grandsons' treatment differed widely from that which Abraham had received; yet each in his own especial manner, the first living alone, the last having in his person laid the foundation of the house that had been promised, is dealt with, even as our short-sighted reason shows, was best calculated to bring about the end which God had in view. And so it always has been, and so it always will be, till time itself shall cease. Men may rebel against God, and fancy that they thwart and obstruct his purposes; yet the tide flows on, and their miserable lets and hindrances are rendered,—and will by and by be seen to be, only so many means of better accomplishing the designs of the Most High. Remember, however, that he who does wrong will, when the hour of settlement arrives, be recompensed for

that

-

wrong; neither will it stand him in stead, though men and angels perceive that his very wickedness became, in God's hand, an instrument of good to others.

The bad man had no such intention. His wish was to disturb the harmony of the universe, to outrage his Creator's will,-to injure his fellow-creatures,-and for that wish he will be judged, condemned, and rejected. On the other hand, though things go unhappily with the pious and the upright, let him not despair. His wicked neighbour wrongs him, and he has no means of obtaining redress. Fortune, as it is called, plays him false, and friends forsake him. His head is bowed down with sickness, and his heart is ready to faint. Let him remember that though he be but a small mite in the boundless extent of God's creation, yet that even his sufferings are not without their uses, and will not, therefore, pass unnoticed. No, reader, the ladder that told its tale to Jacob, still reaches from from earth to heaven,—and the angels are now, as they were then, continually ascending and descending;—nor has the sleepless eye that watches them

from above, ceased for one moment to observe their doing. Nay, have we not all felt this in the days that are gone ? How often, when we believed ourselves surrounded by difficulties, has some mysterious providence cleared them away,how often, when despair had well nigh settled in our hearts, has there broken in a light we knew not from whence, to cheer and to direct us? And can we suppose that this will cease even to the end?

I tell you no.

Make God your friend,

and then there is no enemy that can

hurt you; make God

your place of

refuge to flee to, and no

can beat you to the earth.

misfortune

You know,

however, that there is but one way of doing this. Worship not with your lips but in your lives; and then you who live and move as religious men in the best sense of that term, need not care when the mandate may go forth, which shall say, move no more. For the grave

has no terrors to the Christian; it is but the last bed in which he shall lie down; and when he rises from it, it will be, through the strength and the merits of the Redeemer, to enter, with the sons of God, into glory, and honour, and immortality.

SERMON XI.

JACOB'S TRIALS.

GENESIS XXxvii. 36.

And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard.

If I have succeeded in conveying to your minds the kind of knowledge which it is the design of my present series of discourses to impart, you will have learned by this time to perceive, that neither now nor in the days of old, has God always made choice of men spotless in their moral and religious characters, to be the instruments in his hands for working out his own gracious purposes. Abraham

H