 
156 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 a span," withhold the fullest belief in 
 the volume of inspired truth — upon the 
 ground of being unable to comprehend all 
 that it contains — without being charge- 
 able with folly, which is equally cri- 
 minal and preposterous. For, surely, 
 when once in the healthy exercise of the 
 intellectual faculties which God has given 
 us, we have duly examined the evidences 
 by which the Bible is so convincingly 
 proved to have God himself for its author, 
 — and have thus, if I may so speak, been 
 guided by enlightened reason, w^ithin 
 the precincts of the hallowed temple 
 of Revelation — the office of reason is 
 at an end — it then becomes our obvious 
 duty, not to judge '' the lively oracles," 
 but implicitly to receive them ; and to 
 yield our v^hole hearts to the cordial 
 belief of whatever the Divine Spirit of 
 all truth may therein say unto our souls 
 — exalted though it may be above the 
 highest stretch of our reason, and op- 
 posed, though it may be to the natural 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 157 
 
 bias of our inclinations, " The Lord is 
 in his holy temple ; let all the earth 
 keep silence before him." (Habakkiik 
 ii. 20.) 
 
 The mysteries, however, which abound 
 throughout the sacred volume — as is the 
 case with those we meet with in the book 
 of nature and the book of Providence, 
 have not the same degree of depth and 
 inexplicability. They are capable of 
 being ranged under three distinct classes. 
 First, those which are necessarily mys- 
 terious — embracing subjects too vast and 
 profound for human comprehension ; se- 
 condly, those which were temporarily 
 mysterious — like objects seen in the 
 dusky twilight, only awaiting a subse- 
 quent revelation to clear awa}^ ; and, 
 thirdly, those which are designedly mys- 
 terious — being intended either to exercise 
 our faith upon points which are not of 
 saving importance, or else to represent 
 to us — through the medium of an inferior 
 sort of mystery — some other still fartlier 
 
158 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 removed from the grasp of our contracted 
 intelligence. 
 
 It is in mystery of this latter kind that 
 the character, whom my text introduces 
 to our notice, is enveloped. No human 
 effort can remove the drapery of partial 
 concealment which is suffered to hang 
 around him ; while on the other hand, 
 enough is disclosed to our view to con- 
 vince us, that the concealment is inten- 
 tional on the part of God, in order to 
 represent or illustrate that infinitely 
 greater degree of indefiniteness, which 
 attaches to the person of the great High 
 Priest of our profession, of whose eternal 
 generation and incomprehensible incar- 
 nation, as well as mediatorial offices, 
 Melchisedec was a significant type. Like 
 the star, by whose miraculous beam the 
 wise men of the East were guided — this 
 mysterious personage just makes his ap- 
 pearance, as if to direct us to the inn at 
 Bethlehem; and is then dissolved in that 
 infinitely greater mystery — that mystery 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 159 
 
 which is dark Mdth excessive brightness, 
 even the great mystery of godliness — 
 " God manifest in the flesh." 
 
 There is a twofold point of view in 
 which Melchisedec may be regarded as 
 a type of Christ : First, in what is con- 
 cealed — and secondly, in what is recorded 
 respecting him. 
 
 I. I do not see any warrant for the 
 opinion that Melchisedec was not of 
 human extraction ; either that he was, 
 as some have thought, an angel in 
 human form — for he not only appeared, 
 but reigned for an indefinite length of 
 time in a particular spot, which I am 
 not aware there is the least authority in 
 Scripture for believing that angels have 
 ever yet done ; — or that, as others have 
 supposed, he was the Son of God him- 
 self — for, that Christ should be a type 
 of himself, is inconsistent with the very 
 nature of a type ; and it is expressly 
 said that such Melchisedec was — " made 
 like unto the Son of God," literallv a 
 
160 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 likeness taken off — a sort of pictorial 
 resemblance to Immanuel, God with us : 
 he was, beyond doubt, a man — but his 
 pedigree, his parentage, the time and 
 place of his birth, his right to the dig- 
 nities and offices he exercised, to what 
 extent he exercised them, or by whom 
 they were exercised after him — all these 
 particulars of his history are enwrapt in 
 impenetrable mystery ; not a necessary 
 mystery, for the sacred historian could 
 easily, had God seen fit, have satisfied 
 us in all these respects : nor yet a tem- 
 porary mystery, for no lapse of time will 
 do more than the Apostle has done in 
 my text to clear it up ; but an intentional 
 mystery, obviously designed to carry 
 onward our thoughts to Him, of whom 
 one of the prophets thus speaks, w^hen 
 predicting his advent to our sin and 
 sorrow-smitten world, '' But thou, Beth- 
 lehem Ephratah, though thou be little 
 among the thousands of Judah, yet out 
 of thee shall He come forth unto me 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 161 
 
 that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose 
 goings forth have been from of old, from 
 everlasting." (Micah v. 2.) And of whom 
 the Apostle wsignificantly says, in the 
 very epistle from which my text is taken, 
 that he is " the same yesterday, and to- 
 day, and for ever." (Hebrews xiii. 8.) 
 
 Some little light is indeed thrown upon 
 tlie obscure expressions of the Apostle 
 in the passage before us, by considering 
 the specific object for which he employs 
 them : nor must we, in the investigation 
 of this subject, fail to bear in mind, 
 that the persons to w^hom he addresses this 
 epistle were intimately acquainted with 
 the laws and institutes of the Levitical 
 priesthood, between which and the priest- 
 hood of Clhrist he is drawing a com- 
 parison ; and to strengthen which, he 
 employs the prior and superior priesthood 
 of Melchisedec : they well knew, that 
 under the Levitical economy, no person 
 could establish his claim to the office of 
 a priest, who could not produce a lawful 
 
162 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 pedigree, and prove his right to the 
 office by descent — both on the father's and 
 the mother's side — from the family to 
 which, by God's ordinance, it was to be 
 confined. They knew, moreover, that the 
 sons of Aaron could not enter upon their 
 office before the age of thirty, and could 
 not continue in it after the age of fifty ; 
 which ages, therefore, were the begin- 
 ning of their days and the end of their 
 lives, as priests. In direct opposition to 
 all this he plainly declares that Mel- 
 chisedec — after whose order Christ is 
 made a priest — derived not his sacerdotal 
 office by descent on the side of either 
 father or mother; he was a priest '' with- 
 out pedigree," as the expression is ren- 
 dered in the margin ; neither did he 
 assume, or lay down his office at any 
 particular age, but, as a priest^ he had 
 '^ no beginning of days, or end of life." 
 In short, nothing is said in Scripture, 
 by which we can ascertain that his priest- 
 hood was either derivable from, or trans- 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 163 
 
 ferable to another ; in which respect he 
 was a pre-eminent type of our great 
 High Priest, " who was made not after 
 the law of a carnal commandment, but 
 after the power of an endless life : " the 
 commencement and the termination of 
 whose office are hidden in depths we 
 cannot penetrate, and wdiich, as he re- 
 ceived it from none, so neither will he 
 transfer it to others, seeing that " He 
 abideth a priest continually, and ever 
 liveth to make intercession for us: " 
 w^hat, therefore, may be said literally of 
 the antitype, is said metaphorically of 
 the type, whose parentage and genealogy 
 are purposely withheld, and the begin- 
 ning and the end of whose priestly career 
 are enveloped in profound indefiniteness, 
 in order that he might be '' like unto 
 the Son of God." 
 
 It is true, as some may be ready to 
 remind me, that the genealogy of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ is partially given by 
 the Evangelists, but it must be remem- 
 
164 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 bered, that this is with reference to his 
 regal, and not his sacerdotal character : 
 and to show that, as " concerning the 
 flesh," he came of the line of David, 
 and of the tribe of Judah, '' of which 
 tribe no man gave attendance at the 
 altar." And even the apparent con- 
 fusion with which their several accounts 
 are accompanied is highly instructive. 
 Matthew only traces his genealogy 
 through David to Abraham. Luke 
 carries our minds beyond the plain of 
 Mamre to the garden of Eden, and 
 points out his descent from Adam. 
 Mark makes no mention whatever of 
 his lineage, but commences his history 
 at his baptism, and the attestation by an 
 audible voice from heaven, to his divine 
 sonship. But John soars far beyond the 
 boundaries of time and sense, and re- 
 moving the veil which hides from mortal 
 view eternal things, discloses to us the 
 Son of God in the bosom of the eternal 
 Father, and one with him in substance, 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 165 
 
 in power, and in glory. " In the begin- 
 ning was the Word, and the Word was 
 with God, and the Word was God : " 
 precisely parallel to which sublime de- 
 claration is that statement of Wisdom in 
 the book of Proverbs, by which most 
 commentators agree Christ is meant, " in 
 whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge" — ^who says, chap. viii. 
 22, 23, " The Lord possessed me in the 
 beginning of his way ; before his works 
 of old I was set up, from everlasting, 
 from the beginning, or ever the earth 
 was." As God, the Saviour had not a 
 beginning. As man, his conception was 
 wholly different from the ordinary mode 
 of generation — " A virgin shall conceive 
 and bear a Son.* " " Unto us a Son is 
 born — the everlasting Father ! " 
 
 It is of the very last importance, 
 brethren, that in all our meditations 
 upon the person or work of Christ, we 
 never lose sight of his eternal gene- 
 
 * See Luke i. 34, 35. 
 
166 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 ration ; a truth which, though con- 
 fessedly at an immeasurable distance from 
 the loftiest reach of our intellectual 
 faculties, is nevertheless found, when re- 
 ceived in humble and implicit faith, to 
 give light, and power, and vitality, to all 
 that is revealed concerning him: "for 
 us men and for our salvation he came 
 down from heaven, and was incarnate by 
 the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary:" 
 well might Saint Augustine exclaim, 
 "God, what more glorious! flesh, what 
 more base ! than God in flesh, what 
 more marvellous !" 
 
 Nor is it around his incarnation alone 
 that these shadows of obscurity dwell ; 
 whether we endeavour to ascertain the 
 time when he first assumed his sacerdotal 
 office — or the precise way in which he is 
 carrying it on now that he has entered into 
 the holy place, having obtained eternal 
 redemption for us : or whether our in- 
 quiries have reference to his mediatorial 
 kingdom — the time when he first took 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 167 
 
 up — the extent to which he sways — or the 
 period when he will resign its righteous 
 sceptre, '' that God may be all in all ; " 
 we shall find that revelation throws but a 
 dim and uncertain light upon these sub- 
 jects of inquiry. Thus much we know, 
 that as the inspired writer introduces 
 Melchisedec exercising the functions at 
 once of a priest and a king — and that, 
 too, in the very centre of idolatry, and 
 among the depraved offspring of Ham — 
 so has Christ an altar and a throne in 
 the midst of a crooked, and perverse, 
 and abandoned race — silently controlling 
 the wild elements of rebellion, and re- 
 straining the enmity and fury of the 
 adversaries which encircle the subjects 
 of his spiritual kingdom. ^* The Lord 
 shall send the rod of thy strength out of 
 Zion ; nJe thou in the midst of thine 
 enemies." (Ps. ex. 2.) And doubtless it 
 was to illustrate all this that Melchise- 
 dec is made just to appear upon the 
 stage of revelation and to disappear as 
 
168 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 suddenly ; and that those things are said 
 metaphorically of him which can only be 
 said literally of that adorable Jesus, con- 
 cerning whom it is said, in immediate 
 connexion with the passage last quoted, 
 '^ the Lord hath sworn and will not 
 repent, thou art a priest for ever after 
 the order of Melchisedec." (Ver. 4.) 
 
 II. But let us now pass on to the 
 other point of view, in which we have to 
 regard this mysterious person as a type 
 of the character and offices of the Son of 
 God himself. 
 
 The circumstances under which he is 
 first brought before, us by the inspired 
 historian were these : — When it had be- 
 come necessary for Abraham, and Lot, 
 his nephew — who had been prevailed 
 upon to accompany him into the land of 
 Canaan — to separate from each other, in 
 order to find an adequate provision for, 
 as well as to avoid contention betvveen, 
 their respective companies ; Lot imnie - 
 diately selected the plains of Jordan as 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 169 
 
 his future settlement ; — acting, it is 
 much to be feared,' as multitudes still 
 do, though living under a far more 
 spiritual dispensation, who are more in- 
 fluenced by the specious prospects of 
 temporal advantage than by an in- 
 stinctive shrinking from the contami- 
 nation of vice, and a supreme regard to 
 the obligations of religion, in fixing the 
 bounds of their habitation, and guiding 
 the movements of their earthly history. 
 Lot did not, it is true, give countenance 
 to those 'Mmlawful deeds" which turned 
 the fruitful plains, wherein Sodom and 
 Gomorrah were situated, into a moral 
 desert, and overspread its loveliest scenes 
 with the mildew of the deadliest corrup- 
 tion ; for we are told that his righteous 
 soul was vexed therewith (2 Pet. ii. 8) ; 
 and had the pillar of God's providence 
 guided him into the midst of people and 
 of scenes, thus heaping up wrath against 
 the day of wrath, the vexation under 
 which he smarted would have been unac- 
 
170 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 companied with the self-conviction, which 
 in the present case must have given it a 
 ten-fold pungency, that it was the pu- 
 nishment of his own short-sighted prefer- 
 ence for temporal affluence and aggran- 
 dizement above that blessing of the Lord 
 which maketh rich and addeth no sor- 
 row. But what was the result? Evils 
 not anticipated or calculated upon in the 
 choice he had made, were soon, in the 
 chastening dealings of God, made to 
 counterbalance all the advantages which 
 he had so unduly estimated. War — the 
 offspring of men's evil passions, and 
 which the character and circumstances 
 of the depraved people with whom Lot 
 had, in temporal things at least, so in- 
 consistently identified himself, would na- 
 turally provoke — swept, with all its cus- 
 tomary cruelties and rapacities, through 
 the well- watered plains by which he had 
 been seduced to walk by sight rather 
 than by faith — and the land, which was 
 «s the Garden of Eden before it, behind 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 171 
 
 it was a desolate wilderness. (Joel ii. 2.) 
 And while Abraham, who had left it to 
 his God to choose his inheritance for 
 him, was increasing in cattle and in sub- 
 stance, and in servants — all of earthly 
 good that Lot possessed was in a mo- 
 ment wrested from him by the envy and 
 the avarice of the conquering invaders. 
 
 Abraham, however, who, in foregoing 
 the right — which belonged to him both 
 on the ground of age and relationship — 
 of making the first choice of a portion of 
 the land wherein to establish himself and 
 his numerous retinue, seems to have 
 anticipated some of those precepts of 
 Christianity which, alas I have but little 
 control in the conduct of this world's 
 concerns — '^ Let no man seek his own, 
 but every man another's wealth," — " Let 
 nothing be done through strife or vain- 
 glory; but in lowliness of mind let each 
 esteem other better than themselves," — 
 was equally prompt in the performance 
 
 I 2 
 
172 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 of some other duties which Christianity 
 enjoins- — '^ Bear ye one another's bur- 
 dens, and so fulfil the law of Christ," — 
 '' Remember them that are in bonds as 
 bound with them, and them which suffer 
 adversity, as being yourselves also in the 
 body." No sooner, therefore, had the 
 intelligence reached him of the capture 
 of his brother's son, than, forgetful of 
 every petty and personal ground of 
 offence, he set his domestics in battle 
 array, buckled on his own sword as their 
 leader, and marched forth — not to enrich 
 himself or his retainers, as has usually 
 been the case in feudal expeditions, but 
 to rescue his captured relative, and re- 
 cover the goods of which he had been 
 plundered by the confederate kings of 
 Chaldea and Persia : and with an un- 
 shaken confidence in the justice of his 
 cause, and in the aid of Him with whom 
 it is nothing to help either with many or 
 with few, he overtook the conquering 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 173 
 
 hosts, in all the pride and exultation of 
 their success — tore from them the laurels 
 of victory — regained the spoil they had 
 so unjustly taken — rescued Lot from the 
 fetters of captivity, and brought him 
 back to the city from which he had been 
 torn — " and his goods, the women also, 
 and the people."* 
 
 The interview between Melchisedec 
 and the Patriarch took place in the 
 valley of Shaveh — called also, and pro- 
 bably from this very circumstance, the 
 King's Dale, — on his return from the 
 triumphant exploits of which I have 
 thus given a scanty outline. He is called 
 King of Salem, which is thought to be 
 the same as Jerusalem, near to which 
 the warriors would probably pass on 
 their return ; and having first supplied 
 them — exhausted as they were by the 
 rapid marches and sharp encounter — 
 with the seasonable refreshment of bread 
 and wine ; — then with all the sanctity of 
 
 * Gen. xiv. 15. 
 
174 DISCOURSE v.. 
 
 a priest, and with all the dignity of a 
 king, he pronounced his solemn benedic- 
 tion upon Abraham, who had acted so 
 nobly in a cause so righteous ; while, at 
 the same time, he presented the sacrifice 
 of praise to the Most High God, who had 
 crowned the bravery of his faithful ser- 
 vant with such complete success ; which 
 offices on his part w^ere responded to on 
 the part of the patriarch by his oft'ering 
 to him a tithe of all the spoil which he 
 had re-captured — recognizing thereby, 
 according to the argument of St. Paul, 
 the superiority of Melchisedec ; and 
 teaching us to regard him as a pre- 
 eminent type of our exalted Mediator, 
 from whom alone even they who " have 
 the promises " can receive the blessing 
 of eternal peace (Phil. iv. 7) — to whom 
 even the priests of the spiritual temple 
 (1 Pet. ii. 5) owe, not only a tithe of all 
 — but every thing they possess (Rom. 
 xii. 1) — and who combines in his own 
 divine person the functions of an un- 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 175 
 
 changeable priesthood with the dignities 
 of an unlimited monarchy ; according to 
 the remarkable prediction, '' He shall 
 build the temple of the Lord, and he 
 shall bear the glory, and shall sit and 
 rule upon his throne, and he shall be a 
 priest upon his throne, and the counsel 
 of peace shall be between them hotlu'^ 
 
 But the resemblance between Mel- 
 chisedec and Christ will still further 
 appear, if we consider more at large the 
 titles he bore and the actions he per- 
 formed. 
 
