out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." It is the burden of the whole written Word. It is the reiterated theme of an earnest and faithful ministry. It is incorporated in every system of religious truth; with more or less clearness, as they have adhered to or departed from Him, the Source of all truth, from whom they were first derived. It is the language of all those precious dispensations of the Divine Providence with which our lives are penetrated and encircled from day to day. To the nominal Christian; to the man absorbed in the business or immersed in the pleasures of the world; to the votary of selfish and sensual pursuits; to all who have either never seriously set out heavenwards, or, having made a start, have halted on the way, has the eternal Father said many a time, and He says still, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house; . . . and in such and such wise I will bless thee."

It is the peculiar excellence of the dispensation of the New Jerusalem, that what was only dimly seen or hesitatingly affirmed by the good of past ages, as to the treasures of wisdom and love hid in the letter of the Word, is now authoritatively asserted and abundantly confirmed. We may now look into the Word with a deeper insight, and express its doctrines with an exacter precision.

Our subject, therefore, is still the Divine call to man, only more particularly defined and interiorly represented.

The Lord addressing Himself to Abram implies man's first consciousness of something attainable, as to state, better than his present lot. Abram signifies the affectional part of man, or what we call the heart. It is, however, the heart as yet unrenewed, cold, and worldly. He is love, but taking no thought of aught beyond self. He is affection, only absorbed by earthly things.

Abram means 66 a high father, a father of elevation." This is suggestive. In relation to all other faculties of the mind, love stands as the father. It is the source whence they spring, from which they derive their quality. Its pre-eminence is unquestioned. Its paternity cannot be denied. It is "a high father," though in the case before us its elevation is not of the true order. That is to say, there is much that is good; goodness is conspicuous, but it is natural merely, it wants spiritualizing. When that is accomplished; when the breathing of God, the Divine Aspirate, has been inserted, then Abram will become Abraham; the high father will be the father of a great multitude; earthly affection will expand and multiply; richer experiences will be possible and enjoyed; the lofty but solitary love of self will give place to the loftier and beneficent love of God and the neighbour. But we have to do now with Abram, the love that is still

idolatrous and depraved; the goodness that lacks the elements that make it agreeable to God, useful to others, and salutary to itself.

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The instruction given to Abram has this gracious end in view, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." In other words, there must be a receding from, a coming out of those things that are peculiarly our own. Observe, it is said "thy country," "thy kindred," thy father's house." It were hard to say what is nearer or dearer to a man than these. With the most of people the love of country and of kind is an absorbing passion, exceedingly difficult to eradicate or supersede. What, then, is intended by these things? What is there in us that answers to them? Evidently, they are those things of the flesh and spirit with which Abram, the united affections of the naturally-minded man, are most thoroughly in affinity, in which he finds his chief delight, for aught beyond which he has little thought or care. In them are to be included whatever delights the body, panders to the senses, or satisfies the mind in an unregenerate state; his "country," denoting them all in the aggregate, his "kindred," those of an exterior sort, and his "father's house," those that are more interior.

Abram is to "get out of" these. He is not to take them with him. They have served their purpose, such as it was. Moreover, they are incapable of advancement; so they are to be receded from and left behind, whilst he goes forward. The affections that have been set upon earthly things when regeneration begins must be provided with something better, worthier, and more enduring. We must love, it is a necessity of our being; we cannot do without a home; and so for Haran the Lord offers Canaan; for "kindred" and "father's house" He substitutes Himself and heaven.

"Unto a land that I will show thee." There is much to be said about this that we are fain to leave unexpressed. But you can readily imagine, and will be quite safe in so doing, the things spiritual and celestial, holy and Divine, which it involves, and which in due time shall be set before the enraptured vision of the obedient soul. The land the Lord shows to Abram is heaven, distant only and dim, as he makes it such by the tardiness of his pace in travelling thitherward, and the absorption of his mind with the trifles that lie around his path. It is heaven, a state of felicity, purity, and bliss; not reserved to some indefinite future, but revealed on earth from day to day to the sanctified affections. And why revealed, unless to be entered upon, appropriated, and enjoyed?

Such, then, is the Divine command. Let us now look very briefly

you,

at the promise by which it is enforced and sustained. For, mark both the man Abram, and the principle he corresponds to, need the incentive of a promise to quicken them in undertaking a task so apparently uncalled for and difficult. In the state Abram denotes the soul is not moved by the highest considerations. It does not see that the service of God is its own reward; that "great peace have all they that do His commandments." It looks for a definite, tangible recompense. And the Lord is so good as to accommodate Himself to this hard, dull, exacting state of ours.

And oh what a remarkably rich promise it is He has made! It comprises no less than seven distinct affirmations of His beneficence and power. It is thus a perfect blessing, including all needful and imaginable good.

1. I will make of thee a great nation.

2. I will bless thee.

3. And make thy name great.

4. And thou shalt be a blessing.

5. I will bless them that bless thee.

6. And curse him that curseth thee.

7. And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

1. "I will make of thee a great nation."

