events, in some manner which convinced him that the command came from Jehovah, to sever all the ties of kindred, home, affection, and relationship, and to go forth, as a wanderer, into some unknown land, whither the voice that then spoke undertook to guide him. Observe, that there was no offer of personal gain accompanying this order it was direct and peremptory; yet Abraham, convinced that it came from the Creator, obeyed without a murmur. Hence, kindred and ties were abandoned, and Abraham became a wanderer on the face of the earth. The sole recompense promised was, that he would be the father of a nation, which, ages after he had ceased to take any interest in earthly things, should be great; and that through him should come into the world the mighty Being, towards whose birth, and death, and resurrection, all the events in time that went before had continually pointed. Here, then, we have a cistern hewed out, from which a stream of blessings is to flow for the refreshment of the whole race; and here, without attempting to go farther in the personal history of the father of the faithful, I stop for the present. Let me, however, remind you, that though the great object of what has been said may be to increase your religious knowledge, it ought likewise to have a very powerful effect upon your moral conduct. I will not revert again to what I said a few minutes ago, relative to your and my own sad forgetfulness of God's judgments and mercies in other years. That is beyond our reach of recal. But remember that we are still living in a society where, though all the comforts that can be bestowed by man are afforded, proofs are continually presented that we have no real rock of defence save one. What can all the skill of man do, to counteract the working of the maladies which afflict you, and those around you? The shattered frame, the palsied limbs, the broken constitution, old age, with its infirmities and its weaknesses, against these, there is no fight - - ing, and these, if they belong not to each individual among you, are constantly in your sight. Will you not turn them to good account? I am sure that you will. Bearing them patiently, when they afflict yourselves, gathering wisdom from them when they bow down others,-taught by them to wean your thoughts and wishes from a world, which must soon be to you as if it had never been, you will daily, and hourly endeavour to set up your rest in heaven, where sickness makes no inroad, where sorrow wrings tears from no eyes. you will do more than all this. By your patience, by your endurance, by your upright and sober conduct, by your gratitude to God for his thousand mercies past, by your cheerful confidence in His support for the future, you will teach And younger and healthier men to know, that even age and sickness have their refreshments and, that as in other days, you were examples of courage and of conduct to your younger comrades when employed before the enemies of your country, so now that your season of earthly warfare has passed away, you are willing to stand forth as patterns of what the religious soldier ought to be in every relation of life. Thus will your latter days be passed in a joyous anticipation of the rest which Christ has purchased; and thus, perhaps, you may become instruments, in God's hands, of saving not only your own souls, but the souls of others. SERMON VII. GOD'S DESIGNS GRADUALLY DEVELOPED. GENESIS Xix. 29. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt. THE chapter from the Old Testament, of which my text forms a portion though mainly devoted to the description of a fresh act of judgment on God's part, is not to be read as if it did not bear on the great subject which, from the beginning of this series, we have had under discussion. There is, indeed, a portion of it, which, for obvious reasons, is not ap |