 First, his titles were — Melchisedec, 
 which is, by interpretation, king of 
 righteousness ; and also King of Salem, 
 which is, St. Paul tells us in the text, 
 king of peace. Whatever there was in 
 the character or administration of this 
 Canaanitish king, which obtained for 
 him these dignified appellations, w^e 
 know that they can only, in a qualified 
 sense, apply to any earthly potentate : 
 
 * Zech. vi. 13. 
 
176 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 literally, and in all their utmost signifi- 
 cation, thay must be restricted to Him, 
 to whom God the Father hath committed 
 all judgment — whose throne is estab- 
 lished in righteousness (Ps. xxv. 5) — 
 whose sceptre is a sceptre of righteous- 
 ness (Heb. i. 8) — whose reign is a reign 
 of righteousness (Is. xxxii. 1) — the sub- 
 jects of whose spiritual kingdom he 
 covers with the robe of righteousness 
 (Is. Ixi. 10) — and who, in the appointed 
 day, will judge the assembled w^orld in 
 righteousness. (Acts xvii. 31.) Who, 
 moreover, is the Prince of Peace ; — with 
 whom is ^' the covenant of peace ;" — at 
 whose birth into the world angels raised 
 the song of " peace; " — and who, having 
 made peace by the blood of his cross, 
 commissioned his ambassadors to re-echo 
 upon earth the song which had resounded 
 through the concave of heaven, and to 
 preach peace to them which were far off, 
 and to them that were nigh; '^ of the 
 increase of his government and peace 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 177 
 
 there shall be no end, upon the throne of 
 David, to order it and to establish it with 
 judgment and with justice from hence- 
 forth, even for ever." 
 
 Christ is King of Righteousness — inas- 
 much as he is essentially righteous, and 
 because all righteousness dwells in him as 
 its fountain and origin. '^ In the Lord is 
 all righteousness ; " and the righteous- 
 ness to be found in any created being 
 must be a reflexion of his — ^just as all 
 the light in the natural world emanates 
 from the sun ; — accordingly, Christ is 
 called '* the Sun of Righteousness." The 
 incarnation of this divine person was pre- 
 dicted in the figurative language of pro- 
 phecy, in terms which fully confirm this 
 view of his essential attributes — '^ Drop 
 down, ye heavens from above, and let 
 the skies pour down righteousness ; — let 
 the earth open, and let them bring forth 
 salvation, and let righteousness spring- 
 up together." Again, in a sort of anti- 
 cipated history of that mighty conquest 
 
 i5 
 
178 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 over all the confederated powers of dark 
 ness, which for man he accomplished — 
 the prophet says, " he s^w tliat there 
 was no man, and wondered that there 
 was no intercessor ; therefore his own 
 arm brought salvation, and his righteous- 
 ness it sustained him" — ''who is this 
 that Cometh from Edom, with dyed gar- 
 ments from Bozra ? this that is glorious 
 in his apparel, travelling in the great- 
 ness of his strength ? I that speak in 
 righteousness, mighty to save." And in 
 the fulness of time, when his mysterious 
 advent did actually take place, even in 
 the period of his lowliest abasement, — 
 in all the helplessness of infancy — when 
 a stable was his lodging, and a manger 
 his cradle — yet, even then, we have the 
 Almighty Jehovah bearing solemn testi- 
 mony to the right of this wondrous babe 
 to the title which Melchisedec typically 
 bore — " when he bringeth the first-be- 
 gotten into the world he saith, let all the 
 angels of God worship Him; but unto 
 
IvrELCHISEDEC. 
 
 179 
 
 the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is 
 for ever and ever, a sceptre of righteous- 
 ness is the sceptre of thy kingdom." 
 (Heb. i. 6, 8). 
 
 Christ is moreover the King of Righte- 
 ousness, — because he is the procurer and 
 dispenser of that righteousness whereby 
 his believing people, or the subjects of 
 his spiritual kingdom, are justified in the 
 sight of God. Daniel was inspired to 
 foretel not only the time but the object 
 of his coming, " to make reconciliation 
 for iniquity, and bring in everlasting 
 righteousness," — and St. Paul tells the 
 same all-animating truth of the Gospel 
 when he says, " He was made sin for us 
 who knew no sin, that we might be made 
 the rio;hteousness of God in him." 
 
 The grand peculiarity of the Gospel 
 consists in the exalted view it exhibits of 
 the all-perfect character of God, so as to 
 convince us, that when we have made 
 the nearest approximation to that cha- 
 racter, there is still a broad gulph of in- 
 
180 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 finite distance between our highest at- 
 tainments and the Divine perfection. 
 Every scheme of man's devising seems 
 to proceed upon the possibility of uniting 
 the two—either by bringing down the 
 Divine character nearer to the level of 
 our's. or else by estimating human na- 
 ture so high as to think it capable of 
 rising to a greater equality with His : 
 being ignorant of God's righteousness, 
 and going about to establish their own 
 righteousness, men thus evince the most 
 profound ignorance of the true character 
 of God as well as of their own. This 
 ignorance, however, the Gospel scatters 
 with its blaze of truth ; and, by exhibit- 
 ing the character of God in all its incon- 
 ceivable parity and perfection^ — and by 
 drawing off the minds of men from that 
 unauthorized scale by which they for- 
 merly measured their excellence and 
 demerit— and by bringing them to a 
 standard which admits of no defect, 
 either in the motive or the performance 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 181 
 
 of their actions, the nature or the bias of 
 their feelings — they are thus brought to 
 renounce all righteousness of their own, 
 and to see and acknowledge that the 
 righteousness which alone can profit 
 them in the judgment of God must be 
 a perfect, and therefore an imputed 
 righteousness ; in short, the righteous- 
 ness of our covenant head and surety, 
 to whom Jeremiah gives the lofty ap- 
 pellation of '^ the Lord our Righteous- 
 ness," and of whom St. Paul declares, 
 that he is '' the end of the law for 
 righteousness to every one that be- 
 lieveth." 
 
 It is highly important to distinguish 
 between righteousness as essential to the 
 nature of our divine Mediator, and 
 righteousness as wrought out by him in 
 his capacity as Mediator ; the former is 
 incommunicable, it is a part of his god- 
 head ; the latter is imputable, and is the 
 effect of that vicarious and complete sa- 
 tisfaction which he rendered to the law 
 
182 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 of God — both in its requirements and 
 its penalties — as the surety and the sub- 
 stitute of those who by faith should 
 apprehend and apply this method of 
 becoming righteous in the judgment of 
 God. The obedience of the second 
 Adam, as an adequate remedy for the dis- 
 obedience of the first, constitutes the be- 
 liever's plea of righteousness : and that 
 this righteousness is wrought for us, and 
 imputed to us — and that we cannot be jus- 
 tified by a personal righteousness wrought 
 within us, or by any imperfect obedience 
 of our own, rendered acceptable by 
 Christ's merits — is a truth expressly 
 taught in Scripture and faithfully re- 
 echoed bv our Church: " for now the 
 righteousness of God, without the law^ is 
 manifested " — a righteousness independ- 
 ent of any human obedience as to its me- 
 ritoriousness or its perfection, though 
 made by imputation, to all who by faith 
 apprehend it as much their own as if 
 they themselves had wrought it. In the 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 183 
 
 Lord Jesus shall all the (spiritual) seed 
 of Israel be justified and shall glory. 
 
 Independently, however, of that righte- 
 ousness of Christ imputed to them, of 
 which alone they make mention before 
 God (Ps. Ixxi. 16), in which alone they 
 are exalted in His estimation (Ps. Ixxxix. 
 16), and which alone He declares for the 
 remission of their sins (Rom. iii. 25) — as 
 the subjects of his spiritual kingdom, 
 there is wrought within them by the 
 power of his Spirit a moral change 
 whereby they are confirmed in principle 
 and in will to those laws of righteous- 
 ness by which he governs his kingdom, 
 the distinguishing blessings of which are 
 righteousness and peace in the Holy 
 Ghost. Therefore, addressing his be- 
 lieving nation — his spiritual Israel — he 
 calls them a people that know righteous- 
 ness, that follow after righteousness, 
 and have his laws in their heart ; — all 
 which implies a change of nature as well 
 as of state, wherein they " put off con- 
 
184 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 cerning the former conversation the old 
 man, which is corrupt according to the 
 deceitful lusts, and are renewed in the 
 spirit of their minds; and put on the new 
 man, which, after God, is created in 
 righteousness and true holiness/' (Eph. 
 iv. 22—24.) 
 
 The other title given to Melchisedec 
 is equally typical of Christ's character 
 and work — wherein " righteousness and 
 peace have kissed each other." The 
 Prophet Zachariah, representing Christ 
 as a priest upon his throne, says, '' the 
 counsel of peace shall be between them 
 both," or in that union in him of the 
 regal with the priestly office which was 
 not allowed under the Jewish economy, 
 but which were both performed by Mel- 
 chisedec to render more complete his 
 typical resemblance to the Son of God. 
 By sin open war was declared between 
 God and man ; and in order, therefore, 
 to the re-establishment of peace, the 
 weapons of vengeance must be taken 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 185 
 
 from the hands of God, and the weapons 
 of rebellion from the hands of man. The 
 former was done by Christ in the per- 
 formance of his functions as a priest — 
 the latter is done by him in the exercise 
 of his authority as a king ; by the for- 
 mer he made reconciliation for iniquity 
 in the judgment of God, — by the latter 
 he subdues the principle and love of 
 iniquity in the heart of man : thus '' the 
 counsel of peace is between them both." 
 Reconciliation on the part of God was 
 fully and for ever effected by the precious 
 blood-shedding of his co-equal Son, by 
 whom, as at once the priest and the victim, 
 an adequate propitiation was made for the 
 sins of the whole world (1 John ii. 3) ; 
 and therefore, in announcing his birth 
 for this purpose, the heavenly host 
 praised God and said, " Glory to God 
 in the highest, and " (as far as God is 
 concerned) " on earth peace, good will 
 towards men." But it is obvious that 
 the terms, or method of reconciliation, 
 
186 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 must be embraced by both the offended 
 and offending parties, before the bless- 
 ing of peace can be realized. A sove- 
 reign might be induced to publish a 
 proclamation of amnesty and pardon to 
 the inhabitants of a rebellious province, 
 but if they continue hostile to his go- 
 vernment, and rebels against his au- 
 thority, there cannot be peace between 
 them, whatever his disposition of mind 
 towards them may be. Accordingly, the 
 commission of the Christian minister is 
 not to tell sinners what is to be done 
 on their part in order to make God re- 
 conciled to them — but in Christ's stead 
 to beseech sinners to put away their 
 enmity against his character, and their 
 rebellion against his government, and to 
 be reconciled to God. Christ is there- 
 fore our peace ; his Gospel is appro- 
 priately called "■ the story of peace,'' 
 because it tells us of deliverance from 
 the dominion and curse of sin, by w^hich 
 peace was first broken, and because it 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 187 
 
 provides for the removal of that enmity 
 ao^ainst God which is the effect of sin. 
 Christ's kingdom is a kingdom of peace — 
 in the high places thereof he maketh 
 peace — and to all the subjects thereof he 
 speaketh peace — and the great bond of 
 union v^hich pervades it is the bond of 
 peace — and because they love his law, 
 they have great peace — and because 
 their minds are stayed on him, they are 
 kept in perfect peace — and the very 
 faith which apprehends that righteous- 
 ness on account of which they are jus- 
 tified and have peace with God (Rom. 
 v. 1) possesses a purifying power, and a 
 will-constraining and a lust-subduing 
 influence, by which the enemies to peace 
 within are brought into captivity to the 
 obedience of Christ, and the roots of 
 bitterness and strife prevented from 
 checking the growth of those peaceable 
 fruits of righteousness which are by 
 Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of 
 God. Thus ^^ the work of righteousness 
 
188 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 is peace, and the effect of righteousness 
 quietness and assurance for ever." Well, 
 then, might the apostle take up the ani- 
 mating strain of prophecy, and say, 
 '' How beautiful upon the mountains are 
 the feet of them that preach the Gospel 
 of peace !" And how should all who have 
 ever felt that peace which the Gospel 
 breathes — long, and labour, and pray for 
 its universal diffusion in this world of 
 warfare and of strife ; that the predicted 
 day may hasten onwards when out of Zion 
 shall go forth the law and the word of 
 the Lord from Jerusalem, and he — the 
 King of Peace — shall judge among the 
 nations, and shall rebuke many people, 
 and they shall beat their swords into 
 plowshares and their spears into pruning 
 hooks ; nation shall not lift up sword 
 against nation, neither shall they learn 
 war any more. 
 
 " Waft, waft, ye winds, the story ; 
 And you, ye waters, roll ; 
 'Till, like a sea of glory. 
 It spreads from pole to pole ; 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 189 
 
 'Till o'er our ransom'd nature, 
 
 The Lamb for sinners slain, 
 Redeemer, King, Creator, 
 
 In peace returns to reign ! " 
 
 2. But let us now proceed briefly to 
 notice the actions which are recorded 
 of Melchisedec, and show their typical 
 reference to Christ. And first, the re- 
 freshment with which he supplied the 
 patriarch and his victorious servants, — 
 '' he brought forth bread and wine." 
 From the circumstance, I presume, that 
 it is immediately added, '' and he was 
 priest of the Most High God," the 
 Church of Rome have concluded that 
 the bread and wine he brought forth was 
 not for the refreshment of the exhausted 
 warriors, but as a sacrifice to the Lord ; 
 from w^hich they borrow a sanction for 
 their own shadowy figment of the per- 
 petual sacrifice of the mass — which is 
 plainly opposed to the letter and the 
 spirit of the Gospel, and derogatory to 
 the dignity and sufficiency of that one 
 offering of himself by which Christ hath 
 perfected for ever them that are sancti- 
 
190 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 fled. But without dwelling on the pro- 
 bability that Melchisedec would give 
 such proof of hospitality and good-will 
 to Abraham and his followers — with 
 whose conflicts and achievements he 
 was well acquainted — by affording them 
 these seasonable articles of nourishment 
 which appear to have been commonly used 
 in fatiguing journeys (Judges xix. 19, 
 2 Sam. xvi. 2), I am not aware that 
 there is any instance in Scripture of 
 these articles being used as a sacrifice, 
 otherwise than as accompaniments to 
 the offerings of living victims, or as 
 mere thank-offerings, and not as a sacri- 
 fice of atonement ; and if it be said that 
 Melchisedec used them as thank-offer- 
 ings, then is the case wholly dissimilar 
 to the sacrament of the mass in the 
 Church of Rome, which extorts from her 
 children the confession ^' that in the mass 
 there is offered unto God a true, proper, 
 and propitiatory sacrifice for the living 
 and the dead." 
 
 But it is obvious that — though the 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 191 
 
 inspired historian, with that attention 
 to brevity which distinguishes the sacred 
 writings, does not actually say so — the 
 bread and the wine which Melchisedec 
 brought forth, were simply as articles of 
 food, of which he well knew they were 
 in need — furnishing us with a striking 
 illustration of the use of that sacrament 
 in which these very articles are employed 
 as emblems of the benefits and blessings 
 with which Christ refreshes the faithful 
 soldiers and servants of his cross, amidst 
 the perils and the conflicts of this their 
 militant state : like bread they strengthen, 
 and like wine they revive them ; repre- 
 senting through the medium of the senses 
 and sensible objects, that flesh of Christ 
 which the believer spiritually eats, and 
 that blood of Christ which the believer 
 spiritually drinks ; or, in other w^ords, 
 that sacrifice of himself by giving his 
 body to be broken, and his blood to be 
 shed, from which alone we can ever 
 derive spiritual life, and by the acting of 
 
192 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 faith, upon which alone that spiritual 
 life can be invigorated and matured : 
 '•' Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
 Man and drink his blood, ye have no 
 life in you" — '* As the living Father 
 hath sent me, and I live by the Father, 
 so he that eateth me, even he shall live 
 by me." And it is to keep alive the re- 
 membrance of both the one and the 
 other of these truths, viz., that Christ 
 hath died that we might have life ; and 
 that by faith in his death, the life re- 
 ceived from him must be sustained — that 
 our divine Lord graciously sanctified the 
 use of bread and wine in that sacrament 
 which he instituted as a standing ordi- 
 nance in his Church — to the end that, as 
 our bodies, even when in vigorous health, 
 require that kind of nourishment which 
 is adapted to its own nature ; so our 
 souls, even when spiritually alive, might 
 be strengthened and refreshed by that 
 spiritual food and sustenance which is 
 suited to the nature, and essential to the 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 193 
 
 growth of the new creature in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 But once more : The actions he per- 
 formed in his sacerdotal character as the 
 priest of the Most High God, are equally 
 typical of the offices which Christ sus- 
 tains in his Church. The benediction 
 bestowed upon Abraham was both suit- 
 able and seasonable, peculiarly calculated 
 to tranquillize his mind, still suffering 
 from the turmoil and excitement of the 
 battle-field, by the sanction which it gave 
 to his proceedings, and the stimulant it 
 gave to his confidence from one whom he 
 had been accustomed to honour as a king, 
 and to reverence as a priest.* Such a 
 benediction does Christ bestow upon his 
 faithful soldiers and servants when ha- 
 rassed by the conflicts and even by their 
 
 * Hales is of opinion, that after the separation 
 between Lot and himself, Abraham took up his abode 
 in the plains of Mamre, on account of their vicinity 
 to the seat of Melchisedec's government, whose re- 
 ligion he knew to be the same as his own. 
 
