altogether lovely. Surely every throb of your hearts should be in unison with his own declaration, "Thou shalt not be for another man, so will I also be for thee." 1

66

And now, If ye will deal kindly and truly with my Master, tell me; and if not, tell me; that I may turn to the right hand or to the left." Will ye betroth yourselves to the Son of God, on whose behalf I come; or must I await, in God's good time, others, who will hear the message, and allow me to bring them unto the Saviour's home and heart, to be numbered among his saints for glory everlasting? The servant told Isaac all things that he had done; but he brought Rebekah, as the best evidence of success in his mission. O thou Eternal God, on whose errand of life we come to this family, beseeching them in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to Thee, and united to Him, grant us the same happy results in bringing them effectually to Thee; that when we shall appear in the presence of Christ, many who are now our hope may be our crown of rejoicing!

1 Hosea iii. 3. Gen. xxiv. 49.

SERMON XL.

ABRAHAM'S SECOND MARRIAGE, AND DEATH.

GENESIS XXV. 8.

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.

SEPARATION from a companion, by whose conversation we have been instructed, and to whose kindness we have been indebted, does not take place without a sense of privation and regret. It would be little creditable to our state of mind, if the case were otherwise. The feeling of painfulness is increased, in proportion as the matter discussed has been interesting, and the communion itself endearing. On this principle I cannot contemplate without some feeling of sorrow, the necessity of closing this history of the life of Abraham. The subject, deeply momentous in itself, has become in a measure familiar to me by long, though interrupted

intercourse; and I trust that in the course of my fellowship with it, some better acquaintance with the mind of God has been vouchsafed to me. More spiritual improvement would assuredly have been derived to my own heart, in a deeper knowledge of divine dealing, a greater sense of divine love, and a better appreciation of faith, as the shield of the believer's left hand, while his right holds the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, if the matter had been more powerfully, because more prayerfully applied to my own conscience. How it has fared in this all-important regard with you, can be known only to Him, whose prerogative it is to search the heart, and to yourselves. If however,' (to apply the language of Bishop Horne, concerning a work of far different pretensions,) I could flatter myself that any one had taken half the pleasure in hearing the life of Abraham, that I have taken in writing it, I should not fear the loss of my labour. The hours passed in these meditations, passed very pleasantly; they are gone, but have left a relish and a fragrance upon the mind, and the remembrance of them is sweet.' The subject will reach its close at the end of the present dis

course.

I commend it, under a deep sense of

its imperfections, (which no one knows more painfully, nor deplores more truly than myself,) to the gracious acceptance of God, through the all-prevailing merit of the great Intercessor. But it is a minister's deep and precious consolation, in the saddening persuasion of inability and unworthiness, to know that a man is accepted according to that he hath, and not according to that he hath not. It well becomes him therefore to learn, that he hath in the Atonement of the cross, a blessed hope that "the good Lord will pardon every one that prepareth his heart to glorify God, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary."

In terminating this "strange eventful history," which stands among all others in the experience of mankind, like a lofty mountain gilded and glowing with sunshine, while the lower region is shrouded in mist and gloom, the word of God describes,

I. ABRAHAM'S MARRIAGE WITH KETURAH. Sarah, the wife of his heart, the companion of his earlier, the solace of his later life, the mother of his only child according to the promise of Jehovah, and the type of Christ's Church, enjoying the spiritual freedom of his

salvation, had now been dead seven years. The patriarch himself was more than a hundred and forty years old. All the emotions of worldly love might well be imagined to have been buried in the grave of Sarah; and his hourly thoughts to have been fixed upon the invisible realities and glories of that state where they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Upon what principle then may we account for this act of Abraham's life? Must we diminish our deep and fitting veneration for the friend of God, in these later moments of his pilgrimage, when the eye of his faith, and the aspirations of his heart, should be especially directed towards "the city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God."

It has frequently been supposed that Moses, here, as in some other places,1 has related this transaction out of the proper order of time: and that Keturah, who is referred to in the sixth verse, not as his wife, but as his concubine, must have been united to him during the life time of Sarah. It is asserted, that he who rested upon divine promise that he should

1 The death of Ishmael is recorded in ver. 17, yet he lived until Jacob and Esau were sixty-three years old; and Abraham himself lived until they were fifteen years of age.