whom the life of prayer is the life of peace, and joy, and privilege, as well as the life of appointed duty, restrain prayer before God, while unbelievers are perishing around you; while your Father who is in heaven, is always more ready to give than you to ask; and while He waits to bless you, for yourselves and others, according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus?

The mediation of Abraham was unsuccessful, not, as I imagine, because God by some secret impulse overruled him from praying longer, in behalf of Sodom, as when he closed the prophet's lips from interceding for his sinful heritage, "Therefore pray not thou for this people; neither lift up cry nor prayer for them; neither make intercession to Me: for I will not hear thee," but because Abraham himself thought his request now secure, and ceased to wrestle with God. There is however a Mediator, whose Advocacy never fails, because his plea of merit is infinitely precious in the Father's eye; and because He ever liveth to make intercession for all who come unto God by Him. Seek the footstool of mercy in his name : Ask, and

1 Jer. vii. 16.

66

ye shall have; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." 1

And you, for whom they who have gracious. access to their Father in heaven, are pleading ever with groanings that cannot be uttered, while you are yourselves careless of your misery and danger,-you, over whose heads God's saints behold the sword of his justice and vengeance hanging as by a thread, while you are banquetting beneath it unmoved and secure, I intreat the mercy of the Most High, on your behalf. You against whom the Daniels whose fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ in prayer, see the hand writing upon the wall which declares you to be weighed and found wanting, doomed, sentenced, and about to die for ever, while you, slumbering, cannot observe the sentence, because the god of this world hath blinded your eyes,-I pray, in deep anxiety for your deliverance, that the God of heaven may enable you to discover that there is but a step between you and death. "As it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded: but the same day that

1 Matt. vii. 7.

Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed. Do not think that because you are insensible, God is forgetful; that because you dream of security, He will sleep also, and never awaken you. To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Behold now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation!" 3 The Lord may be now tarrying, while some of Abraham's spiritual children are imploring Him to save you. He stops perhaps, until their prayer is poured out, and their lips closed, and then He may go towards you in the city of your sins. If He find you there, find you out of Jesus Christ, find you girdled with walls of brass in your unbelief, will they be too strong for Him to break? The men of Sodom might have resisted an earthly foe, but when the fire and brimstone fell down from heaven, the dreadful tempest did its office, and the sinners were overwhelmed in that awful deluge of flame. You can no more put aside the Arm of God, than they could avert the storm of fire. Arise

Luke xvii. 28-30.

2 Psalm xcv. 7. 3 2 Cor. vi. 2.

then, and pray for yourselves. Are you guilty? Christ will be your Righteousness. Are you polluted? He will be your Sanctification. Are you in spiritual bondage? He will be your Almighty Redemption. Are you lying among the pots of habitual sin? He will create you anew unto good works, and "ye shall be as the wings of a dove, covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." 1

1 Psalm lxviii. 13.

SERMON XXIV.

THE FORTUNES OF LOT.

GENESIS XX. 1.

AND ABRAHAM JOURNEYED FROM THENCE TOWARD THE SOUTH COUNTRY, AND DWELT BETWEEN KADISH AND SHUR, AND SOJOURNED IN GERAR.

THE promise, to which Abraham's hope had long clung, was now about to be accomplished, according to the set time that God had declared to him, in the plain of Mamre. But the ark of his faith was to be tossed to and fro, by waves of temptation and sorrow, before the assured season of its rest arrived, in the fulfilment of divine undertaking concerning him. The love of man which ever dwells in the heart, where the love of God hath taken up its abode,-the yearnings of affection for his kindred,-his holy submission to the judgments of the Most High, --and the stability of his confidence were to be