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spread forth the affections of his heart to enjoy that communion.

Ye who have thus known the Saviour's preciousness, in gracious intercourse with Him by faith, put forth the exercises of that faith, to expect Him at all times, and especially when your trials may abound: and so be persuaded that you will be raised above them, by divine consolations, as the ark above the waters of the deluge, by the hand of God. Thus condescendingly and familiarly walking with you by the way, He will give sweetness to every joy; not only sanctify every sorrow, but deprive it of its sting, and make it unable to cast you down in feebleness of spirit, and sinful mourning before God. Seek Him whom your soul loveth; and you will assuredly find Him, and with him the peace of God.

(2) Abram had in this visit of Jehovah, a renewal of all the promises, by which his faith had been upheld and strengthened in following God. Christian trust is continually called to rest upon a promise; but if the manifestations of God to the heart, in his covenant faithfulness, are not often renewed, faith is apt to become feeble, until there seem to be only a handful of meal in the barrel, and a drop of oil in the

cruse. Therefore it is that God unveils his love to his waiting, and almost fainting servants; and saith unto them, " Fear not, I am your salvation." God said to Abraham, "Lift up thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed, as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it, and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee." Abram is a man of faith; but he is bidden to lift up his eyes, and look with a larger and closer observation of yet clearer and more heavenly.confidence, upon the heritage, in which God had instated him. It is entirely his own: and the more narrowly he examines it, the more will he be smitten with its loveliness; the more effectually carried out of himself, and out of the intermediate sorrows of his pilgrimage, to dwell in that consolation, which is so freely given and so unalienably secured.

If they who believe in the appointed Redeemer, to the saving of the soul, would enter

into and understand the beauty of that house of God, wherein their happy lot is cast, even the Church, built upon its living corner stone, they must not give merely a slight and hasty regard to the general structure, but must enter into its detail, follow its magnificence, from one chamber of beauty to another, and search out what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and height of the love of Christ which it contains, until they understand it minutely; and hunger and thirst, as becomes the children of light, to be filled with all the fulness of God. "Arise, walk through the land." Abram was to examine it fully; to see its brooks and watersprings; its stones of iron, and its hills, out of which brass might be digged; to know that it was a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands. And ye, who would not remain strangers to any part of your vast inheritance, the land of exceeding great, precious, and unchangeable promise, be your own spies and search it out by diligent inquisition. Rest not contented to study it, even in that accurate map afforded you by the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures. But let an experimental religion, enkindled and maintained by the eternal Spirit in your hearts, make you deeply

acquainted with the surface of the field, and the treasure contained in it.

O that Christians knew how much of life, peace, happiness, strength, joy, stability in faith, they lose for want of walking in holy observation through Immanuel's land, that ever-smiling country which He hath died to give them! Of how much glory is He defrauded, by their want of active and practical search into the happiness of their spiritual possession, as He has made it over to them in the everlasting covenant of his love! "Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces;" not only to enjoy your own present and eternal portion in their beauty and glory, but to tell them that come after: that they likewise may become followers of you, as ye also are of Christ. Thus survey your goodly heritage in the Church of God; and that which hath been hard to suffer in the trials of life, will become much more tolerable: and very delightful will be the remembrance, when you shall have finally entered the ark, with the saints of Christ at his coming again, and the

1 Psalm xlviii. 12, 13.

hand of God shall have shut you in, and ye shall go no more out for ever. "All things are yours, whether of the world, or life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's." And is not this an inventory which ye should lift up your eyes to examine, a land of good, which you should arise and walk through, with ever unfatigued, ever new delight?

I. If the distinctions of Abram were great, amidst all his trials, and his communion with God endearing, in those misty and more dim periods of the infancy and non-age of the Church, how much more blessed the believer's position, when he is called into the Mount Zion of the Gospel prospect, and sees his spiritual portion as there exhibited in the light and lustre of accomplished redemption? Abram had only a Pisgah view of the true land of promise; even when he walked through the visible Canaan. They who believe, in this noon-day of the Redeemer's manifested love, are privileged to behold what no eye of elder saint had seen, no ear of ancient believer heard, neither had it entered into the heart even of Abram, in

1 1 Cor. iii. 22.