 K 
 
194 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 victories in that ''good fight of faith," 
 which they are called upon manfully to 
 sustain under the banner of " the Captain 
 of salvation" against sin, the flesh, and 
 the devil — '' In the world ye shall have 
 tribulation, but in me ye shall have 
 peace." Brethren, this peace, so sweet, 
 so refreshing, so suitable to our present 
 circumstances, we can never experience, 
 till, by the Spirit of God, who takes of 
 the things of Christ and shows them to 
 his people, we are enabled spiritually to 
 apprehend and embrace him as at once 
 the King and the Priest of his Church : 
 by his atonement it was procured ; and as 
 the fruit of his intercession, that Spirit 
 is sent forth, by whose operations upon 
 the heart its enmity is slain, and the 
 dominion of peace and joy established. 
 And as Christ is the only channel through 
 which the blessing of peace can descend 
 upon our souls, so is he the only medium 
 through which our praises must ascend 
 to the God of peace, from whom the 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 195 
 
 blessing proceeds. Melchisedec blessed 
 Abraham in the name of God, and then 
 he blessed God in the name of Abraham ; 
 even so it is '' through Jesus Christ 
 alone, by whom we receive the atone- 
 ment," or reconciliation; — and it is alone 
 through him that we can spiritually 
 ''joy in God, or with acceptance draw 
 near to his mercy-seat." And if, there- 
 fore, we are relying upon his meritorious 
 sacrifice, as the grand and sole means of 
 pacification — let us also rely upon his 
 prevailing intercession as the medium of 
 seeking, and of realizing, and of pre- 
 senting our thanksgivings for the ines- 
 timable benefits which arise out of that 
 pacification : ''for if when we were 
 enemies, we were reconciled to God by 
 the death of his Son, much more being 
 reconciled, we shall be saved by his life," 
 seeing that he ever liveth to make inter- 
 cession for us. (Heb. vii. 25.) 
 
 Thus, brethren, have I endeavoured 
 to point out to you some of those mo- 
 
 k2 
 
196 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 mentous truths which this illustrious type 
 seems intended to prefigure ; the distin- 
 guishing characteristic of which consists 
 in the remarkable illustration it affords 
 us of the union of regal authority with 
 the priestly office in the person and work 
 of our once crucified, but now exalted 
 Lord ; an union, which constitutes his 
 fitness to be the Saviour of a lost world — 
 a Saviour from the dominion as well as 
 the guilt of sin, by which it was undone ; 
 and which union, many other parts and 
 passages of holy writ may be brought to 
 confirm ; but I shall content myself with 
 adducing two, and then bring the sub- 
 ject to a conclusion. 
 
 " Wherefore," says the Apostle Paul, 
 '^ holy brethren, partakers of the hea- 
 venly calling, consider the Apostle and 
 High Priest of our profession, Christ 
 Jesus." The coupling in this verse of the 
 apostleship with the high priesthood, is 
 very significant ; it exhibits to us the 
 Lord Jesus, as the anointed prophet and 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 197 
 
 lawgiver of his Church, in which offices 
 he was typified by Moses, who was sent 
 by God to his people of old in their state 
 of darkness and oppression, both to teach 
 them his will, and to rule over them in 
 his name. (Deut. xviii. 15 — 19.) And, 
 moreover, in this verse the Lord Jesus 
 is set forth as the great High Priest of 
 his Church, in which character he was 
 typified by Aaron, to whose office it ap- 
 pertained to carry the blood of atone- 
 ment into the holiest of all, and in the 
 immediate presence of God to make in- 
 tercession on behalf of his transgressing 
 and rebellious people. Thus is Christ at 
 once the apostle (Moses) and high priest 
 (Aaron) of our profession. 
 
 Again : the same truths are represented 
 to us in a somewhat obscure and highly 
 metaphorical chapter in the prophecy of 
 Zechariah (ch. iv.), wherein the prophet 
 is shown the two individuals, in whom, at 
 the period of the events alluded to in the 
 chapter, the offices of priest and prince 
 
198 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 were vested, viz., Zerubbabel and Joshua, 
 who are spoken of as '' the two anointed 
 ones, which stand by the Lord of the 
 whole earth;" and they are represented 
 as two olive-trees, standing by a golden 
 candlestick with seven lamps, into which 
 they empty — through two golden pipes, 
 feeding seven other pipes, connected with 
 the seven lamps — the golden oil out of 
 themselves : which candlestick is a sym- 
 bol of the Church of God ; the seven 
 lamps probably representing the gifts and 
 influences of the Spirit; the two olive- 
 trees on the right hand and on the left, 
 denoting the twofold office of Christ, upon 
 whom, both as a Priest and a Prince, 
 the anointings of the Divine Spirit were 
 poured without measure ; the two golden 
 pipes, and seven lesser ones, represent- 
 ing the various means and channels by 
 which in the exercise of both his offices, 
 he communicates the oil of divine grace, 
 of which He is the only source, and by 
 which alone the light of divine truth, 
 
MELCHISEDEC. 199 
 
 and the flame of divine love can be 
 maintained in his Church. All which 
 is also taught us by another type in the 
 same chapter, wherein the restoration of 
 the temple at Jerusalem by Zerubbabel 
 and Joshua conjointly, is plainly set 
 forth as an emblem of the gradual com- 
 pletion of that spiritual temple of which 
 Christ is the foundation ; upon whom all 
 the building fitly framed together, is 
 made to rest; and who at length shall 
 himself, ^^ bring forth the head-stone 
 thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, 
 grace, unto it." 
 
200 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 ABRAHAM'S SEED. 
 
 " BY MYSELF HAVE I SWORN, SAITH THE LORD, FOR 
 BECAUSE THOU HAST DONE THIS THING, AND HAST 
 NOT WITHHELD THY SON, THINE ONLY SON; THAT 
 IN BLESSING I WILL BLESS THEE, AND IN MULTI- 
 PLYING I WILL MULTIPLY THY SEED AS THE STARS 
 OF THE HEAVEN, AND AS THE SAND WHICH IS UPON 
 THE SEA SHORE ; AND THY SEED SHALL POSSESS 
 THE GATE OF HIS ENEMIES; AND IN THY SEED 
 SHALL ALL THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED, 
 BECAUSE THOU HAST OBEYED MY V01CE."-Gen. xxii. 
 16—18. 
 
 Often did Jehovah condescend to ratify 
 the covenant He made with the illustrious 
 '' father of the faithful " when at His su- 
 preme command he had broken through 
 every inferior claim upon his submission 
 or his love; and had pitched his tent and 
 erected his altar in that land with whose 
 history the destinies of his posterity, and 
 even of the human family at large, were 
 
' Abraham's seed. 201 
 
 to be thenceforward and for ever identi- 
 fied. And every subsequent ratification 
 of that first covenant — like the succes- 
 sive touches of the pencil in the master- 
 hand of the painter — gave a more bold 
 and intelligible embodying to the prime- 
 val design. 
 
 The transaction with which its renewal 
 in my text was connected, has scarcely a 
 parallel in the annals of human actions, 
 either in the severity of the command 
 which enforced it, or the triumph of 
 heaven-wrought principle which distin- 
 guished it. Even apart from its typical 
 import, it is instructive as a brilliant 
 example of that obedience, which all 
 creatures are bound to render to every 
 requirement of the One Eternal and 
 Supreme : — but to restrict it to so sub- 
 ordinate an object would be as unworthy 
 of its true dignity and magnitude, as to 
 regard the sun which illumines a whole 
 system, to be kindled for no higher a 
 purpose than to enlighten our single and 
 
 K 5 
 
202 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 diminutive globe. It will consequently 
 be needful to examine, as concisely as 
 we can, the typical significancy of that 
 mysterious transaction which gave occa- 
 sion for this fullest and final confirmation 
 of the Abrahamic covenant : for if we are 
 unable to comprehend in some measure 
 the spiritual meaning of the context, — 
 we shall find equal difficulty in discover- 
 ing the spiritual truths comprised in the 
 text itself; but if, on the other hand, 
 by the guidance of the Spirit of Truth, 
 we are enabled to trace in the trans- 
 action, so highly applauded in this 
 passage, a dim foreshowing of sublime 
 evangelical mysteries, — then may we 
 " spiritually discern," in the covenant 
 connected with it, an application immea- 
 surably more extensive than the boun- 
 daries of Canaan — yea, even than the 
 sand-like star-like numbers of the chil- 
 dren of circumcision. 
 
 The course of Abraham's earthly pil- 
 grimage had been strongly marked with 
 
Abraham's seed. 203 
 
 what must form a conspicuous part of 
 every human being's history — vicissitude 
 and trial. Of worldly affluence and dis- 
 tinction he had ever enjoyed an ample 
 share ; but the infirmities of age were 
 stealing upon his mortal frame, and yet 
 the attainment of one object which, in 
 his estimation, threw all his other pos- 
 sessions into shade, was still denied him 
 — Sarah, the wife of his youth, the 
 sharer of his fortunes, was barren. No 
 feature, however, in the administration 
 of Divine Providence, is more conspicu- 
 ous than this one, that the times of 
 God's special interposition, are when 
 all circumstances combine to render it at 
 once necessary and convincing ; accord- 
 ingly, when all hope of legitimate issue 
 was abandoned, a divine promise was 
 given of the boon he so anxiously de- 
 sired ; and the promise — ^though five- 
 and-seventy years had rolled over his 
 head before it was given, and five-and- 
 twenty more had followed them before 
 
204 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 it was fulfilled — was neither given nor 
 relied upon in vain. Omnipotence, 
 triumphing over human improbabilities, 
 caused the long-expected child to come 
 forth from the barren womb of the age- 
 stricken Sarah :^ — and the Patriarch — 
 happy in the realization of the hopes 
 which had so closely entwined his heart ; 
 and beholding in the child, born under 
 circumstances so extraordinary, a pledge 
 of the gradual fulfilment of all those glo- 
 rious promises which depended on his 
 birth and manhood — was probably be- 
 ginning to assure himself that now the 
 rude tempests of life had spent all their 
 fury, and that all that remained for him 
 was — like the great luminary of heaven 
 when his diurnal course is run — to sink 
 with calm and mellowed majesty beneath 
 the horizon of terrestrial things. But 
 how sadly the reverse of all this was the 
 Patriarch's experience— how little were 
 all the trials of his lengthened life to be 
 compared to the one which now, like a 
 
Abraham's seed. 205 
 
 terrifying clap from an unseen thunder- 
 cloud, was on the point of bursting upon 
 him ! "It came to pass after these 
 things, that God did tempt Abraham, 
 and said unto him, Abraham : and he 
 said. Behold, here I am. And he said, 
 Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac 
 WHOM THOU LovEST, and get thee into the 
 land of Moriah, and offer him there for 
 a burnt-offering upon one of the moun- 
 tains which I will tell thee of." Such 
 was the divine command — and that com- 
 mand Abraham dared not, and wished 
 not to disobey. He could not, it is true, 
 obey it without violating the divine pro- 
 hibition of human sacrifices — frustrating 
 the whole chain of the divine purposes — 
 and incurring the abhorrence of every 
 future generation ; but it was enough 
 that the command w^as div'me ; and as 
 when God promised him this child — 
 though no human probabilities seemed 
 to exist of its being verified — he stag- 
 gered not at the divine promise ; so now 
 
206 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 that God commanded him to slay his 
 child — though every natural feeling 
 must be stifled before he could do it — he 
 was equally prompt to make his own 
 feelings do homage to the divine au- 
 thority ; and both as it regards the pro- 
 mise, unlikely as it was — and the com- 
 mand, unnatural as it was — he was 
 " strong in faith, giving glory to God." 
 To the land of Moriah, therefore, the 
 doting father and his only child hastened 
 away at Jehovah's bidding; and after a 
 three days' journey — every step of which 
 added new lustre to the obedient faith of 
 the father and the dutiful submission 
 of the son — (who, in the full vigour of 
 youth, could doubtless have overpowered 
 the aged Patriarch had he chosen to 
 rebel against the divine mandate, by 
 which it is more than probable he knew 
 full well that his father was actuated) ; 
 the dreaded mountain was gained — and 
 there, upon the appointed spot, and 
 aided, as we may presume, by his de- 
 
Abraham's seed. 207 
 
 voted boy, did Abraham erect the altar 
 — '' the saddest," as Bishop Hall pathe- 
 tically remarks, '^ that ever he built, and 
 he had built many a one," ^' and laid 
 the wood in order, and bound Isaac his 
 son, and laid him upon the altar upon 
 the wood." And does the Patriarch's 
 faith still hold out ? — is there no possible 
 way of evading the fatal catastrophe ? — 
 must the hoary-headed parent return 
 childless to his desolate home ? — must 
 the fair flower, the budding and blos- 
 soming of which had been to every 
 feeling of his breast like the influence of 
 spring upon the chilled and dreary 
 aspect of nature after the cheerless reign 
 of winter — must it now be cut down in 
 the prime of its bloom and loveliness, 
 and that too by the very hand which had 
 planted, fostered, and protected it? O 
 does not the fond father's heart sink and 
 faint, and his arm turn as if in a frenzy 
 of despair to plunge the knife into his 
 own bosom rather than that of his dar- 
 
208 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 ling and only child ? No — the struggle 
 was inconceivably tremendous — but faith 
 was victorious to the last — '^ Abraham 
 stretched forth his hand, and took the 
 knife to slay his son." 
 
 This was enough. To none had the 
 most Holy imparted a higher degree of 
 faith ; proportioned therefore to the de- 
 gree of faith was the severity of the 
 trial, and to the severity of the trial the 
 splendour of the triumph. And so, 
 brethren, it is with all the true children 
 of God, in the course of that moral dis- 
 cipline to which, in the present life, they 
 are invariably subject ; its grand design 
 is to draw out into vigorous exercise, 
 and exhibit in its transcendent purity, 
 that principle of implicit trust — which, 
 as supplying the best touch-stone of 
 submission to His will, under circum- 
 stances too, when all other considerations 
 are made to bend to the simple fact 
 that it is His loill — is calculated above 
 all others to maintain the honour of the 
 
Abraham's seed. 209 
 
 divine government, and keep alive the 
 conviction of the divine sovereignty. 
 
 And surely from the experience of 
 Abraham in the present instance, we 
 learn as well the wisdom as the duty 
 of holding all the objects of creature- 
 endearment with so loose a grasp, as to be 
 prepared at the shortest notice to resign 
 them again into the hands from whence 
 we received them. It is this spirit 
 which so eminently distinguishes the 
 true believer from the yet unemanci- 
 pated children of this world. Take 
 away from the latter their wealth, their 
 pleasure, some member of their family, 
 or some object of their ambition, in a 
 word — their Isaac — and lo ! the language 
 of their disconsolate heart is "ye have 
 taken away my gods, and what have I 
 more :" but it is far otherwise with the 
 former, take away the dearest object of 
 their affection, the richest treasure of 
 their heart's desire — and you have only 
 extinguished a taper at midday I God 
 
210 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 is still their sun and shield ; and faith 
 in God can erect an altar for the sacri- 
 fice of all they hold most valuable on 
 earth ; can fill, moreover, the widest 
 vacuum which such a sacrifice may 
 occasion ; and teach them while stand- 
 ing by the yet smoking altar to sing with 
 the poet — 
 
 God is my portion — He the gift bestowed ; 
 God is my portion — He the gift recall'd ; 
 And though the gift's recall'd — my portion still 
 Is God who gave, and took the gift away. 
 
 Jehovah will indeed sometimes suffi- 
 ciently demonstrate the faith of his peo- 
 ple without carrying the trial to so great 
 a length : very often has it happened, 
 that by some marvellous interposition he 
 has turned the deepest heaviness into 
 the brightest joy ; and when all their 
 earthly hopes have seemed to be upon 
 the very point of being extinguished for 
 ever, the voice of heavenly consolation 
 has fallen upon their bleeding, bursting 
 hearts, and their Isaac has been spared ! 
 
Abraham's seed. 211 
 
 Such was the rich reward of Abraham's 
 obedient faith : having been found pre- 
 pared to yield up even the darling of his 
 parental heart when God demanded it, the 
 probation was deemed sufficient, without 
 the enforcement of the demand ; and the 
 very voice which had so peremptorily 
 required the sacrifice, in the sweetest 
 accents of divine approval, stayed the 
 uplifted hand, and spared the much- 
 loved victim. 
 
 It is not easy to determine how far the 
 Patriarch was permitted to trace in all 
 this an adumbration of that infinite love 
 of the everlasting Father w4ucli induced 
 him not to spare, but freely to give up 
 his only-begotten Son to be made a 
 sacrifice, upon the very same chain of 
 mountains, and very nearly upon the 
 same spot which was made so memorable 
 by his own unexampled act of faith. 
 