Not only a nation, but a great one. The Lord does nothing meanly or by halves. All His operations are on a grand scale, as great as they are glorious. But that is not all this means. There is something definite meant by the term "a great nation." Nations in the spiritual sense of the Word denote more particularly the various goods of regeneration as peoples do its truths. So that "I will make of thee a great nation" indicates the large extension as to the quality of goodness to which the principle Abram, viz. natural affection, shall attain through obedience to the Truth. When human affection is regenerated, and our loves are all inflamed with a heavenly ardour, our deeds will be specially characterized by goodness. Active benevolence will be the ruling principle in the soul. "I will make of thee a great

nation."

2. "And I will bless thee."

How does the Lord bless us? Is it not by enabling us severally to fulfil the object of our creation? He blesses the eye with sight, the ear with hearing, the hand with the ability to exercise its cunning. And so with everything else. It were no blessing to set the eye to do the work of the ear, or the hand that of the foot. God blesses Abram when He makes goodness, with which He has endowed the regenerating will, active, intelligent, diffusive; when its prayer goes forth, as

much in acts of usefulness as in fervency of petition, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to do?"

3. "And make thy name great.”.

That is, in the significative language of the Word, the eminence of thy quality shall lie in its intrinsic worth. "Thou shalt be a great nation" in that thy native goodness shall become spiritual. "I will bless thee" by giving thee a capacity for benevolent aspirations and righteous deeds. "And I will make thy name great" in letting it be seen that in thy new state thou hast lost neither fame nor power, but acquired both, yea, that which alone is excellent and abiding.

Poets of all ages have sung the praise of love; but in their loftiest flights and profoundest musings they have never yet worthily approached the love that animates and rules the Christian soul. That is a theme as yet unsung. No name is so great, no quality is so Godlike, as that of heaven-born charity; because none claims so preeminent a Source, so glorious a destiny.

4. "And thou shalt be a blessing."

This follows, of course, from what has gone before. When Abram becomes a great nation, and God blesses him, and makes his name great, he is now qualified to be the medium of good to others. God blesses you and me that through us He may reach others and bless them. The highest dignity conferred upon a man or an angel is when the Lord fits him to be the medium through which the Divine Goodness and Truth can flow to other men and angels. And love is never more blessed, never more exalted, never more lovely, than when, like the flowers holding up their tiny cups to catch the rain-drops, it makes itself the receptacle for receiving the streams of Divine Mercy, and then transmits them to all around.

5. "And I will bless them that bless thee."

The essen

Who are they who bless Abram? Clearly all those faculties which contribute to the furtherance of Abram's distinctive use. tial difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate can be soon expressed. In the one, order prevails; in the other, anarchy. Paul talks about the law in his members warring against the law of his mind. It ever is so till the Lord's kingdom comes, and His will is done on earth, as it is in heaven. But when Abram gets out of his country, etc. etc., which is as he ceases to do evil and learns to do well as the turbulence and misrule in the soul subside, and order and peace ensue- -the goodness with which the heart is infilling will find co-operators springing up on every hand. The same thing will be repeated of which we read (in 1 Chron. xii. 18), when the children of Benjamin and Judah came to David to the hold, and said, "Thine

are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse : peace, peace be unto thee, and peace be to thy helpers; for thy God helpeth thee. . . . David received them, and made them captains of the band." With regenerated affections there will be reciprocating thoughts and feelings, motives and desires. These, then, are they who bless Abram. And the Lord says He will bless them. He will do it by giving them greater freedom and enlarged power to assist the renewing heart to go on in its heavenly, upward path. And what is this but "all happiness to those who, from the heart, acknowledge the Lord"?

6. "And curse him that curseth thee."

This is nothing else than the converse of what goes before. If blessing, in the shape of increased facilities for labour, be given to the principles that co-operate, to the faculties in harmony with the renewing heart, then cursing must be equivalent to a restraint put upon those which continue antagonistic. If all happiness flow from the acknowledgment of the Lord's presence and activity in the purified affections, its deprivation or diminution must inevitably ensue where that acknowledgment ceases or is less pronounced. And these words. can teach nothing harsher or sadder than this. Nor can we desire them. God utters His heaviest curse when, by our determined hostility, He is fain to withhold His blessing, when He is hindered in the work of saving the soul.

I do not say the patriarch put this construction upon this branch of the munificent promise he received. I do not think he did. He was not prepared for so spiritual and genuine an idea. He would regard it as not a few do still, as indicating the exercise of a special Providence in his and their behalf. And it was needful for him, as it is for them, to be allowed to confirm this supposition. But we may and should rise to a truer conception of the Lord's teaching. God curses men or principles that are inveterate in their obduracy by diverting in other directions the streams of His mercy and grace that would be abused by the profane recipient. And in no other way. They will die, He is fain to let them.

Time will not permit us to do more than simply point to the triumphant character of the Divine Mercy, as shown in the contrast, evidently intended in the plurality of them who are blessed as against the singularity of him that is cursed. It ever is so. We have to do with a God who delights in mercy; who while, even as to the letter, He seems to visit iniquity upon the third and fourth generation of them who hate Him, shows mercy to the thousandth of them that love Him and keep His commandments.

7. "And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."