dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer." His mother seems henceforth to have laid hold of the promise made in her son's favour, and to have watched over him accordingly.

Were it thus in the experience of parental faith, did parental love rest on the promises made to parental trust, and that trust in lively exercise, were God's exceeding great and precious undertakings on behalf of parents more closely regarded, what blessed effects would follow such simplicity of hold on God as a ground and motive for diligent, prayerful, instruction and example! Many would be the children, now perishing in a spiritual wilderness, for lack of the wells of salvation, restored to life and blessedness: and many would be the outpourings of parental joy, "This my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost, and is found." 1

1 Luke xv. 32.

SERMON XXXII.

THE BENEFICIAL INFLUENCE OF CONSISTENT

RELIGION.

GENESIS XXI. 22-25.

AND IT CAME TO PASS AT THAT TIME, THAT ABIMELECH AND PHICOL THE CHIEF CAPTAIN OF HIS HOST SPAKE UNTO ABRAHAM, SAYING, GOD IS WITH THEE IN ALL THAT THOU DOEST. NOW THEREFORE SWEAR UNTO ME HERE BY GOD, THAT THOU WILT NOT DEAL FALSELY WITH ME, NOR WITH MY SON, NOR WITH MY SON'S SON: BUT ACCORDING TO THE KINDNESS THAT I HAVE DONE UNTO THEE, THOU SHALT DO UNTO ME, AND TO THE LAND WHEREIN THOU HAST

SOJOURNED. AND ABRAHAM SAID, I WILL SWEAR. AND ABRAHAM REPROVED ABIMELECH BECAUSE OF A WELL WATER, WHICH ABIMELECH'S SERVANTS HAD VIOLENTLY

TAKEN AWAY.

OF

A GREAT man has been described as one who can embrace the highest, or condescend to the least important matters, with equal competence and grace. The definition will apply exactly to a man of true religion. As that Almighty Father, whose he is and whom he serves in the Gospel of his Son, not only directs

-so

the harmonies of the mightiest worlds, but arranges the meanest atoms in his creation, with the same ease, so his renewed children, animated by his Spirit, and governed by his mind, remembering that they serve the Lord Christ, endeavour with equal readiness to adorn the doctrine of their Saviour in all things. With them religion is not a matter to be brought out only on high and momentous emergencies; while the general current of life is regulated merely by ordinary and earthly motives; but whether they eat or drink, or whatsoever they do, they do all to the glory of God. The love of Christ constraineth them; they discern Him, and their relation to Him, in every imaginable circumstance of life: and therefore they have one elastic impulse, capable of reaching the greatest obligations, or contracting itself to enfold and beautify the meanest station, or the most common duties of life. They can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth them.

In this spirit, we have lately seen Abraham acting in the private concerns of family duty and trial. In the history now before us, commencing with the text and ending with the chapter, the divine record brings him under

our notice, exhibiting the same simplicity and godly sincerity in his transactions with a king who sought his friendship, and it might almost be added, his protection. There is equal consistency, the consistency of holy faith, that best and most blessed safeguard of the soul, in both situations. We may therefore hope, in prayerful dependence upon the Holy Spirit, to draw some profitable lessons for our instruction, by considering

I. THE TENDENCY OF HOLY CONSISTENCY IN A BELIEVER'S CONVERSATION TO HONOUR GOD, BY ITS BENEFICIAL INFLUENCE UPON

OTHERS.

That great Apostle who hath left to the Church a summary of the everlasting Gospel, in the emphatic words, "Ye are not your own, but bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's," hath enjoined the disciples of his Lord, as one mean of advancing this high end and aim, "to walk in wisdom towards those who are without." But this is a portion of God's requirements at his children's hand, often ill understood, and consequently very imperfectly

1 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.

2 Col. iv. 5.

practised. We are too negligent of the duty imposed upon us,-that of making the truth of salvation, and the service of Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as attractive and beautiful as possible in the eyes of those who have not yet tasted that the Lord is gracious, or who are only feebly disposed to follow Him, uncertain whether to go with Him steadfastly, like Ruth, or to kiss Him with outward reverence, and draw back again, like Orpah. We lack that glowing zeal for his honour, that one overmastering affection of love and gratitude towards his Person, that all-presiding sense of everlasting obligation to his cross and passion, that transcendant esteem for the excellences of his character, that ever present sense of the felicities of his service, and that deep abiding tenderness for the souls of men, which, regard Him as the chiefest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely, and as the only hope of life and mercy to endangered souls. We hold Him forth rather with lip confession than with that godly consistency of deed and conversation, that exhibition of Christian graces, that adorning the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things, which is often the most eloquent and effectual appeal, that the