 Isaac is unquestionably a very con- 
 spicuous type of Christ, and the points 
 of resemblance are strong and striking 
 
212 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 now that the great antitype has shed the 
 lustre of his own history upon the sha- 
 dows that preceded it. For instance : — 
 In the surrender of Isaac on the part of 
 Abraham ; in the unresisting submission 
 too, of Isaac to the stern determination 
 of his father — we behold, as in a glass, a 
 representation of the part assumed by 
 both the first and the second persons of 
 the eternal Trinity in the economy of 
 redemption. The assaults of earth and 
 hell to which the Saviour submitted, 
 were but as the wood and the knife 
 which Abraham took to slay his son. 
 They were but the instruments by which 
 Jehovah accomplished that which by his 
 own determinate counsel and foreknow- 
 ledge he had pre-ordained — " it pleased 
 the Lord to bruise him ;" and on the 
 other hand, the subjection of the Son to 
 those assaults was not from any impe- 
 rious and unavoidable necessity. For 
 when in the fulness of time ^' he took 
 upon him," mark the expression, took 
 
Abraham's seed. " 213 
 
 upon him by a will and purpose and 
 power of his own, '^ not the nature of 
 angels, but the seed of Abraham," do 
 we not hear him declaring of the 
 humanity thus assumed, ^' I lay down 
 my life of myself, no man taketh it 
 from me?" And when the last tragic 
 scenes of his life, of unequalled priva- 
 tion and suffering, were drawing to a 
 close — in the garden of Gethsemane, 
 we are reminded still of the patient 
 submission of Isaac, ''Father, if it be 
 possible, let this cup pass from me : 
 nevertheless not as I will, but as thou 
 wilt;" and when standing in the midst 
 of that infuriated populace by which 
 Pilate's judgment-hall was crowded, he 
 declared that if his resolution to abide 
 the worst should for a moment waver, 
 he could command legions of angels to 
 vindicate his cause ; and when after the 
 mockery of a trial, his unrighteous sen- 
 tence was passed, and his ignominious 
 death decreed — though possessing power 
 
214 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 to cause the bowels of the earth to en- 
 tomb, or the fires of heaven to scorch 
 his blood-thirsty enemies — lo ! like Isaac 
 still, '^ he was led as a lamb to the 
 slaughter." In all these, and it may 
 be in some other respects, Isaac was a 
 type of Christ ; bat in the transaction 
 referred to in my text, we must cease to 
 regard him in that light altogether ; 
 otherwise we lose sight of its distinguish- 
 ing feature — that which pervades the 
 whole scheme of human redemption — 
 that in which, if Abraham was taught 
 to trace even the simplest elements of 
 that scheme, he must have discovered 
 them — and that, moreover, which is 
 implied in the very name which was 
 affixed to the locality where it took 
 place — '^ Jehovah-jireh." It was the 
 vicarious sacrifice of the ram, brought 
 by God himself to the hand of Abraham, 
 at the fearful crisis when Isaac was 
 bound as the devoted victim, in which 
 we see in a figure, the substitution of 
 
Abraham's seed. 215 
 
 that Divine sacrifice which God, in the 
 counsels of eternity had foreordained 
 and provided to be offered up in the 
 room and stead of man — ^'he hath made 
 Him to be sin," a sin-offering '^for 
 us, who knew no sin ; that we might be 
 made the righteousness of God in him." 
 Such a substitution can only be appre- 
 hended, at least to its full extent and to 
 any saving purpose, by a living and a 
 divine faith ; the soul must be brought 
 to renounce every other way of being 
 reconciled to God, before it lays hold of 
 the sacrifice which the Lord hath pro- 
 vided. And the circumstances under 
 which the Gospel propitiation is gene- 
 rally embraced, bear some analogy to 
 those in which my text exhibits the 
 Patriarch Abraham ; the renunciation 
 of self-righteousness, that darling of 
 every natural heart, is frequently at- 
 tended with struggles and with pangs, 
 not wholly unlike those which, we can 
 easily conceive, the Patriarch had to 
 
216 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 endure in his journey to Moriah. And 
 yet, till this is renounced, we cannot 
 take hold of the vicarious sacrifice and 
 imputed righteousness of Christ ; we 
 cannot glory in his cross, or magnify 
 his grace, or triumph in his love. Till 
 we see ourselves lost, ruined, and sen- 
 tenced to eternal death — till we abandon 
 ourselves to the requirements of Divine 
 justice — till we are brought to own, 
 that in withering our dearest, our im- 
 mortal hopes, God would be righteous 
 still ; — never can we walk in the steps of 
 Abraham; never shall we ascend with 
 trembling feet and heaving breasts the 
 Gospel Moriah, the mount of Calvary; 
 never shall we hear the voice of the 
 angel of the covenant bidding us to 
 despair no longer ; never shall we see 
 written there in characters of blood, and 
 yet with beams of divine love reflected 
 in that very blood — " Jehovah-jireh, the 
 Lord will provide." "• Forasmuch as ye 
 know ye were not redeemed with cor- 
 
Abraham's seed. 217 
 
 ruptible things as silver and gold, . . . but 
 with the precious blood of Christ, as of a 
 iamb without blemish and without spot ; 
 who verily was fore-ordained before the 
 foundation of the world, but was in these 
 last times manifested for you who by 
 him do believe in God that raised him 
 from the dead, and gave him glory, that 
 your faith and hope might be in God." 
 Little perhaps did Abraham imagine, 
 when answering the touching question 
 of his son, that God had provided any 
 other lamb than the very son who asked 
 it ; nor would the trial of his faith have 
 been so complete if he had ; on this 
 point he walked in darkness and had 
 no light, but he trusted in the name of 
 the Lord and stayed upon his God : he 
 felt that he was placed in circumstances 
 wherein he was called not to reason, but 
 to obey — not to confer with flesh and 
 blood, but to follow wherever God led 
 the way — and to do whatever God re- 
 quired — and to welcome whatever God 
 
218 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 should appoint — '' It is the Lord, let 
 him do as seemeth him good." This, 
 brethren, is the point to which in some 
 way or other every genuine believer 
 must be brought. Selfish feelings, car- 
 nal reasonings, worldly policy, temporal 
 interests, all must be sacrificed, when- 
 ever they clash with the plain and posi- 
 tive decrees of Him. from whose tribunal 
 there can be no appeal : and nature is 
 thus humbled that grace may triumph ; 
 man is thus brought low, that the Lord 
 alone may be exalted ; believers, like 
 Abraham in this passage — like his pos- 
 terity at Pi-hahiroth — are brought into 
 straits and difficulties, that, driven from 
 every other dependence, they may lift 
 the eye of faith to the rending heavens ; 
 and in the attitude at once of readiness 
 to move at his bidding, and of patient 
 submission to his decrees — '^ stand still 
 and see the salvation of God." 
 
 Such was the frame of mind evinced 
 by the Patriarch at this most trying 
 
ABRAHAM'S SEED. 219 
 
 crisis ; — he sanctified the Lord of hosts 
 himself, and made Him his fear and his 
 dread, and He therefore became his 
 sanctuary ; for ' ' the secret of the Lord 
 is with them that fear Him, and He will 
 show them His covenant.'' Accordingly 
 the faith and obedience of Abraham, re- 
 sulting from this predominating principle, 
 the fear of the Lord (Gen. xxii. 12), were 
 in this way rewarded : not that they 
 could possibly merit any such reward, 
 for never must it be forgotten that while 
 God promises to reward the qualities in 
 his people which he approves ; and 
 while all who are truly his people will 
 ever be aspiring after those rewards ; the 
 rewards from the highest to the lowest, 
 which either God promises or his people 
 attain — are not of debt but of grace. 
 " By myself have I sworn, saith the 
 Lord, for because thou hast done this 
 thing, and hast not withheld thy son, 
 thine only son : — that in blessing I will 
 bless thee, and in multiplying, I will mul- 
 
 l2 
 
220 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 tiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven ^ 
 and as the sand which is upon the sea 
 shore ; . . . and in thy seed shall all 
 the nations of the earth be blessed ; be- 
 cause thou hast obeyed my voice." 
 
 II. We must now proceed to consider 
 the covenant thus confirmed and estab- 
 lished — the parties interested in it — and 
 the blessings comprehended under it. 
 
 The covenant is evidently twofold — 
 having reference to two distinct classes 
 of blessings ; one literal and temporal, 
 the other spiritual and eternal. Corres- 
 ponding with which division, we have 
 two distinct parties to whom its promises 
 and provisions respectively belong ; the 
 first being his natural descendants, who 
 are interested in its temporal blessings — 
 the second, his spiritual seed, or all true 
 believers in Christ, to whom alone belong 
 its spiritual and eternal blessings. 
 
 On the natural offspring of Abraham, 
 the covenant made with that illustrious 
 Patriarch upon his first setting his foot 
 
Abraham's seed. 221 
 
 upon the land of Canaan, entailed the 
 whole length and breadth of that land as 
 an inalienable inheritance. ^^ The Lord 
 appeared unto Abram and said, unto thy 
 seed will I give this land." (Gen. xii. 7.) 
 This covenant on several important occa- 
 sions Jehovah was pleased to ratify ; 
 thus, after the brave exploits noticed in 
 my last discourse, the same promise was 
 repeated, and confirmed with an oath ; 
 that is, with the same forms with which 
 all important treaties were in that day 
 solemnized — by the separation of the 
 pieces of victims slain for the purpose, 
 and the passing of the parties between 
 the pieces : by which treaty thus attested, 
 Jehovah consigned the land to Abra- 
 ham's seed, " from the river of Egypt 
 unto the great river, the river Eu- 
 phrates." (Gen. XV. 18.) Which cove- 
 nant was again renewed soon afterwards, 
 with yet stronger assurances of its dura- 
 bility, and distinguished by the appoint- 
 ment of circumcision as its token or seal — 
 
222 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 '^ I will give to thee, and to thy seed 
 after thee, the land wherein thou art a 
 stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an 
 everlasting possession, and I will be 
 their God ; " — in which covenant every 
 descendant of Abraham was concerned, 
 npon the simple condition that he re- 
 ceived its appointed token — circumcision. 
 Thus far the promises of God to Abra- 
 ham are mainly, if not entirely, restricted 
 to temporal benefits, as the portion of his 
 literal seed : every circumcised Jew may 
 regard them as the title-deeds of his in- 
 heritance — an inheritance which belongs 
 to his nation at this present day, as much 
 as it has ever done — ''God hath not 
 cast away his people" — they are still 
 " beloved for the fathers' sakes ;" and 
 though scattered over the face of the 
 whole earth, though pointed at by the 
 finger of scorn and reproach, and marked 
 as the objects of oppression and wrong 
 — yet neither the unbelief of the Jew, 
 nor the scorning of the Gentile, can 
 
Abraham's seed. 223 
 
 make the promise of God of none effect ; 
 the land of Canaan, in the lengtli and 
 breadth of it, is still the '^ everlasting- 
 possession " of the seed of Abraham, 
 Jehovah is still the God of Israel : and 
 the day may not be distant when the 
 God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, 
 shall from the east, and west, and north, 
 and south, gather together his banished 
 ones — place their unshackled feet upon 
 the necks of their enemies — and brino- 
 them with songs of triumph and with 
 shouts of joy, in which all the astonished 
 world shall sympathise — to that fair and 
 fruitful land wherein their father was a 
 stranger, and which Jehovah gave to 
 him and his seed after him, to their ut- 
 most generation, to be their own peculiar 
 inheritance — 
 
 God will avenge His captive people's woes, 
 And hurl His thunders on their scorning foes ; 
 Their gold again shall shine — their fine gold blaze 
 In the full splendour of Religion's rays : 
 And Zion — spurning the oppressor's rod — 
 Shall rise to life, and liberty, and God. 
 
224 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 Hear the word of the Lord upon this 
 point by the mouth of the prophet 
 Jeremiah — '' considerest thou not what 
 this people have spoken, saying, The 
 two families which the Lord hath chosen 
 he hath even cast them off? thus they 
 have despised my people that they 
 should be no more a nation before them. 
 Thus saith the Lord, If m^^ covenant be 
 not with day and night, and if I have 
 not appointed the ordinances of heaven 
 and earth, then will I cast away the 
 seed of Jacob and David my servant, so 
 that I will not take any of his seed to 
 be rulers over the seed of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob ; for I will cause their 
 captivity to return, and have mercy 
 upon them." (Ch. xxxiii. 24 — 26.) 
 
 But the renewal of this covenant with 
 Abraham in my text, is worthy of our 
 most serious examination; — it was to 
 this renewal of it to which St. Paul re- 
 ferred when he emphatically declared 
 that the Gospel was preached to Abra- 
 
Abraham's seed. 225 
 
 ham : observe, it makes no mention 
 whatever of circumcision as the seal, or 
 of the land of Canaan as the object of 
 the covenant, but it promises an infinite 
 multiplication of his seed — their triumph 
 over their enemies — and the blessing 
 through them to come upon the whole 
 world. Here then it is we are especially 
 to look for the spiritual and eternal be- 
 nefits of the Abrahamic covenant — bene- 
 fits to which his natural descendants, as 
 such, have no title whatever, and the 
 true proprietors of which will be found 
 in another '^ seed of Abraham," typified 
 indeed by the literal seed, but totally 
 distinct from them, as well before as 
 after the introduction of Christianity. 
 Thus, in a time of universal degeneracy 
 and apostacy, Jehovah declared, that all 
 the house of Israel were uncircumcised in 
 heart (Jer. ix. 26), agreeing with which 
 is the well-known statement of St. Paul, 
 " He is not a Jew which is one out- 
 wardly, neither is that circumcision 
 
 l5 
 
226 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 which is outward in the flesh ; but he is 
 a Jew which is one inwardly, and cir- 
 cumcision is that of the heart, in the 
 spirit and not in the letter, whose praise 
 is not of men but of God." (Rom. ii. 
 28, 29). Abraham was approved of 
 God on the ground of his faith — a faith 
 prompting to obedience, and by works 
 made perfect — having the Eternal Spirit 
 as its author, and the Divine Messiah 
 and his mediation as its supreme and 
 all-commanding object : and all of every 
 age, and clime, and kindred, whose 
 faith has rested upon the same object, 
 have been in a spiritual sense his seed, 
 and all others, though sprung from his 
 loins, have borne no relation to him as 
 '' the father of the faithful." Hence said 
 our Lord himself to the unbelieving 
 Jews, '' If ye were the children of 
 Abraham, ye would do the works of 
 Abraham ; " to which St. Paul supplies 
 a most important corollary — " know ye, 
 therefore, that they which are of faith, 
 
Abraham's seed. 227 
 
 the same are the children of Abraham." 
 Circumcision is not, nor has it ever 
 been, the badge of the spiritual seed — 
 nor has uncircumcision ever been the 
 ground of exclusion from its privileges. 
 (Rom. iv. 11.) Circumcision ever has 
 been, and still is, indispensably neces- 
 sary in order to entitle the Jew to the 
 temporal promises of the covenant which 
 God made with Abraham, but it does 
 nothing more for him — it does not unite 
 him to Christ, and consequently confers 
 upon him no claim to evangelical bless- 
 ings ; '' for in Christ Jesus neither cir- 
 cumcision availeth anything, nor un- 
 circumcision, but faith which worketh 
 by love ; " — and again — '' we are the 
 circumcision (spiritually) who worship 
 God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ 
 Jesus, and have no confidence in the 
 flesh." Thus the two different seeds are 
 broadly defined — the one is literal, com- 
 prehending all those who are " born 
 after the flesh," the other is spiritual. 
 
228 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 comprehending all those who have been 
 '^ born after the Spirit." To these latter, 
 and to them alone, the covenant which 
 was confirmed of God in Christ four 
 hundred and thirty years prior to the 
 giving of the law belongs. Accordingly, 
 in vindicating the honour and pro- 
 claiming the verities of the Gospel in 
 his noble Epistle to the Galatians, the 
 great apostle of the Gentiles passes over 
 that subordinate part of the Abrahamic 
 covenant which secured to his natural 
 descendants certain temporal advantages 
 and possessions ; he makes scarcely any 
 mention of that literal seed to whom by the 
 terms of the covenant those advantages 
 and possessions exclusively belong ;f but 
 magnifying his office as an apostle of that 
 crucified One, in whom, as the centre, 
 all the typical and prophetical lines met 
 and terminated ; and, taking an expan- 
 sive view of the mighty scheme of re- 
 demption, at once in its retrospective 
 and prospective aspects, — he most dis- 
 
Abraham's seed. 229 
 
 tinctly identifies the covenant with Abra- 
 ham with the discoveries of Christianity, 
 and scatters to the wdnds every claim 
 to a participation in its rich, sublime, 
 and eternal benefits, save that of a 
 vital union to Christ. And this he 
 does, first, by telling us that the Gospel 
 promises were given to Abraham and his 
 seed, w^iich is Christ ; comprising in the 
 term all who are Christ's, as in 1 Cor. 
 xii. 12 : and again, by reducing the 
 self-righteous Jew to precisely the same 
 level as the uncircumcised heathen in 
 the matter of being in the highest and 
 inde^^d only evangelical sense — the seed 
 of Abraham — ^' There is neither Jew 
 nor Greek, there is neither bond nor 
 free, there is neither male nor female — 
 for ye are all one in Christ Jesus — and 
 if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's 
 seed, and heirs according to the pro- 
 mise." (Gal. iii. 28, 29.) 
 
 All which is in perfect harmony with 
 the statements he every where gives of 
 
230 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 this distinguishing glory of the Gospel. 
 If we turn to his Epistle to the Ephe- 
 sianSj we find him, in the second chap- 
 ter, plainly teaching that one grand 
 effect of Christ's incarnation and death, 
 was the completion of the original cove- 
 nant with Abraham, by bringing the 
 believing Gentile, equally with the be- 
 lieving Jew, into a state of reconciliation 
 with God ; employing language remark- 
 ably parallel with that we find in Gal. iii. 
 14, wherein he declares the end of the 
 Saviour's meritorious cross and passion 
 to be ^' that the blessing of Abraham 
 might come on the Gentiles through 
 Jesus Christ, that we might receive the 
 promise of the Spirit through faith/" 
 And to adduce only one more passage to 
 the same eflfect, in 1 Cor. xii. 12, 13, 
 with a similar reference to the distinctive 
 character of Christianity as a '' ministra- 
 tion of the Spirit," he says, '^ for by one 
 Spirit we are all baptized into one body, 
 whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether 
 
Abraham's seed. 231 
 
 we be bond or free, and have been all 
 made to drink into one Spirit." 
 
 Such, then, being the spiritual seed of 
 Abraham, what are the specific blessings 
 which the covenant made with him as 
 the father of all them that believe, com- 
 prises ? These, of course, must corres- 
 pond to that new nature of which they 
 are made partakers, " for if any man be 
 in Christ he is a new creature." The 
 same analogy, however, which subsists 
 between the parties interested in the 
 covenant, may be also traced in its bless- 
 ings ; the transitory and terrestrial ad- 
 vantages restricted to the one, were but 
 shadowy representations of the more 
 spiritual privileges and more durable 
 benefits made sure to the other. Thus, 
 if the sons of circumcision w^ere, on re- 
 ceiving that significant token, received 
 into national relationship with God — all 
 who believe in Christ, and are sealed 
 with the Holy Spirit of promise, are in a 
 far higher sense made his children by 
 
232 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 adoption and grace, '' for to as many as 
 received Him (Christ), to them gave he 
 power to become the sons of God, even 
 to them that believe on his name, which 
 were born not of blood, nor of the will 
 of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but 
 of God." Circumcision— while it distin- 
 guished the literal seed of Abraham from 
 all other nations of the earth — constituted 
 their title to a participation in the tem- 
 poral provisions of the covenant of which 
 it was the seal. And faith, while it distin- 
 guishes the true followers of Christ from 
 all the other sons and daughters of men 
 — constitutes their title to all the more 
 exalted privileges, consolations, and 
 prospects which are involved in the glo- 
 rious Gospel of the blessed God; '' for 
 the Scripture foreseeing that God would 
 justify the heathen through faith, 
 preached before the Gospel unto Abra- 
 ham, saying, in thee shall all nations be 
 blessed ; so then they which be of faith 
 are blessed with faithful Abraham." 
 
