the favoured of heaven. To him the promise of salvation, made to our first parents, was renewed by a special revelation; and to give him a greater degree of interest in the event, he received an assurance, that from him the promised Messiah should descend. The terms were neither figurative nor obscure, for it was expressly declared, "that in his seed all the families of "the earth should be blessed." And to ascertain the truth and certainty that the promise thus made to him was no delusion practised on the imagination, it was accompanied by the notice of an unhoped-for event speedily to be accomplished.

Abraham had then no child; for his wife Sarah, now a very aged person, never had brought him any offspring. God promised that they should have a son. The promise was fulfilled; and in the birth of this

son

son Abraham received an assurance that all which God had said should

come to pass.

That the faith of Abraham might descend as an inheritance to his posterity, the events which should befal his family after his decease were foretold with the utmost clearness and precision. The country which he then inhabited was promised by God to the descendants of Abraham, who were there to live a distinct and chosen race, appropriated to the service of God, and destined to preserve the knowledge of him from becoming extinct, or corrupted by the absurd inventions of human pride and ignorance. And, lest they should forget that the land promised as a possession was the gift of God, the fulfilment of the promise was referred to a distant period, and not to take place till the fourth generation.

We

We may be assured that the children of Abraham, and his children's children, were well instructed in all the particulars of this extraordinary revelation, which was to them so full of hope, and in all respects so interesting. And we accordingly find that the patriarch Jacob was SO strongly impressed with it, that he on his death-bed took an oath from his sons to bury him in that land in which God had promised that in a future age his family should be established.

In the course of time, however, this impression was nearly obliterated. The posterity of Abraham forgot the promised land, the destined place of their inheritance; and were so base as to be contented in a state of slavery and bondage. From this state of subjection they were rescued by Moses, whom God raised up as a deliverer,

deliverer, and endowed with power to work such miracles, as should sufficiently attest his divine mission. He who is the ruler of all events might doubtless have brought this to pass by means of wars and revolutions, such as have taken place in all ages of the world, and in which one event seems to grow out of another, as a natural and unavoidable consequence. But a gross and sensual people would not in this have seen the hand of God; they would have taken to themselves the glory. God therefore brought them unto that land, which he had promised Abraham to bestow upon them, not by the ordinary course of events, but by an open display of the interposition of Divine Providence, which, whenever it is thus displayed, is called miraculous." By signs and by wonders "and by an outstretched arm, did

"the

awful scenes. "of the days

"the Lord God bring his people out "from among the Egyptians." The power which he exerted in doing this was so evident to their senses, that it could neither be mistaken nor denied. Well might the venerable lawgiver, to whom was assigned the arduous task of leading and instructing the unruly multitude, well might he appeal to those who had been eye-witnesses of the "Ask now," says he, "that are past, which were before "thee, since the day that God "created man upon earth; and ask "from the one side of heaven to the "other, whether there hath been any "such thing as this great thing is, or "hath been heard like it?" What is the conclusion, what the inference which he desires them to draw from all the mighty miracles which they had seen and heard? "Unto thee it

❝ was