and his guide, and his familiar friend through the whole business of the day; always saying in his heart, "Thou God seest me; "1 and remembering that there is not one hour that can flow, nor one occasion that can happen, where his law is not present, and where it must not preside. It is false that the principle of Christian sanctification possesses no influence over the transactions of civil and ordinary life. It is altogether false that godliness is a virtue of an order so lofty and monastic, as to hold its dominion only over the solemnities of worship, or over the solitudes of prayer and spiritual contemplation. If it be substantially a grace at all, it will give a direction and influence to the whole of our path in society; nor is it vested with the place which of right it claims, until it be invested with a presiding authority over the entire system of human affairs. And therefore, the preacher is only sending the lovely and lifegiving religion of the gospel abroad over the field of its legitimate operation, when he goes with it to your counting houses, and there rebukes every selfish inclination that would carry you ever so little within the limits of fraudu

1 Gen. xvi. 13.

lency; when he repairs to the crowded exchange, and pronounces of every bargain over which truth in all its strictness has not presided, that it is tainted and defiled by sin against God; when he looks into the shop, and in listening to the contest of argument between him who magnifies the object of sale and purchase, and him who would diminish its worth, he calls it the contest of avarice broken loose from integrity.'1

Of all such doings and dealings-of the defilement of such a spirit, utterly repugant to the glassy simplicity of an evangelical conversation, I would have you ignorant;-or when it comes under your notice, I would have you cry, 'So will not I, because of the fear of God.' It is not because it is creditable before all thinking men to eschew the meanness of these prevailing evils; nor is it merely-however deeply worthy of consideration to every disciple of Christ, that a reproach will thus be brought upon all who profess his holy faith, that the unthinking and prejudiced world exaggerates the few into the many, inverting the process of Atonement, by laying the sins of one

1 Chalmers' application of Christianity to the commercial and ordinary affairs of life, pp. 61, 62.

man upon the multitude of believers. But it is because of the entire inconsistency of such a fraudulent spirit with Gospel precept, no less than with Gospel promise. It is because a stumbling-block is thus laid in the way of weak Christians, and because the Holy Spirit of God is thus resisted and grieved. The very essence of Christianity is heavenly-mindedness; and every approach towards double dealing, whether in traffic, or in any other transaction, is a canker at its root, hindering its growth, and tending to make it pine and perish.

SERMON XXXVII.

ABRAHAM'S PROVISION OF A WIFE FOR ISAAC.

GENESIS XXIV. 2—4.

AND ABRAHAM SAID UNTO HIS ELDEST SERVANT OF HIS HOUSE, THAT RULED OVER ALL THAT HE HAD, PUT, I PRAY THEE, THY HAND UNDER MY THIGH: AND I WILL MAKE THEE SWEAR BY THE LORD, THE GOD OF HEAVEN, AND THE GOD OF THE EARTH, THAT THOU SHALT NOT TAKE A WIFE UNTO MY SON OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE CANAANITES AMONG WHOM I DWELL: BUT THOU SHALT GO INTO MY COUNTRY, AND TO MY KINDRED, AND TAKE A WIFE UNTO MY SON ISAAC.

THE aged believer, as he draws near to the end of his course, looks back upon the past with holy gratitude, and upon the future with a hope full of immortality. Thus happily and graciously minded, he awaits the period of his dismissal, with no abatement of zeal for the divine honour, nor of heavenly love towards those in whom his best earthly affections have been centred. Having himself lived the life of

faith in the Son of God, he exceedingly desires that the same extent of spiritual privilege which he hath largely enjoyed, should be communicated in yet larger measure to those, by whom his place in the Church shall be occupied, when he is sleeping in the grave.

Abraham was now old, and well stricken in age; and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. Among the other sources of his happiness, and indeed of his spiritual mercies, his marriage with Sarah was to be especially accounted. It had brought peace into his tent, and had encouraged him in his holy walk of faith. Profiting then by the well-remembered lesson of his own experience in this matter of deep and vital interest, he had an important duty to perform, and suitable steps to take towards Isaac, his son of God's amazing promise, like himself the heir of the world by faith, linked with him to the same unchangeable God, by the same covenant of grace, and in whose seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. That duty and those measures will open matter for prayerful consideration. We notice then,

ABRAHAM'S ANXIETY FOR THE RELIGIOUS MARRIAGE OF HIS SON. The subject may fitly