Abraham's seed. 233 
 
 St. Paul, indeed, in a very remark- 
 able passage in his Epistle to the Ro- 
 mans, (ch. iv. 13, &c.) leads us to think 
 that the occupancy of the whole land of 
 Canaan by the literal children of Abra- 
 ham, does typify the universal triumph 
 of the Church of Christ in this present 
 world ; — and doubtless there are num- 
 berless passages to strengthen the idea — 
 leading on our faith to a period when her 
 days of mourning, and sackcloth, and 
 persecution shall be ended ; and her 
 children shall possess the gate of their 
 enemies; and ^' the kingdom, and do- 
 minion, and greatness of the kingdom 
 under the whole heaven shall be given 
 to the people of the saints of the Most 
 High, whose kingdom is an everlasting 
 kingdom, and all dominions shall serve 
 Him." (Dan. vii. 27.) 
 
 But the earthly Canaan was typical 
 of something higher, more glorious, 
 more lasting still — the rest which re- 
 maineth for the people of God — the 
 
234 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 land in which the Canaanite shall no 
 more be found, and which no hostile 
 nations shall encircle — the land which 
 secures an exemption from all evil, and 
 the eternal fruition of all good — the 
 land in which all the ransomed Church 
 of Christ shall for ever realize the bless- 
 ings of which his blood was the purchase 
 price — blessings not confined within the 
 boundaries, or measured by the duration 
 of time, but in every way adapted to the 
 exalted nature, the expansive faculties, 
 the angel-like aspirings of the immortal 
 soul ! That to this consummation of the 
 believer's hopes the true people of God 
 under former dispensations were taught 
 to look forw^ard — is not a matter of 
 idle conjecture ; the declaration of our 
 Church (Art. 7) that '' they are not to 
 be heard which feign that the old fathers 
 did look only for transitory promises," 
 is backed by a declaration resting on far 
 higher authority — even that of St. Paul, 
 who tells us of these old fathers that 
 
Abraham's seed. 235 
 
 they " all died in faith, not having re- 
 ceived the promises, but having seen 
 them afar off, and were persuaded of 
 them, and embraced them, and con- 
 fessed that they were pilgrims upon 
 earth — desiring a better country, that 
 is a heavenly. (Heb. xi. 13 — 16.) 
 
 With two general observations I will 
 now conclude my present subject. And, 
 first, we are reminded by it of the essen- 
 tial importance of living faith. It was 
 this, as a vital and transforming prin- 
 ciple, which moulded the whole cha- 
 racter and regulated the whole conduct 
 of Abraham ; and his actions were 
 pleasing to God only in proportion as 
 they were prompted and purified by 
 faith. Had it been possible for him to 
 have complied with the terrible com- 
 mand, enjoined in the opening of the 
 chapter, from any other motive — obe- 
 dience could never have obtained the 
 same commendation; for '^ whatsoever 
 is not of faith, is sin." To this prin- 
 
236 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 ciple, therefore, St. Paul distinctly 
 traces every action of the Patriarch's life 
 which is proposed for our imitation ; and 
 by the possession of this principle, alone, 
 can we ever be numbered with his chil- 
 dren, or obtain part or lot in their in- 
 heritance. It is true that the great ob- 
 jects of faith have, in various stages of the 
 wonderful apparatus of redemption, been 
 presented with different degrees of clear- 
 ness and grandeur ; but those objects have 
 ever been the same ; and the apprehension 
 of those objects, according to their degree 
 of development at the time, have ever 
 distinguished those who have served 
 God aright, and those who have served 
 him not. The principle, however, is 
 divine — it cometh from above — it is the 
 gift of God — and not as a quality in 
 man, but as a benefit freely and gra- 
 ciously bestowed upon man is it counted 
 unto man for righteousness; — ^' Where 
 is boasting, then ? " St. ' Paul signifi- 
 cantly asks ; " it is excluded ; by what 
 
Abraham's seed. 237 
 
 law — of works? — nay, but by the law of 
 faith." 
 
 But once more. The principle which 
 is thus implanted, which thus appre- 
 hends the truths which come to it em- 
 blazoned with the Divine sanction ; and 
 which thus moreover avails for complete 
 justification, can never be a dormant and 
 inoperative principle ; — it will, like the 
 quickening influences of heaven upon 
 the face of nature, break forth in a thou- 
 sand forms of energetic existence. All 
 else is artificial and perishable ; it may 
 have the semblance of obedience, and 
 borrow the colouring of piety, but is at 
 best, form without power — body without 
 spirit. Not such the faith of Abraham 
 — it was at once the evidence and the 
 eflPect of spiritual regeneration, and all 
 its fruits partook of its own nature, and 
 exhibited its essential properties; hence 
 St. James enquires — when contrasting 
 such a faith 'with the cold, barren, 
 corpse-like assent to revealed truths 
 
238 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 which thousands substitute for it — '^ was 
 not Abraham our father justified by 
 works, when he had offered Isaac his son 
 upon the altar? — seest thou how faith 
 wrought with his works, and by works 
 was faith made perfect." The point he 
 wishes to establish is simply this — that a 
 justifying faith is in its very nature a 
 working faith ; and that to whatever 
 men may give the name of faith, if it 
 be destitute of this characteristic — it 
 must be also of that property. He 
 shows, moreover, the reciprocal action of 
 faith upon works and of works upon 
 faith ; for as a principle of life it is 
 not a mere series of actions—- but a prac- 
 tical habit, to the vigour and maturity 
 of which unremitting exercise is abso- 
 lutely essential. He shows, also, the 
 progressive nature of the principle — 
 A tree in the barrenness and destitution 
 of winter is an emblem of a soul before 
 the attainment of a divine faith. In 
 spring, when it puts forth its tender 
 
Abraham's seed. 23,9 
 
 buds, we behold a soul brought under 
 the vivifying influence of faith. In 
 summer, when clothed with foliage and 
 adorned with blossoms, we see the in- 
 creasing vigour and productiveness of 
 faith. But when bending beneath the 
 full ripe crop of autumn, we have a 
 beautiful representation of a soul when 
 its faith is made perfect by its works. 
 The principle is the same in every stage 
 — but the effects of the principle become 
 more marked and more convincing. 
 (2 Pet. i. 5—8.) To this stage had 
 Abraham's faith arrived when he wil- 
 lingly obeyed the divine command to 
 yield up a treasure which lived in his 
 heart's affections second only to the fa- 
 vour of his God. And not the proof of 
 its existence — but the fact that it did exist, 
 to an extent capable of abiding such 
 a proof — was the thing which distin- 
 guished Abraham as the friend of God, 
 and led the High and Lofty One to 
 renew with him that covenant of grace 
 
240 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 which to all genuine believers in Christ 
 is well ordered in all things and sure. 
 
 Brethren, presume not upon the exist- 
 ence of the principle, without satisfactory 
 evidence of its legitimate operation in 
 your hearts and lives ; if it be genuine, 
 it must be effective — if it be alive, it 
 must have a beating pulse as well as a 
 blooming countenance. You cannot be 
 " as Isaac was, the children of the pro- 
 mise" — if you have not the faith of Abra- 
 ham ; and this again cannot be, unless 
 your faith, like his, assumes the govern- 
 ment of your affections, and takes prece- 
 dence of all other springs of action. 
 
 We think of Abraham, and we admire 
 his fortitude, while in imagination we fol- 
 low his footsteps to the summit of Moriah, 
 and contemplate with painful interest the 
 submissive parent taking the child he had 
 desired so long, and loved so intensely, 
 and binding the fatal cord around his 
 youthful limbs, and stretching upon the 
 altar's fuel — the passive victim : and 
 
Abraham's seed. 241 
 
 when, with an involuntary shudder, we 
 turn away from the uplifted arm and 
 glittering knife, we probably can scarce 
 persuade ourselves that anything in our 
 own experience can ever bear the smallest 
 analogy to a scene so heart-rending as 
 this. And yet, beloved brethren, let me 
 ask — may there not be dwelling in your 
 breast some darling and besetting sin, 
 some secret and long-cherished lust — to 
 which you cling with all a parent's fond- 
 ness, and to the continued indulgence of 
 which you are ready to think your hap- 
 piness is inseparably allied ? This, then, 
 is the Isaac God calls upon you to sacri- 
 fice, and by the sacrifice of which you 
 must prove that you are walking in the 
 steps of that faith of Abraham which 
 God in his Word has stamped with im- 
 perishable renown. Plead as it may for 
 longer existence, ready as your own heart 
 may be to second and even to antici- 
 pate its most specious and urgent plead- 
 ings, whatever the subtle adversary of 
 
 M 
 
242 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 souls may suggest of its insignificance 
 and harmlessness, and though more will- 
 ing to give up a thousand other sins ra- 
 ther than this ''little one," the command 
 of God must silence all your objections 
 and all your pleas. You must take this 
 dearest idol of your carnal heart — you 
 must ascend with it from the vale of 
 sensual delight to the mount of heavenly- 
 mindedness — and then with the cords of 
 holy resolution you must bind, and on the 
 altar of Christian devotedness you must 
 stretch, and with the knife of self-denial 
 you must slay, the struggling, slow- 
 expiring victim, for which neither earth 
 nor heaven will supply you with a sub- 
 stitute. Never but by some such a test as 
 this, can you take for granted that you 
 are " Abraham's seed and heirs accord- 
 ing to the promise ;" never but by works 
 corresponding in some measure to the 
 case described, will your faith be made 
 perfect. And be assured nothing can 
 abide such a test, or produce such works, 
 
Abraham's seed. 243 
 
 but that faith which is of the operation of 
 God ; for in reply to the momentous en- 
 quiry of the Jews — " What shall we do, 
 that we might work the works of God ? 
 Jesus answered and said, This is the 
 work of God, that ye believe on him 
 whom He hath sent." And glorious is 
 the destiny of those, who thus like Abra- 
 ham see the heaven-sent Messiah — and are 
 by a living faith in Him incorporated into 
 his mystical body, '' which is the blessed 
 company of all faithful people ;" for this, 
 the voice that never sanctioned error or 
 uttered falsehood, solemnly declared — 
 "■ This is the will of Him that sent me, 
 that every one which seeth the Son and 
 believeth on him may have everlasting 
 life, and I will raise him up at the last 
 day;"- — decked with the robe of righteous- 
 ness, clothed in the garments of salvation, 
 — changed into the image of the glorified 
 Jesus, — absorbed in the splendours of a 
 cloudless immortality, — and enriched 
 with the fruition of the Triune Deitv ! 
 
 M 2 
 
244 
 
 DISCOURSE VIL 
 
 JACOB'S DREAM. 
 
 " AND JACOB WENT OUT FROM BEER SHEBA AND WENT 
 TOWARDS HARAN. AND HE LIGHTED UPON A CER- 
 TAIN PLACE, AND TARRIED THERE ALL NIGHT BE- 
 CAUSE THE SUN WAS SET; AND HE TOOK OF THE 
 STONES OF THAT PLACE, AND PUT THEM FOR HIS 
 PILLOWS, AND LAY DOWN IN THAT PLACE TO SLEEP. 
 AND HE DREAMED, AND BEHOLD A LADDER SET UP 
 ON THE EARTH, AND THE TOP OF IT REACHED TO 
 HEAVEN; AND BEHOLD THE ANGELS OF GOD AS- 
 CENDING AND DESCENDING ON IT." - Gen. xxviii. 
 10—12. 
 
 God is no respecter of persons, neither is 
 the book which His Spirit hath revealed. 
 With an impartiality, which only can be 
 accounted for by its divine original, it 
 exhibits, with almost equal prominency, 
 in the most eminent characters whose 
 history it records, those failings which it 
 behoves us to avoid, as well as those vir- 
 
Jacob's dream. 245 
 
 tues which we are called upon to imitate. 
 Jacob is a striking instance of this. It 
 is impossible to justify and difficult to 
 extenuate the earlier actions which are 
 recorded of him. The transaction with 
 Esau in the matter of his birthright, 
 while it plainly indicates on the part of 
 his brother a criminal disregard to those 
 promises of God which belonged to 
 Abraham and his seed for ever, demon- 
 strates also that he himself was too ready 
 to become what his name implies — a 
 supplanter. But this infirmity of his 
 character was still more clearly shown 
 in the surreptitious manner in which he 
 obtained his father's blessing. It was, 
 indeed, a melancholy instance of human 
 degeneracy, both on the part of Jacob 
 and his mother ; — for it is possible that 
 both had persuaded themselves, as mul- 
 titudes have ever since been doing, that 
 the end would sanctify the means. Re- 
 bekah had doubtless pondered in her 
 heart the remarkable struggle of the 
 
246 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 twins in her womb, and the promise of 
 the Lord that the elder should serve the 
 younger ; and it was right for her to 
 desire the accomplishment of what he 
 had promised ; but nothing could be 
 more opposed to those principles which 
 God has laid down for the regulation of 
 human conduct than the method she 
 adopted for this purpose ; — it was mani- 
 festly doing evil that good may come. 
 She had ever shown an inexcusable 
 weakness in suffering an overweaning 
 partiality for one of her children to 
 work, with so little disguise, to the pre- 
 judice of another. Favouritism on the 
 part of parents can only be productive of 
 envy, and contention, and sin among 
 their offspring. Every child must be 
 conscious of an equal claim upon pa- 
 rental regards with all who derived their 
 being from the same father and mother 
 as themselves ; and consequently will 
 be prepared to rebel against an unequal 
 distribution of those regards as an in- 
 
Jacob's dream. 247 
 
 fringement of natural rights; and hence, 
 in countless instances, arise those jea- 
 lousies and heart-burnings which too 
 often overspread the domestic scene — 
 where only the lovely flowers of harmony 
 and love should appear — with the dead- 
 liest roots of bitterness ! That such was 
 the state of things even in this patriarchal 
 family, we learn from Gen. xxv. 28, 
 wherein it is written that " Isaac loved 
 Esau because he did eat of his venison, 
 but Rebekah loved Jacob." It was this 
 undue partiality for her younger son 
 which induced her to take the measures 
 she did, not only for exalting him above 
 his elder brother, but also imposing upon 
 his aged father. Jacob, it was true, was 
 arrived at a sufiicient age to see the 
 criminality of her crafty design — he 
 must have been fully aware that parental 
 commands should never be obeyed at the 
 sacrifice of those higher principles which 
 are involved in our moral responsibility 
 to God ; and consequently to both the 
 
248 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 mother and the son a high degree of 
 censure must ever attach ; and the de- 
 ception they conjointly practised upon 
 the dying patriarch — whatever v^^ere the 
 motives by which they were influenced — 
 must ever be regarded as arguing a 
 lamentable lack of high-toned moral 
 feeling, as well as a proper confidence 
 in that God who, in the face of human 
 improbabilities, and in defiance of the 
 mightiest impediments, moves onwards 
 in silent majesty to the consummation of 
 his own eternal purposes. Beloved 
 brethren, He who is over all from the 
 beginning has ever been engaged in 
 overruling the infirmities and the sins of 
 his people for good, since the day that 
 he made the transgression of Adam an 
 occasion for displaying before all created 
 intelligences the glorious harmony and 
 manifold wisdom of his divine and indi- 
 visible attributes. But let no one ima- 
 gine that because he does this he gives 
 the shadow of a sanction to their obli- 
 
Jacob's dream. 249 
 
 quities ; or that because he makes good 
 to arise out of evil, he thereby, in the 
 smallest degree, confounds evil with 
 good ; far otherwise ; he may make our 
 follies and even our crimes occasions for 
 exhibiting more fully his own trans- 
 cendent grace and forbearance ; but it 
 will invariably be in such a manner as 
 to compel us to feel that sin — whatever 
 be the form or complexion it assumes — 
 whether manifesting itself in the im- 
 pieties of the wicked or the inconsisten- 
 cies of the righteous — is that abominable 
 thing which his righteous soul doth hate, 
 and which his righteous rod will punish. 
 We have evidence of this in the expe- 
 rience of Rebekah and Jacob ; the end 
 of both was indeed accomplished — the 
 coveted blessing w^as secured though at 
 the expense of truth and equity — Isaac 
 was disgracefully duped, and Esau was 
 unrighteously supplanted. Dearly, how- 
 ever, had both of the parties concerned 
 to pay for the success of their unprin- 
 
250 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 cipled stratagem. So exasperated was 
 Esau at the treachery of his brother, and 
 withal so stung by a consciousness of his 
 own misfortune in being thus deprived 
 of his father's blessing, that in order to 
 escape his vindictive and murderous in- 
 tentions, Jacob was compelled to fly from 
 his father's house, and to wander through 
 a land of strangers — while Rebekah was 
 deprived of the society of her favourite 
 child, and probably was never permitted 
 to see his face again. 
 
 Let us not, however, as an unchari- 
 table world generally does, so magnify 
 the blemishes and failings of the people 
 of God, as to conceal those brighter parts 
 of their character which demonstrate the 
 existence of principles God alone can 
 implant, and which He delighteth to 
 honour. Sad as was Jacob's error in 
 imagining that fraud was needful in 
 order to bring about results which God 
 had promised, let us not forget that even 
 the error manifestly originated in a too 
 
Jacob's dream. 251 
 
 impatient desire to inherit those pro- 
 mises of which his fond mother had 
 doubtless taken pains to acquaint him : 
 and while in the study of his history we 
 find so much to convince us that he was 
 a man of like passions, encumbered with 
 the same infirmities, and beset with the 
 same ensnarements as ourselves — let us 
 not overlook the abundant evidence it 
 affords of the superiority which divinely 
 implanted principles are able to exert 
 over the principles and the passions of 
 our fallen humanity. His infirmities 
 and inconsistencies let us attribute to the 
 struggling of the "" old man " ever seek- 
 ing to obtain the mastery over him ; — in 
 his meekness, and patience, and piety, 
 let us trace the features of that '' new 
 man" which is distinguished by con- 
 formity to the image of God, obedience 
 to His will, and enjoyment in His ser- 
 vice. 
 
