literally, to lead us to Christ; and the reason why God proclaimed the Hagarene covenant on Sinai was not to put us under it, but that, seeing how impossible it is to be saved by it, we might long for that better covenant, which is provided in Christ for the children of Sarah, and the heirs of the promise. To be saved is just to take God at his word. I do not know any shorter definition of salvation than this, taking God at his word, treating the Bible as a reality. What is a £10 Bank of England note? It is a piece of paper not worth a farthing, but nevertheless to you by faith it is property; though it be but the possession of a bit of paper to sense, yet it is by faith the possession of ten sovereigns, or of any thing that ten sovereigns can purchase. So this Book, which to sense is not better bound than a thousand in the library, is to faith the compendium of all that you need to make you holy and happy in time and eternity.

Hagar and Sarah will quarrel to the end. Ishmael and Isaac will fight to the end—the one will mock and persecute, in the language of the apostle, the other. Even when the covenant of Sarah is supreme within us, there will be the remains of our attachment to the covenant of Hagar; there will be still the law in the members, the remains of Hagar's presence, of Ishmael's power, warring against the law of the spirit, the inspiration of Sarah's covenant, and of the God' and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the outer world, the Ishmaelite church, the church of mere rite, of ceremony, of error, will ever war with the Saracenic church, the church of Isaac, the church of spirit and of truth. There will be no peace in this dispensation till the Lord of Peace come. There will be war and antagonism between truth and error till the end. Nevertheless, we are assured, the issue is absolutely certain. "What saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman." The crescent wanes

every day, the Jew is becoming weary of feeding upon husks. There may be struggles, perplexities, trials, yet truth is making progress. Sarah will be supreme in God's own home, and Hagar the bondwoman will be cast out. The creed that is at present the acceptance of a few will be the hope and joy of all mankind - God has said it, and that is enough for us.

"Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free." Accept no human law or restriction in matters of religion as obligatory upon your consciences in the sight of God; whatever the Bible says, believe; whatever the Bible says not, do not hold as essential to salvation stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free.

19

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WAY OF ALL THE EARTH.

"All that of good and fair

Has gone into the past from earliest time,
Shall then come forth, to wear

The glory and the beauty of its prime.

"They have not perished-no!

Kind words remembered, voices once so sweet,
Smiles radiant long ago,

And features the great soul's apparent seat,

"All shall come back; each tie

Of pure affection shall be knit again:

Alone shall evil die,

And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign."

"Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre.". GEN. XXV. 8, 9.

We have followed the beautiful and interesting biography of the father of the faithful till we arrive with sorrow at its close. Abraham, as presented to us in the sketches of his character given by the sacred penman, approaches us almost as a father, a friend, and a companion. We feel real regret as the curtain closes on his chequered and impressive biography. A prince in Israel has fallen, a patriarch is gathered to his grave, and the tent that knew him once, knows him now no more for ever. As the set

ting sun leaves a trail of light upon the sky above and upon the earth behind him, Abraham's life and departure have alike left us influences and taught us lessons we cannot easily forget. He being dead, yet speaketh. His voice still sounds along the centuries; his deeds reverberate along the corridors of ages, the works he did, the truths he spoke, and the lessons he taught, cannot die. There is in every man a double immortality-one he carries into eternity, where it endures for ever; another he leaves behind him, acting for good or for evil, upon earth; so that the good and the evil men do are not buried with their bones, but alike live after them.

Our parting with Abraham in this beautiful story of his life is not however a final one; if we are Abraham's children by being Christ's, he and we shall meet again. It is the special promise of our blessed Lord, that ye shall "sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." I can conceive no more touching position than to hear Adam tell the history of his trial, and Abraham repeat the scenes, and incidents, and years of his pilgrimage, and all that have preceded us to glory receive us to their fellowship, not, as some suppose, strangers to us, and we strangers to them. Can I believe that heaven is an awful blank, a dread solitude, a collection of insulated cells? that those beautiful images of the dear dead that are hung up in my memory as in a picture gallery, shall never be resolved into the originals that those images shall fade before any thing save the beautiful originals themselves, when father meets child, and child meets parent, and broken relationships are renewed, and interrupted circles are completed, and we shall know even as we are known?

We gather from the fact of Abraham dying in his good old age, that death spares none. There is not a more common aphorism than this, "All must die;" and yet

there is not an aphorism in the Book of Proverbs, or in the proverbs of nations, that has less practical effect. We all live here as if we were to live here as we are for ever. We really fancy this world is home, and the next a country we may decline or enter at our discretion. "He died," is the epitaph upon every antediluvian patriarch; "he died," is the ever repeated epitaph of all generations. The prince is taken from his palace, the noble from his hall, the patriarch from his tent, and all, whatever be their dignity, their rank, their learning, their power, depart unto the shadow and silence of the future, for death has passed upon all

men.

Yet this was never meant to be so, death was no part of God's original design. God made neither sin nor death; they are irruptive phenomena subsequent to the constitution or creation of man. When man was made and placed in Paradise, he was meant by God to live for ever. Grey hairs, and aches, and pains, are not a bequest from Eden in its glory, they are intrusions and blights scattered down by sin long subsequent to the fall. When man was made, every pulse was music, and his life, like the sundial, was meted out by sunshine. If clouds have fallen thick and heavy upon that life, and interruptions have occurred in the beatings of his heart, these are not God's doings, nor is God responsible for them. For every happy feeling that is in the human heart we are indebted to God; for every sad, and sorrowful, and painful, and sinful one, we are indebted to ourselves.

The cause of death, is not an everlasting decree, but an innovation. Sin is in man's soul and body as a corrosive poison. It is the mother of our aches, the solvent of our sorrows, the only explanation of the world's present state. Philosophers are at their wits' end in their attempts to harmonize all things, just because they ignore sin. The