 It was while upon his journey towards 
 Syria, the land where the family con- 
 
252 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 nexions of his mother dwelt, tliat the 
 symbolical vision related in my text was 
 vouchsafed to Jacob. It is not easy to 
 conceive a condition more sad and dis- 
 mal than his was at the time, or more 
 painfully contrasting with all he had left 
 behind. No mother's embraces had he 
 to comfort him, no father's table had he 
 to supply him, no paternal dwelling had 
 he to be at once his shelter and defence ; 
 on the contrary, we find him a solitary 
 traveller in a country he had never ex- 
 plored before, and wearied with the 
 journey of the day — every step of which 
 removed him further still from all that 
 he had then been taught to love and 
 value upon earth — the sun was leaving 
 the world in darkness, and he had 
 reached no city or habitation wherein to 
 find a resting-place for the night ! At 
 such a moment how exactly must the 
 dreariness and solitude without have 
 corresponded with the feelings of des- 
 titution which reigned within his breast. 
 
Jacob's dream. 253 
 
 But had Jacob no friend to comfort and 
 no arm to protect him ? An outcast on 
 earth, was heaven in like manner closed 
 against him? No; for, says the Psalmist, 
 "• to the righteous there ariseth light in 
 the darkness." And if there are seasons 
 when that light shines with more re- 
 viving lustre than at others, it is when 
 all creature comforts — w^hich, by inter- 
 vening between the soul and God, too 
 often eclipse the light in which man was 
 originally created to rejoice — have been 
 so entirely removed, that the soul is 
 brought into immediate contact with God 
 — to the uninterrupted view of his all- 
 sufficiency. So it was with Jacob ; so 
 it often was with his seed after him; 
 hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted 
 in them ; and when nature refused to 
 yield them the needed supplies, and 
 they were thus compelled to cast them- 
 selves upon nature's God, abundant 
 cause had they to rejoice that the drying 
 up of the streams brought them to realize 
 
254 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 the inexhaustible fulness of the foun- 
 tain ; for at the voice of their cry in the 
 extremity of their distress and the agony 
 of their despair, he made the very skies 
 to rain down bread, and the very rock to 
 burst out with water. Look again at 
 David ; driven by the unnatural rebel- 
 lion of his son and the relentless per- 
 secution of his enemies from his throne, 
 his palace, and all his earthly comforts, 
 he had still a refuge, a source of for- 
 titude, and an arm of might, of which 
 his enemies could never deprive him : — 
 and albeit their earthly riches and com- 
 forts were increasing, while his own 
 were fast ebbing away, he was still 
 happy in realizing blessings to which 
 those whereof they had stripped him 
 were less than nothing in comparison. 
 The desires of his soul were all em- 
 bodied in one brief petition : ^' Lord, 
 lift thou up the light of thy countenance 
 upon me !" and that petition answered, 
 he felt that he had nothing to fear. 
 
Jacob's dream. 255 
 
 Furious enemies he had, and dangers of 
 every kind encircled him ; and yet, in 
 the lovely spirit of holy resignation and 
 unshaken confidence, we find him sinking 
 into repose like a child on the guardian 
 bosom of a tender parent, and saying, 
 ^' I will lay me down and sleep ; for it 
 is thou, Lord, that makest me to dwell 
 in safety." 
 
 Exactly like this was the frame of 
 Jacob's mind, as exhibited in my text. 
 Far away from his home and his friends, 
 '^ he lighted upon a certain place, and 
 tarried there all night, because the sun 
 was set." He had no couch but the 
 chilling earth, no pillow but the naked 
 stones, no canopy but the darkened 
 skies, and yet, in all his loneliness and 
 destitution, there laid not down to rest 
 that night among all the living posterity 
 of Adam — however soft his bed, how- 
 ever splendid his dwelling, however nu- 
 merous his attendants — one more secure, 
 more truly to be envied than he. And 
 
256 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 wherefore ? Because the eternal God 
 was his refuge, and underneath him, 
 and above him, and around him, were 
 the everlasting arms. Ah ! brethren ; 
 we look to outward things, and we think 
 that our comforts depend upon them ; 
 but it is not so : our peace, and I may 
 say our security, are associated with the 
 inward state of the mind. We may have 
 a gorgeous canopy, and stretch our 
 limbs upon a downy couch, — but if we 
 have a restless conscience, and a dis- 
 ordered mind, we may court repose in 
 vain ; but if, on the other hand, con- 
 science be pacified, and the mind com- 
 posed — if God be our friend, and angels 
 our guardians, — we may sleep in perfect 
 peace, though our pillow may be as 
 hard as Jacob's, and our resting-place 
 as comfortless as his : for thus saith the 
 prophet of the righteous : ' ' they shall 
 enter into peace ; they shall rest in their 
 beds ; each one walking in his upright- 
 ness." A touching example of this was 
 
Jacob's dream. 257 
 
 given me a short time since, in the case 
 of an aged woman who, in the midst of 
 outward penury and privation, realized 
 in her soul the riches of faith and the 
 peace of God. She was found by a 
 Christian friend dwelling alone in a 
 miserable cottage, without another ha- 
 bitation near her ; but on his asking her 
 if she felt no fear in so lonely and de- 
 fenceless a situation, she sweetly replied, 
 " No ; for Faith shuts my door at night, 
 and Mercy opens it again in the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 The very things which render the 
 Christian in the eyes of natural men, 
 who judge only from external circum- 
 stances, '^ of all men the most miser- 
 able," render him in reality of all men 
 the most enviable. If his portion were 
 indeed circumscribed by the visible 
 boundaries of time and sense, it would 
 be otherwise : poverty, and disappoint- 
 ment, and affliction, would in that case 
 be barriers to his happiness. But since 
 
258 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 he has a better portion m prospect, — and 
 since all these earthly crosses and vexa- 
 tions are but the instruments which God 
 employs to endear that portion more per- 
 fectly to his heart, and, by their chastening 
 and sanctifying tendency, to qualify him 
 more richly and fully to enjoy it, — the 
 case is altered ; and, as St. Paul ex- 
 pressly teaches us, the afflicted Christian 
 glories in tribulation also, because, in 
 its very lowest depths, he is enabled more 
 triumphantly to '^ rejoice in hope of the 
 glory of God." 
 
 Look, brethren, to the narrative before 
 us, and see if it does not fully justify 
 such sentiments. Judging as men un- 
 enlightened by the Spirit of God would 
 judge, few would envy Jacob his cheer- 
 less lodging and his rocky pillow : but 
 none who have been born of God, and 
 taught to value spiritual joys above the 
 choicest earthly advantages, and to know 
 experimentally the sweetness of fellow- 
 ship with the Father and with his Son 
 
Jacob's dream. 259 
 
 Jesus Christ, would quarrel with Jacob's 
 lodging or Jacob's pillow, or exchange 
 them for the richest or softest which 
 earth contains, provided they may be 
 favoured with the special presence, pro- 
 tection, and blessing of Jacob's God. 
 
 Nothing could have been more suitable 
 than was the sublime vision itself to the 
 peculiar circumstances of Jacob, under 
 which it was vouchsafed him : an un- 
 protected, unaccompanied itinerant, he 
 might have been agitated with most dis- 
 tressing apprehensions of the dangers to 
 which he was exposed : — driven more- 
 over from his father's house, he might 
 have thought that he was excluded from 
 all participation in those glorious pro- 
 mises which God had annexed to that 
 house, and a criminal impatience to in- 
 herit which was the true cause of his 
 brother's resentment and his own exile : 
 and, therefore, the vision which, in a 
 dream, Jehovah presented to his mind, 
 was most admirably calculated to allay 
 
260 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 his fears in both these respects — for as to 
 the former ground of fear, the vision 
 supplied an antidote, by representing the 
 ever-watchful Providence of God ; and 
 as to the latter, what could so effectually 
 have removed it, as a vision having 
 special reference to the mysteries of re- 
 demption, accompanied with a ratification 
 of that covenant of grace, first made in 
 Eden, afterwards renewed with Abra- 
 ham, and permanently confirmed to him- 
 self and his posterity, of whom, as con- 
 cerning the flesh, Christ was to come, 
 who is over all, God blessed for ever. 
 
 Thus considered, the vision before us 
 has a twofold signification ; the one pri- 
 mary and subordinate, the other ultimate 
 and principal. 
 
 First, It was probably intended to con- 
 firm the faith and dissipate the fears of 
 the outcast and friendless Jacob, by re- 
 presenting to him the Providence which 
 Jehovah ever exercises over the affairs of 
 this lower world. It seemed to assure 
 
Jacob's dream. 261 
 
 him that, though driven from his father's 
 dwelling, and deprived of its comforts 
 and protection, he had still a friend in 
 heaven, who though immeasurably ex- 
 alted above all created beings, and veiled 
 from mortal sight by boundless inter- 
 vening space, was ever observing and 
 overruling the whole system of terrestrial 
 things — that lonely and defenceless as 
 his situation might seem to himself, holy 
 angels were the guardians of his waking 
 and his sleeping hours — that God not 
 only regarded the interests of man- 
 kind in the mass, and interfered in 
 their behalf in special and extraordinary 
 emergencies, but that he is ever about 
 the path, and ever engaged in the sup- 
 port of every individual being ; for the 
 ladder which represented the commu- 
 nication between heaven and earth, and 
 on which the angels of God seemed with 
 activity and delight to be passing to and 
 fro as His messengers, had its foot not in 
 the bustling and crowded city — not 
 amidst the scene of events which con- 
 
262 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 stitute some mighty epoch in the world's 
 history, but on the spot where Jacob was 
 lying without a friend, without a shelter, 
 and even without consciousness ! 
 
 And surely, brethren, the train of 
 thought thus awakened in our minds — the 
 fact thus incontestably established, that 
 we are individually the objects of the 
 regard of a wise and benign Providence 
 whose eye never slumbereth or sleepeth, 
 is peculiarly calculated to inspire a re- 
 flecting mind with gratitude, and con- 
 fidence, and joy. Amidst the vicissitudes 
 which are ever occurring, and the many 
 evils we have ever such abundant cause 
 to dread, O, what can preserve us from 
 absolute despondency, but the blessed 
 assurance that every event which con- 
 stitutes a link in the chain of our history, 
 is wisely adjusted by Him whose agency 
 is as absolutely needed in the slightest as 
 in the vastest movement of created ex- 
 istence — in the fall of an insignificant 
 sparrow, as in the flight of a fire -winged 
 
Jacob's dream. 263 
 
 seraph ! Had we ground to suspect that 
 there can possibly be a spot of earth upon 
 which the divine energy does not operate, 
 or an event of life to which his Pro- 
 vidence does not extend, that spot may 
 be the one to which our destiny is fixed 
 — that event may be the one by which 
 our future happiness is menaced : but 
 since this cannot be the case, since the 
 Providence of Jehovah embraces within 
 its parental and encircling arms all that 
 live, and move, and have any being ; 
 in short, the whole range of created 
 things in earth or heaven, without regard 
 to magnitude or importance, to time or 
 place — then, surely, we may take to oar- 
 selves the comfort of knowing and be- 
 lieving that we are not too insignificant 
 to be the objects of his notice — that none 
 of our concerns are so trivial, as to be 
 exempted from his care, — that as our very 
 hairs are numbered, so all our steps are 
 ordered, all our necessities known, all 
 our interests watched over by One who 
 
264 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 is '* too wise to err, and too good to be 
 unkind." It is this conviction which 
 gives its truest importance to all ter- 
 restrial things ; it is this which tempers 
 the exultation of success, and neutralizes 
 the bitterness of disappointment — which 
 takes from adversity its fang — peoples 
 solitude itself with heavenly companion- 
 ship — feeds us even in poverty and des- 
 titution with angels' food — and puts into 
 our mouths the song of the Prophet, when 
 too much tried and harassed to raise 
 any other. ^' Although the fig-tree shall 
 not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the 
 vines, the labour of the olive shall fail, 
 and the fields shall yield no meat ; the 
 flock shall be cut off from the fold, and 
 there shall be no herd in the stall ; yet 
 will I rejoice in the Lord ; I will joy in 
 the God of my salvation." 
 
 There's mercy in every place, 
 
 And mercy — encouraging thought — 
 
 Gives even affliction a grace, 
 And reconciles man to his lot. 
 
Jacob's dream. 265 
 
 II. But the vision we are now con- 
 sidering was emblematical of mysteries 
 far more profound than any connected 
 with the administration of Providence ; 
 it was a transcendent type of the Incarna- 
 tion of the eternal Son of God, in order to 
 effect the crowning work of Redemption. 
 
 The ladder, we are told, was set up on 
 earth, while the top thereof reached to 
 heaven : the foot of the ladder represents 
 to us the human nature assumed by our 
 Lord ; the top of the ladder represents 
 his divine nature, or godhead, touching 
 which he is equal to the Father ; while 
 the ladder itself stands as the stupendous 
 connection between the two ; for '* there 
 is one God, and one Mediator between 
 God and man— the man Christ Jesus" — 
 the man that is Jehovah's fellow. It is a 
 subject, brethren, of unfathomable mys- 
 tery, and yet of everlasting moment, 
 which now opens before our minds, even 
 the mystery of godliness, which, without 
 controversy, is great, that God should be 
 
 N 
 
266 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 manifest in the flesh. With probable 
 allusion to this very vision, our Saviour 
 declared of himself, " I am the way, and 
 the truth, and the life ; no man cometh 
 unto the Father but by me." And with 
 allusion to it still more pointed and intel- 
 ligible, he said to Nathanael, " Hereafter 
 ye shall see heaven opened, and the 
 angels ascending and descending upon 
 the Son of Man." 
 
 Jehovah makes no manifestation of 
 himself to fallen man, but through the 
 medium of his Son Jesus Christ. ^' No 
 man hath seen God at anytime — the only- 
 begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
 the Father, he hath declared him." Again : 
 '' No man knoweth the Father but the 
 Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall 
 reveal him. " It was to reveal the Father, 
 as well as to atone for the guilt of man, 
 that " the Word was made flesh and dwelt 
 among us;" and, therefore, when with 
 illumined minds they caught a glimpse 
 of the glory of Christ, the disciples recog- 
 
Jacob's dream. 267 
 
 nized him thereby, to be the only-begot- 
 ten of the Father. In Christ, we are 
 told, dwelt all the fulness of the godhead 
 bodily ; and it dwelt in him, not only as 
 the power and authority of an earthly 
 monarch may be delegated to one of his 
 subjects, but it dwelt in him essentially. 
 He was — if I may venture so to speak — 
 an accommodation of the overwhelming 
 majesty of God to the earth-bound capa- 
 cities of the fallen race, whose cause he 
 had voluntarily undertaken. The glories 
 of the sun in its meridian splendour are 
 too dazzling for our feeble powers of 
 vision ; but upon the moon, by which 
 those glories are in the night season 
 reflected, we can gaze with composure 
 and delight : even so, the full-orb 'd 
 brightness of the Divine attributes would 
 be too glorious for mortal contemplation — 
 it would overwhelm our inadequate capa- 
 cities ; but when the glories of the eternal 
 godhead are reflected in the person of 
 the Incarnate Son, they are no longer a 
 
 n2 
 
268 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 consuming fire, but a light to lighten our 
 otherwise dark and benighted souls. 
 Even the partial exhibition of His majesty 
 to the Israelites when Sinai burned with 
 his awful presence, was found to have an 
 overawing and a paralyzing effect upon 
 the human mind, and therefore they 
 begged that God would make himself 
 known to them in a way more suited to 
 their nature and capabilities ; and the 
 petition God acknowledged to be a wise 
 one, and he answered it by an express 
 prediction of the incarnation of the Mes- 
 siah for this purpose: ''The Lord thy 
 God will raise up unto thee a Prophet 
 from the midst of thee of thy brethren 
 like unto me ; unto him ye shall hearken 
 according to all that thou desiredst of the 
 Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of the 
 assembly, saying, Let me not hear again 
 the voice of the Lord my God, neither 
 let me see this great fire any more, that 
 I die not." (Deut. xviii. 15, 16.) Accord- 
 ingly, when the Divine Prophet here 
 
Jacob's dream. 269 
 
 spoken of was raised up, and by his 
 instructions had excited a desire in the 
 minds of his Apostles to behold that 
 Divine Being whose will it was his grand 
 object to reveal, we find one of their 
 number pointedly saying to him, " shew 
 us the Father ; " and what is the Saviour's 
 reply to so bold a request? — ^^ He that 
 hath seen me hath seen the Father." And 
 if any should object that such a declara- 
 tion must apply to his moral resemblance 
 to the Father, then we must place in 
 juxta-position with this saying, the one 
 which brought upon him the charge of 
 blasphemy from the unbelieving Jews, 
 " I and my Father are one" — one, not 
 merely in purpose, or in character, but 
 in being — essentially, everlastingly one. 
 
 If, therefore, it be true that there is no 
 other way of contemplating the glory of 
 God, but in the face of Jesus Christ, — if 
 there be no other way of drawing nigh 
 unto God but that '' new and living way 
 which he hath consecrated for us through 
 
270 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 the veil, that is to say, the fleshly or 
 human nature of Christ — then our Church 
 is fully warranted in maintaining that, 
 in order to eternal salvation, it is neces- 
 sary '' that we believe rightly the incar- 
 nation of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he 
 is perfect God and perfect man ; " by 
 which incomprehensible union of natures 
 in his one person, he is constituted the 
 day's man between the two, being at once 
 the everlasting Father, and the Son of 
 Man; in short, like Jacob's ladder, having 
 its foot upon earth, and its top in heaven. 
 Most readily, indeed, do we admit 
 that the precise nature of the union of 
 divinity with humanity in the person of 
 the God-man, Jehovah-Jesus, revela- 
 tion itself leaves enveloped in mystery 
 which the human mind is utterly unable 
 to penetrate : but the necessity of the 
 union, in order to constitute him a Sa- 
 viour, such as the character of God and 
 the condition of man required, is — if the 
 divine inspiration of the Bible be admit- 
 
Jacob's dream. 271 
 
 ted, most fully and indisputably demon- 
 strated therein. It was necessary to his 
 office as Mediator, that by partaking of 
 the nature of both the offended and the 
 offending parties, he might be touched 
 with the condition of the one, without 
 compromising the honour of the other, 
 and thus be able to effect a lasting recon- 
 ciliation between them. It was necessary 
 that, as our Surety and Substitute, he 
 might claim relationship with us, — might 
 be brought within the reach of that stroke 
 by which the Justice of God was to be 
 satisfied, and propitiation for human guilt 
 effected — consequently, that he should be 
 truly man. And, on the other hand, it 
 was necessary that he should be the 
 absolute lord of his own person and life, — 
 should add an infinite value to the suffer- 
 ings and obedience by which alone eternal 
 redemption could be obtained, compatibly 
 with the nature and extent of the divine 
 law ; that by the former the penalty 
 might be fully endured, and by the other 
 
272 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 a righteousness wrought out capable of 
 being imputed to the transgressor for his 
 complete justification ; to the accomplish- 
 ment of all of which, no created being 
 could possibly be equal, — consequently 
 that he should be truly God. His huma- 
 nity was needful in order that, in his 
 various offices, he might be made perfect 
 through sufferings and obedience, — his 
 divinity was needful to give weight and 
 value to both the one and the other, and 
 make them available for all the grand 
 and gracious purposes they were designed 
 to answer. And accordingly this two-fold 
 nature is plainly to be traced in all that 
 the Scriptures reveal concerning him. 
 If as man he had a heart to pity — as God 
 he had an arm to save. If as man he 
 was the offspring and son — as God he 
 was the root and the Lord of David. If 
 as man he was born of a woman — as God 
 he was conceived of the Holy Ghost. 
 If as man a stable was his lodging and 
 a manger his cradle — as God he had a 
 
Jacob's dream. '27 S 
 
 miraculous star to direct to his lowly bed 
 the eastern Magi who came to worship 
 him. If as man it became him to fulfil 
 all righteousness, and like the sons of 
 Aaron to enter on his public ministry by 
 partaking of the significant rite of bap- 
 tism — as God the heavens were opened 
 above him, and the Holy Ghost descended 
 upon him, and the voice of Jehovah him- 
 self attested the dignity of his person and 
 pretensions. If as man he journeyed 
 from place to place, and shared in the 
 wants and the sorrows of humanity — as 
 God he could feed thousands with a few 
 barley loaves ; could at any time work a 
 miracle to supply his exigences ; could 
 give rest to the weary, health to the sick, 
 sight to the blind, life to the dead. If 
 as man he submitted to shame and spit- 
 ting, and every indignity and cruelty 
 which the malice of his adversaries was 
 able to invent — as God he could declare 
 that, should his resolution to abide the 
 worst for a moment waver, leo-ions of 
 
 n5 
 
274 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 angels were ready to vindicate his cause. 
 If as man he uttered on the cross the cry 
 of mysterious agony, '^ my God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me?" — as God 
 he could say to the worthless wretch who 
 was writhing in the grasp of death at his 
 side, '^ to-day thou shalt be with me in 
 paradise." If as man he bowed his head 
 and gave up the ghost — as God, by that 
 very death upon the cross, he spoiled the 
 powers and principalities of darkness, 
 and brought the felicities of heaven within 
 the reach of the apostate creatures of 
 earth. '' I have power to lay down my 
 life" — this the Redeemer could have 
 said as a man : ' ' I have power to take it 
 again" — this he could only say as God. 
 '' Unto us a child is born, unto us a 
 son is given" — this the prophet said 
 of his humanity : but the names by 
 which in the very same passage he an- 
 nounces that wondrous babe, can be given 
 to no created being without blasphemy 
 — '' Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty 
 
JACOB S DREAM. 275 
 
 God, the everlasting Father, the Prince 
 of Peace." 
 
 " Without controversy great is the 
 mystery of godliness : God was manifest 
 in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen 
 of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, 
 believed on in the world, received up into 
 glory." The mystery, however, great as 
 it is, unravels every other mystery, and 
 opens a vista of glorious expectation 
 through the dreadful gloom which sin 
 had made to intervene between the chil- 
 dren of time, and the " Father of Eter- 
 nity," '' who hath saved us and called 
 us with a holy calling, not according to 
 our works, but according to his own pur- 
 pose and grace, which was given us in 
 Christ Jesus before the world began ; 
 but is now made manifest by the appear- 
 ing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath 
 abolished death, and hath brought life 
 and immortality to light by the gospel." 
 Seeing, then, that the assumption of 
 our nature by Him who existed in the 
 
276 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 form of God, was the great subject typi- 
 fied by the ladder which Jacob saw in 
 his dream, we discover at once the reason 
 whv Jehovah should ratifv from its sum- 
 mit that covenant which he had already 
 made with Abraham, and which had for 
 its special object the advent of the Divine 
 Messiah, who, as concerning the flesh, 
 was to come of the seed of Jacob. It was 
 intended to reveal to him the soul-reviving 
 truth, that as surely as he beheld in his 
 vision a communication established be- 
 tween heaven and earth, so surely by the 
 intervention of a Saviour uniting in his 
 own person the attributes of Deity with 
 the sympathies of humanity, a way would 
 be opened whereby God could again de- 
 scend, as before the fall, to talk with men, 
 and men be restored to a privileged 
 intercourse with God ; and thus in him 
 and his seed — to whom the high honour 
 belonged of being the progenitors of the 
 Saviour of mankind — " all the families of 
 the earth would eventually be blessed." 
 
Jacob's dream. 277 
 
 We know not any way, however, in 
 which this world-embracing promise, can 
 be verified through the posterity of 
 Jacob, apart from their relation to Him 
 in whom Jehovah hath declared himself 
 not the God of the Jews only, but also of 
 the Gentiles : the singularity of their 
 national character, and the exclusiveness 
 of their religious institutions, have erected 
 around them a middle wall of partition, 
 which — like the wall that separated them 
 from the proselytes of the gate in the tem- 
 ple worship — have ever intervened be- 
 tween them and all other portions of the 
 human family. And that barrier, Chris- 
 tianity alone has power to lay low. The 
 incarnation of the eternal Son of God, to 
 which the patriarchs looked forward, 
 which prophets foretold, and which a 
 train of the most splendid types and 
 visions prefigured, — that wondrous event 
 by which the Divine Word stooped to the 
 low and degraded estate of the children 
 of men, that thus, like Jacob's ladder, 
 
278 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 he might plant his foot on earth, while 
 yet retaining his power in heaven (John 
 iii. 13), and become the medium of gra- 
 cious communication on the part of God, 
 and unreserved communion on the part 
 of man — that stupendous mystery the 
 Apostle Paul declares to have the effect 
 of uniting in one mystical body all those, 
 whether Jews or Gentiles, who are taught 
 by the Spirit of God to discern, and are 
 enabled by a living faith to embrace it ; 
 affirming to the saints at Ephesus, that 
 Christ — having abolished in his flesh the 
 enmity previously subsisting between the 
 two divisions of the human race, occa- 
 sioned by the ceremonial law, which to 
 the Gentile was so odious and of which 
 the Jew w^as so tenacious, but which was 
 wholly and for ever abolished by his 
 appearing, as the stars of night are ab- 
 sorbed in the glories of the rising sun — 
 hath thus of twain made one new man, 
 so making peace ; and hath reconciled 
 both in one body by the cross, having 
 
Jacob's dream. '279 
 
 slain the enmity thereby ; and hath pro- 
 claimed the peace so made to them which 
 were far off, and to them that were nigh. 
 To all which he adds a declaration which 
 still reminds us of the vision vouchsafed 
 to Jacob, and introduces the whole co- 
 equal and co-eternal Trinity, engaged in 
 carrying on to its final consummation 
 the glorious scheme of man's recovery, 
 ^' for through Christ we have access by 
 one Spirit unto the Father." 
 
 If any then should ask why I dwell 
 upon these points at so great a length, 
 I answer, to prove to you that in the 
 vision recorded in my text, the gospel 
 was preached unto Jacob ; — to show you 
 that the Bible is the revelation of but one 
 and the self-same mode of regaining that 
 which by transgression has been forfeited, 
 whether dimly revealed to patriarchs, 
 or fully developed by apostles ; — to bring 
 you sinners of the Gentiles to trace the 
 spiritual and evangelical blessings in- 
 volved in the promises given, in con- 
 
280 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 nection with the vision we are considering, 
 and to recognise therein what St. Paul 
 terms '^ the mystery of Christ, which 
 in other ages was not made known unto 
 the sons of men, as it is now revealed 
 unto the holy apostles and prophets by 
 the Spirit ; that the Gentiles should be 
 fellow-heirs of the same body, and par- 
 takers of his promise in Christ by the 
 gospel" (Eph. iii, 4, 6); — to lead you to 
 magnify the boundless grace which — long- 
 before the publication, amidst the awful 
 thunders and unearthly darkness of 
 Sinai, of that Law, which, by the inflex- 
 ibility of its requirements and the extent 
 of its penalties, extinguished all hope of 
 ever obtaining admission, by any obedi- 
 ence or merits of our own, into the para- 
 dise which sin has barred against us — 
 aflbrded a cheering glimpse of that new 
 and living way by which our guilty race 
 may ascend to a more glorious paradise, 
 to the heaven of unfallen spirits, to the 
 very dwelling-place of Jehovah : in short, 
 
Jacob's dream. 281 
 
 to make you all ^' see what is the fellow- 
 ship of the mystery which from the be- 
 ginning of the world hath been hid in 
 God, who created all things by Jesus 
 Christ ; to the intent that now unto the 
 principalities and powers in heavenly 
 places, might be known the manifold 
 wisdom of God, according to the eternal 
 purpose which he purposed in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord, in whom we have bold- 
 ness and access ivith confidence by the faith 
 of him,'' Yes, dear brethren, if believers 
 in the Lord Jesus, of whom the whole 
 family in heaven and earth is named, 
 '^ the Lord of hosts is with us, the God 
 of Jacob is our refuge." Help has been 
 laid for our helpless and ruined souls 
 upon one that is mighty — one who can 
 exercise towards us at once the compassion 
 of a God, and the sympathy of a brother 
 — who can throw the arch of his own in- 
 finite merits over the fearful gulf inter- 
 posing between the sinner and his God, 
 making a way for the ransomed of the 
 
282 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 Lord to pass over. Jesus is able to save 
 them to the uttermost that come unto 
 God by him — he has all power in heaven 
 and in earth — he is exalted to be a Prince 
 and a Saviour ; and the period is advanc- 
 ing when in him all the families of the 
 earth shall be blessed — when every knee 
 shall bow to his name, and every tongue 
 bear testimony to his godhead — and all 
 creation shall be musical with the sub- 
 lime song of the Apocalypse, '' Thou art 
 worthy, for thou wast slain, and hast 
 redeemed us to God by thy blood out of 
 every kindred, and tongue, and people, 
 and nation ; and hast made us unto our 
 God kings and priests ; and we shall 
 reign on the earth." 
 
 There remain, however, one or two 
 points of importance connected with the 
 vision itself, upon which I must briefly 
 touch before I conclude. 
 
 I. And first, the sacred historian in- 
 forms us that Jacob saw the angels of 
 God ascending and descending upon the 
 
Jacob's dream. 283 
 
 ladder. I am far from wishing to advance 
 any fanciful theory upon this circum- 
 stance ; but I cannot help thinking that 
 it was intended to represent, what num- 
 berless subsequent passages of the inspired 
 volume demonstrate, that those pure and 
 perfect existences which encircle the 
 throne, and execute the sovereign will of 
 the Eternal, are constituted active though 
 invisible agents in the mighty economy 
 of redemption ; that they not only look 
 on as deeply interested spectators, but 
 that they have their appropriate offices 
 to perform, in the progress and consum- 
 mation of its vast and all-perfect scheme. 
 Accordingly St. Peter, when speaking of 
 the common salvation, — that salvation of 
 which the prophets searched and inquired 
 diligently as to what manner of time the 
 Spirit of Christ which was in them did 
 signify when it testified before-hand the 
 suiferings of Christ, and the glory that 
 should follow, immediately adds — "which 
 things the angels desire to look into." 
 
284 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 St. Paul again, after making a declara- 
 tion which incontestably establishes the 
 Deity of Christ, that, at the very time 
 when he assumed our nature, and in its 
 earliest stage, " all the angels of God were 
 commanded to worship him," enquires 
 at the close of the chapter concerning 
 these same celestial beings — '^ are they 
 not all ministering spirits, sent forth to 
 minister to those who shall be heirs of 
 salvation?" 
 
 Nor can we doubt that such is the fact, 
 when we remember that angels were 
 commissioned to announce the birth both 
 of the forerunner of our Lord, and our 
 Lord himself, — when we remember the 
 joyous strains which burst from the 
 countless multitude of their heavenly 
 hosts when the long-expected Messiah 
 was born, — when we remember the 
 offices they performed, as his constant 
 attendants from the stable of his birth to 
 the cross of his sacrifice, — and when, 
 moreover, we remember that as they 
 
Jacob's dream. 285 
 
 attended him in his humiliation, so we 
 are told thev will when he comes in his 
 glory ; that to them it will appertain to 
 execute the final sentence of the Judge 
 of quick and dead alike upon the acquit- 
 ted and the condemned, — to draw at his 
 bidding the curtain of material things 
 which hides the future world from mortal 
 view, — and, with a voice which even 
 inanimate matter shall feel, to '' swear 
 by Him that liveth for ever and ever, 
 that time shall be no longer." 
 
 And is there not something inexpres- 
 sibly soothing in the thought, that we 
 are ever beneath the care and guardian- 
 ship of such exalted and spotless beings, 
 — that they even delight to hover around 
 the path of our pilgrimage (Gen. xxxii. 
 1, 2), — that our first emotions of peniten- 
 tial grief, our first step in retracing the 
 course of apostacy and returning to the 
 outstretched arms of our heavenly Father, 
 gives a thrill of increased rapture even 
 to bosoms like theirs, which sorrow has 
 
286 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 never troubled or sin polluted, that in 
 all our solemn assemblies they are pre- 
 sent ( 1 Cor. xi. 10), probably exciting 
 spiritual feelings and desires, and helping 
 us to ward off those of an opposite 
 nature ; and then wafting our petitions 
 to the skies ; and there, as our represen- 
 tatives, beholding the face of our Father 
 in heaven ; and thence returning, quick 
 as thought, to convey some fresh token 
 of his love and communication of his 
 grace ; — that as they did to our Incarnate 
 Head, so if we are living members of his 
 body, they are ever doing to us, guiding 
 us in all our perplexities, succouring us 
 in all our conflicts, ministering to us in 
 all our necessities, bearing us up in their 
 hands lest at any time we dash our foot 
 against a stone, and refreshing us amidst 
 the toils and sufferings and contests of 
 this probationary state, with many a 
 sweet foretaste of that bliss, which, in 
 their own society and nature, we shall 
 hereafter for ever enjoy (Matt. xxii. 30) — 
 
Jacob's dream. 287 
 
 and that at last, when the cold hand of 
 death has closed our eyes upon all terres- 
 trial objects, and our material frame is 
 permitted for a time to commingle with 
 the dust of which it was originally made, 
 they will bear our ransomed souls to the 
 happy abodes of that paradise, where 
 the disembodied spirits of the just await 
 the coming period of '^ adoption, to wit, 
 the redemption of the body," and the 
 glorification of body and soul in the 
 presence and likeness of the Saviour, the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 St. Paul, I am aware, has said, that 
 " unto the angels God hath not put in 
 subjection the world to come," or the 
 gospel dispensation. Christ is now him- 
 self head over all things to his Church ; 
 and from the moment of his ascension to 
 the right hand of God, angels, and au- 
 thorities, and powers have been made 
 subject unto him. ( 1 Peter iii. 22.) 
 When we speak, however, of theministr}^ 
 of angels, we regard them merely as 
 
288 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 subordinate agents, employed by the 
 Saviour in carrying on his own purposes, 
 in the hearts of believers individually, 
 and in his Catholic church collectively ; 
 nor must it be forgotten that, for all the 
 benefits we either do or can hope to de- 
 rive from their ministrations, we are 
 entirely indebted to the mediation of the 
 Son of God ; for whatever use he may 
 make of subordinate instruments, he 
 himself is the only way by which we can 
 draw nigh unto God, or God draw nigh 
 unto us : — '' Being justified by faith we 
 have peace with God, through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; by whom also we have 
 access, by faith, into this grace wherein 
 we stand, and rejoice in hope of the 
 glory of God." But we know of no rea- 
 son which can be deduced from this 
 cardinal truth, why the ministry of angels 
 may not be subservient to the mediation 
 of Christ ; on the contrary, we think, to 
 this very point our Lord refers in his 
 remarkable declaration to Nathan ael, 
 
Jacob's dream. 289 
 
 which, I conceive, applies not merely to 
 the termination, but to the entire duration 
 of the evangelical dispensation, of which 
 the vision we are considering is expressly 
 typical, — '' hereafter ye shall see heaven 
 opened, and the angels of God ascending 
 and descending upon the Son of Man."* 
 2. But the ascending and descending of 
 these spiritual beings on the ladder, sug- 
 gests another highly important train of 
 thought, with reference to the mediation 
 of Christ, — that it is at once the channel 
 through which all the mercies of God, 
 
 * The olden Poet, Spenser, takes the same view 
 of the ministry of Angels in a beautiful stanza, — 
 
 How oft do they their silver bowers leave, 
 To come and succour us, that succour want ; 
 How oft do they, with golden pinions, cleave 
 The flitting skies, like flying pursuivants, 
 Against foul fiends to aid us militant ! 
 They for us fight, — they watch and duly ward, 
 And their bright squadrons round about us plant ; 
 And all for love, and nothing for reward. 
 Oh ! why should heavenly God to man have such 
 regard ? 
 
 O 
 
290 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 temporal, spiritual, or eternal flow to us ; 
 and also the medium by which alone 
 our persons or our services can come up 
 before him with acceptance. God was 
 in Christ reconciling the world unto 
 himself; — in him we have redemption 
 through his blood ; — through him we are 
 justified by faith, and are made to enjoy, 
 as the effect of justification, peace with 
 God ; — from him is said to proceed that 
 Spirit by which the work of sanctification 
 is carried on in the hearts of believers, 
 and that renewal in the spirit of their 
 minds effected, by ' which they are 
 changed into the image, and prepared 
 for the presence of a thrice holy God. 
 Christ is accordingly declared by St. 
 Paul to be '' made of God, unto us wis- 
 dom and righteousness, sanctification and 
 redemption." That he might be all this 
 to his people, was the cause of his humili- 
 ation — that they are permitted to realize 
 blessings so inestimable, is the result of 
 his re-exaltation ; for he hath ascended 
 
Jacob's dream. 291 
 
 up on high, he hath led captivity captive, 
 and received gifts for men, even for the 
 rebellious also, that the Lord God might 
 dwell among them. 
 
 But Christ is not only the channel 
 through which alone any covenant bless- 
 ings can flow to us- — he is also the only 
 way of access to God, the only medium 
 through which our prayers or our praises, 
 our persons or our services, can be ac- 
 cepted before Him. '' By him therefore," 
 he says again, '' let us offer the sacrifice 
 of praise to God continually, even the 
 fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his 
 name." St. Peter also affirms to all who 
 truly believe — '' ye are built up a spi- 
 ritual house, to offer up spiritual sacrifices 
 acceptable to God, by Jesus Christ." 
 With his name as our trust, and his 
 righteousness as our plea, we may venture 
 to approach the mercy-seat of Jehovah, 
 and fear neither repulse or denial, — for 
 now have we '' boldness to enter into 
 the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a 
 
 o2 
 
292 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 new and living way which he hath con- 
 secrated for us through the veil, that is 
 to say, his flesh.'' 
 
 A late gifted poet has said in a popular 
 hymn — '' Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob 
 saw." It would be more correct, I ima- 
 gine, to ascribe to Faith that which is 
 here ascribed to Prayer, Faith is uni- 
 formly spoken of in the sacred volume as 
 the instrument through which the Spirit 
 of God operates upon the soul. Thus in 
 Rom. i. 17, the apostle Paul, speaking 
 of that Gospel of Christ of which he was 
 not ashamed, affirms that ^' therein the 
 righteousness of God," or God's method 
 of justifying the ungodly, '' is revealed 
 from faith to faith, as it is written — the 
 just shall live by faith." Through Christ, 
 by faith, believers are justified : by grace, 
 through faith, believers are quickened 
 from the death of trespasses and sins, 
 and made to sit together with him in 
 heavenly places. In short, faith to the 
 renewed mind — like the glance of the 
 
Jacob's dream. 293 
 
 mortally wounded Israelite to the brazen 
 serpent — is that by which it beholds the 
 Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of 
 the world ;— -that by which it apprehends 
 the great mystery of Christ's two-fold 
 nature as absolutely necessary for the 
 success of his mediation ; — that, moreover, 
 by which it not only perceives what 
 Christ is, and what Christ has done, but 
 by which also it is made to rejoice in a 
 personal appropriation of the inestimable 
 benefits which he lived and died and is 
 now alive for evermore to bestow upon 
 all them that are his at his coming ; 
 therefore, says St. Peter, in a passage 
 which sanctions the analogy between the 
 faculty of sight and the operation of 
 faith — '^ whom not having seen we love, 
 in whom though now we see him not, 
 yet believing we rejoice with joy unspeak- 
 able, and full of glory." 
 
 By prayer the soul is brought as it 
 were into contact with the ladder, but it 
 is hy faith that we climb it (Eph, iii. 12) ; 
 
294 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 the special office of which is to take hold 
 of those exceeding great and precious 
 promises of the gospel which constitute, 
 if the analogy may be carried so far, the 
 rounds or steps of that ladder by which 
 the soul ascends to heaven ; for, says the 
 apostle, by these promises we are made 
 partakers of the divine nature, are raised 
 above the world and all its lying vanities, 
 and are made to aspire after the high 
 and holy blessings of that covenant of 
 grace, the mighty span of which is from 
 everlasting to everlasting, thereby es- 
 caping the corruptions that are in the 
 world through lust, and realizing by in- 
 felt and heart-gladdening experience, the 
 faithful saying that '^ all the promises of 
 God in Christ are yea, and in him amen, 
 unto the glory of God." 
 
 In making a practical improvement of 
 the subject, allow me, dear brethren, to 
 ask you individuallj^ — Have you any ex- 
 perimental knowledge of the things about 
 which I have been discoursing ? Have 
 
Jacob's dream. 295 
 
 you ever been made a partaker of that 
 faith which is to the new-born soul the 
 substance and the evidence of the truths 
 which belong to its eternal well-being? 
 Have you ever beheld the glorious anti- 
 type to this symbolical ladder ? Have you 
 had so much of the real nature of sin dis- 
 closed to your mind by that Spirit, whose 
 office it is to exhibit it in the enormity of 
 its soul-corrupting evil, and the endless- 
 ness of its soul-destroying penalties, as to 
 convince you how utterly and eternally it 
 had separated between God and your 
 soul ? And after having thus been taught 
 how far off you were from Him by wicked 
 works, have you spiritually discerned the 
 method devised, executed, and revealed 
 of bringing you nigh ? While feeling 
 yourself an outcast, an alien, a wanderer, 
 and almost overpowered by a sense of 
 your helpless and hopeless condition, has 
 God in the appointed time granted you a 
 vision of that true and living way by 
 which the infinite distance between him- 
 
296 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 self and your soul may be overpassed? 
 Have you known by actual experience, 
 as well as by human tuition, the apostle 
 Paul's account of genuine conversion, — 
 '^ we all had our conversation in times 
 past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the 
 desires of the flesh and of the mind, and 
 were by nature the children of wrath 
 even as others ; but God, who is rich in 
 mercy, for his great love wherewith he 
 loved us, even when we were dead in 
 sins hath quickened us together with 
 Christ, and hath raised us up together 
 and made us sit together in heavenly 
 places, in Christ Jesus?" 
 
 Blessed beyond compare are those who 
 can answer such enquiries in the affirma- 
 tive. Flesh and blood hath not revealed 
 these things to their minds, neither have 
 they discovered them by any intuitive 
 perception, or embraced them by any 
 inherent power. God hath loved all such 
 with an everlasting love, and therefore 
 with loving-kindness hath he drawn 
 
Jacob's dream. 297 
 
 them, and by his Spirit quickened them ; 
 and by his grace enabled them to detach 
 their affections from sinful and unworthy 
 objects, — to lay hold of that blessed hope 
 which entereth in within the veil, — and 
 to act faith upon those promises by which 
 a faithful God is pledged to pardon, to 
 justify, to restore to his favour, and 
 finally to welcome to his kingdom all 
 who are made new creatures in Christ 
 Jesus. Blessed, I repeat, are all such, 
 though outcasts from the sympathies, and 
 destitute of the advantages, and weaned 
 from the charities of the present evil 
 world ; far nobler enjoyments have they 
 in possession, and inconceivably more 
 glorious treasures have they in rever- 
 sion than any for the acquisition of which 
 the deluded children of men are too com- 
 monly induced to sacrifice their immortal 
 interests upon the altar of Mammon : 
 they have received not the spirit of the 
 world, but the Spirit which is of God, 
 that they may know the things which are 
 
298 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 freely given them of God ; they have 
 enlisted in that noble band of believers 
 who are treading beneath their feet, alike 
 the promises and the threatenings of the 
 world in their supreme anxiety to secure 
 the imperishable portion of the sons of 
 God ; to them the ministry of reconcili- 
 ation has been " life from the dead," — it 
 has introduced them into a new world of 
 thought, and feeling, and motive, and en- 
 joyment; and opened before their believ- 
 ing view that " shining way" which 
 conducts the soul from the storms and 
 tribulations of the present pilgrim-state, 
 to that stormless, sorrowless clime, where 
 its eternal inheritance will be the unin- 
 terrupted fruition of God. United to 
 Christ, they have in Him a fulness which 
 their most alarming necessities cannot 
 exhaust, — a security which their most 
 distressing fears cannot diminish, — a lad- 
 der by which they may scale the heaven 
 of heavens, — a way of access whereby, 
 in the exercise of that prayer which is 
 
Jacob's dream. 299 
 
 the expression of faith, and that faith 
 which gives efficacy to prayer, they may 
 betake themselves in every exigency and 
 in ever}^ misgiving to the throne of God, 
 to receive a fresh supply of succouring 
 grace — a renewed token of paternal 
 favour. Rejoicing in Christ as their Ad- 
 vocate with the Father, their sense of 
 their own personal unworthiness is coun- 
 terbalanced by a self-appropriating con- 
 viction of the infinitude of his merits, and 
 the prevalency of his intercession ; and 
 being thus clothed in the robe of righte- 
 ousness, and arrayed in the garments of 
 salvation ; having the light of the divine 
 countenance shining upon them, and the 
 angels of God encamping around them, 
 and the still small voice of the Spirit 
 witnessing within them, and the prospects 
 of a heaven of unmixed blessedness open- 
 ing before them — the whole world can 
 yield nothing that can really add to their 
 happiness : they are safe in the midst of 
 danger, contented in the deepest penury, 
 
300 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 sorrowful yet always rejoicing, having 
 nothing and yet possessing all things, — 
 '^ for all things are theirs, whether Paul, 
 or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or 
 life or death, or things present, or things 
 to come ; all are theirs, and they are 
 Christ's, and Christ is God's." 
 
 But are there not some among my 
 hearers, whose interest in the covenant 
 of redeeming love there is too much 
 reason to question ? Are there not some 
 who, though they assent to the incarna- 
 tion of Christ as an historical fact, and 
 profess to embrace the doctrines of his 
 Gospel as articles of their religious creed, 
 and so far conform to the outward 
 duties and decencies of Christianity, 
 as to command the respect of their 
 fellow-men, — are nevertheless, to all 
 spiritual intents and purposes, " without 
 Christ, being aliens from the common- 
 wealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant 
 of promise, having no hope, and without 
 God in the world?" who, in short, have 
 
Jacob's dream. 301 
 
 never obtained that " precious faith," 
 which, as the especial gift of God, con- 
 stitutes the broad line of demarcation 
 between those who are and those who 
 are not his people. Let me solemnly 
 assure such, that they are destitute of a 
 principle without which it is impossible to 
 please God, or be justified in his sight, — 
 that principle which made the sacrifice 
 of Abel more acceptable to God than 
 that of his unbelieving brother. — that 
 principle too, which led Jacob to value 
 supremely the spiritual blessings which 
 Esau despised, — that principle, without 
 which, millions of prayers would not 
 obtain a single blessing from God, nor 
 rivers of penitential tears wash out the 
 stain of the lightest transgression, — 
 without which, the great remedy God 
 has provided for our ruined condition 
 cannot be embraced, or the slumber 
 of spiritual death shaken off, or the 
 future portion of the hypocrite and the 
 unbeliever escaped, — for this was the 
 
302 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 declaration of the Eternal Son of God, 
 when his Deity was enshrined in a body- 
 like our own — and I beseech you to 
 remember, that while it describes a 
 character to which you can lay no claim, 
 it also implies a doom you have every 
 reason, in the absence of such a claim, to 
 expect, — ^^ Verily, verily, I say unto 
 you, he that heareth my words and 
 believeth on Him that sent me, hath 
 everlasting life, and shall not come 
 into condemnation, but is passed from 
 death unto life." Let this passage be 
 deeply considered, and you will find 
 it replete with truths which are inter- 
 woven with every part of that Gospel 
 which is the power of God unto sal- 
 vation. It describes the state of every 
 natural man to be a state of death — 
 that death which is the prelude to 
 everlasting death. It teaches also, 
 that the passage from this state to its 
 opposite, is the very first commencement 
 of our spiritual being; that as a dead 
 
Jacob's dream. 303 
 
 man cannot hear the voice addressing 
 him, or confide in any message delivered 
 to him, so until our souls are quickened 
 from the death of sin, we cannot hear 
 the words of Christ, or believe on Him 
 who sent him, which are acts of spiritual 
 life — that life which is the incipiency 
 of everlasting life. In a passage pa- 
 rallel to the one I am commenting upon, 
 the exercise of faith is represented b}^ 
 another metaphor, taken from the bodily 
 senses — " This is the will of him that 
 sent me, that every one which seeth 
 the Son and believeth on Him, may 
 have everlasting life." This expression, 
 too, is one of similar comprehensiveness, 
 and signifies a spiritual apprehension 
 of him in his twofold nature, and in 
 his several offices, as Immanuel — God 
 with us. Unenlightened by the Spirit 
 of God, no man can see the Son as at 
 once perfect God and perfect man : the 
 doctrine may be admitted as an article of 
 our creed — but as a truth upon which the 
 
304 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 soul feeds as the very manna which sup- 
 ports it in this wilderness state — as a truth 
 which the soul regards, like Jacob's lad- 
 der, to be the only medium of spiritual 
 intercourse between earth and heaven — 
 it never can be seen, or known, or 
 embraced, save by divine tuition, and 
 assistance. (1 John iv. 2.) And until 
 the divine and human nature of the 
 Son be seen, we cannot believe aright 
 on Him that sent him : if we see him not 
 as God, we have no solid ground of con- 
 fidence whereby we may draw near to 
 the Father; and if we see him not as man, 
 we have no right knowledge of him as 
 our substitute and compassionate High 
 Priest— able to feel with us, as well as for 
 us, to carry our griefs and sorrows, as 
 well as to make reconciliation for our 
 iniquities. To strip the Son of any of his 
 attributes, or to limit him in any of his 
 offices, is not only to dishonour him as 
 the divine Messiah, but it argues an evil 
 heart of unbelief and enmity towards the 
 
Jacob's dream. 305 
 
 Father, who identifies the honour which 
 all men owe to Him, with the honour 
 which He commands all men to pay his 
 Son. And, moreover, if it is by the Son 
 alone we arrive at any true knowledge of 
 the Father (Matt. xi. 27.), and have ac- 
 cess unto Him, — how is it possible that 
 we can be in a state of acceptance with 
 God, unless by his Spirit we are made 
 acquainted with the Son whom He hath 
 sent ? Men are apt to reverse the scrip- 
 tural order, by imagining that they have 
 no warrant to receive fully and per- 
 sonally, the distinguishing doctrines of 
 Christianity, until — by a preparatory 
 course of what in the judgment of the 
 world are good works — they have in a 
 measure recommended themselves to 
 God ; but the fact is, that until those 
 distinguishing doctrines are embraced, 
 felt, and relied upon in all their length 
 and breadth, as the sole basis of a sinner's 
 hope, we never can by any fancied ex- 
 cellencies, or by any religious formalities, 
 
306 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 recommend ourselves to God, seeing 
 that by rejecting, or by casting into 
 shade the testimony which he has given 
 of his Son, we are virtually making 
 Him a liar. (1 John v. 10.) Faith in 
 Christ must precede all works which 
 in the judgment of God are good ; and 
 to expect that a heart still a stranger 
 to the impulses of genuine faith, can 
 cordially delight in things which ac- 
 cording to the scriptural standard are 
 '* true, or honest, or just, or pure, or 
 lovely, or of good report," is to expect 
 that sparkling streams can flow from 
 an empty cistern, or fruitful branches 
 spring from a sapless tree. Our at- 
 tention must first be directed to the 
 source of the evil — a corrupt state of 
 the heart ; we must remember the 
 Saviour's just and reasonable maxim, 
 ''Make the tree good and the fruit will 
 also be good," and we mast connect 
 with it, the statement which an inspired 
 writer furnishes, — that the grand in- 
 
Jacob's dream. 307 
 
 strument of purifying the heart h faith, 
 (Acts XV. 9, 1 Peter i. 22.) Accordingly, 
 we find that the Apostle Peter begins 
 with this principle, in urging believers 
 to increasing fruitfulness in the divine 
 life. " Add to your faith virtue, and 
 to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge 
 temperance, and to temperance patience, 
 and to patience godliness, and to god- 
 liness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly 
 kindness charity." 
 
 Faith in Christ, implies the possession 
 of a new nature (1 John v. 1) — a nature 
 wholly distinct from that we derived 
 from Adam, and which being holy (v. 18), 
 necessarily produces a corresponding 
 life and conversation. Faith in Christ 
 implies, acquaintance with the true cha- 
 racter of God, — " He that hath seen 
 me hath seen the Father ; " he that 
 abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he 
 hath both the Father and the Son ; but 
 whosoever transgresseth, and abideth 
 not in the doctrine of Christ, he hath 
 
308 DISCOURSE vir. 
 
 not God;" hence the importance of the 
 Saviour's language, ''He that heareth my 
 words, and believethon Him that sent me;" 
 and the necessity that you should couple 
 the two expressions together, and deter- 
 mine upon your state before God, by the 
 reality of your faith in the Son whom 
 he hath sent ; and I would solemnly 
 beseech all, who as yet have never 
 seen him or heard his words — so seen 
 him as to be attracted towards him — 
 so heard as to yield implicit and universal 
 obedience to his commands, — to re- 
 member that while such is your state, 
 you are not passed from death unto life 
 — you are still obnoxious to the condemn- 
 ing sentence of a sin-avenging God, — 
 you are still enveloped in the gloom 
 of spiritual blindness — yea, wrapped in 
 the shroud of spiritual death. " Awake 
 then, thou that sleepest, and arise from 
 the dead, and Christ shall give you 
 light." "See that ye refuse not him 
 that speaketh, for if they escaped not 
 
Jacob's dream. 309 
 
 who refused him that spake on earth, 
 much more shall not we escape, if we 
 turn away from Him that speaketh from 
 heaven." May the Spirit of God carry 
 home the admonition to your hearts, — 
 may he open your blind eye, unstop 
 your deaf ear, soften your obdurate 
 heart, convert your enmity into love, 
 your unbelief into faith, your ignorance 
 of the great mysteries of redemption 
 into a holy, well-grounded assurance 
 like that of the inspired apostle, when 
 he said, ''We know that the Son of 
 God is come, and hath given us an 
 understanding that we know Him that 
 is true, and we are in Him that is true, 
 even in his Son Jesus Christ, that is 
 the true God, and eternal life." 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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