All these lived because they were members of a race formed in God's image. All might claim that image, confessing their dependence upon Him whom they could not see. All might sink into their own individual, animal natures, which were under the curse of death. Of that degradation, and of its consequences, God himself, and all true men hearing and echoing his voice, bare testimony to themselves and to their fellows; the warning, by its very terms, declared who could raise them out of this death, how they might hold fast life. In these respects there is no change. Abraham must stand or fall, sink or rise, as all who preceded him stood or fell, sank or rose. He must yield to the invisible Guide, or become the slave of visible things. He must walk by faith or by sight. There is in him no more stock of faith, than there was in Adam a stock of innocence. a property as innocence. trusts before it has gone trust, and so goes wrong. The man trusts from the sense of weakness, the feeling that evil is close to him; so he becomes right. But there must be an object of trust in both cases. And as that object reveals itself more distinctly, the history of the person or the race that receives the revelation advances. Abraham's story is no mere repetition of Adam's or Noah's. A step, a very great step, has been made in discovery, and the discovery has reference to Abraham himself; to Abraham as connected with a surrounding world; to Abraham as the head of a family and a nation. One great truth unites all

Faith can as little be The child depends and wrong; it ceases to

these aspects of his life together. He is educated to acknowledge a Righteous Being—a Being the direct opposite of that one whom the Babel-builders worshipped, whom they feared as the probable destroyer of their brick walls, whom by all acts they were to propitiate that he might save them. It is not only One who preserves men from the waters, who blesses them, bids them increase and multiply, and restrains them from shedding each other's blood, that is disclosed to the mind and heart of Abraham. It is a Person in whom Stedfastness, Fidelity, Truth, dwell absolutely. The shepherd comes to apprehend a character; one different from his own, which he is able partly to understand through that very difference, through the want of fidelity and truth in himself, and yet which he must acknowledge as the image after which he is formed. Let us trace, so far as we are permitted, the process of his discipline and his illumination.

I. The thought may sometimes have struck your own minds—it will be suggested to you by many modern books of a certain school-that the circumstances of Abraham were eminently favourable to the cultivation in him of a pure, simple, monotheistic faith. A man living under the eye of Nature-on open plains, amidst flocks and herds-away from the artifices and deceptions of cities, was likely, it may be said, to preserve his devotion unsullied, and to give it that healthy direction which it loses when a knowledge of the world's evil suggests painful questions respecting

the origin of evil, and confuses the belief in a perfectly benignant Creator and Guardian.

I have no doubt that the circumstances of Abraham were the best possible to fit him for the work which he had to do, just as I believe that yours and mine are the best, if we use them rightly, to fit us for the work which we have to do. But I would ask you to remember, that there was nothing in the perpetual beholding of natural objects which could preserve him from the worship of those objects. Cities may be very dangerous, but it is not in cities especially that men have learned to bow before the Sun, when he comes as a bridegroom out of his chamber,' or to kiss the hand when 'the Moon is walking in her brightness.' These are the special temptations of the shepherd-of the man on the open plain-of the devout man, who feels his need of something to adore, and who is not constantly led by the power which men exert over him, to bestow his adoration upon them. The recollection perhaps of the North American Indian and his Great Spirit presents itself to you, and you ask whether that is not, at all events, an instance of a God heard in the winds, seen in the clouds, not taking any definite, visible shape? Whether it be so or not, I think you will perceive in a moment that the difference between the worship of the North American Indian and that of Abraham, is even wider than that between the worship of the Sabæan and his. For the marked peculiarity of Abraham is, that he does not hear God in the winds, or see Him in the

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clouds that he does not associate Him primarily with the things around him, but primarily with himself and with human beings. This man living out of cities, this settler in lands, which neither he nor any one appropriates, is yet regarding the Lord of All in connexion with a family, with a nation, with all the families of the earth. God speaks to him-tells him where he shall go, and what he shall do; that is the Scriptural statement, which we may reject if we please, but which we must not pretend to explain by cases and examples unlike it in every respect. You cannot, by any considerations of this kind, escape from the acknowledgment of a distinct call from an actual, personal, unseen Being, addressed to the man himself, felt and confessed by him in his inmost heart and conscience. But if you start from the belief of such a call, the more you reflect upon Abraham's outward position the better. Think then, if you please, of the simplicity, the regularity, the monotony, of a shepherd's life. Remember that his flocks not only constitute his wealth, but his work; that all exercises of vigilance, courage, patience, are needful for the performance of that work. Remember, further, that in the guidance and discipline of these animals he has the help of others, who are not merely animals-that he has men-servants and womenservants-that these form a pastoral family, of which Sarah is the head. Remember that the conduct and ordering of this human society is a part of his needful business, which we should of

course think much higher and nobler than the other, and which is expressly forced upon us by the language of the book of Genesis. I will not ask you at present to reflect how the language of Scripture is studded with allusions to the Lord of All as a shepherd; how these allusions are no accidental appendages or ornaments of the discourse, but are worked into the very tissue of it. Such observations I may often have occasion to make hereafter. I only give a hint of them now, because they illustrate the truth upon which Abraham's education turns. If his work was not the image of a Divine work, if his government over the sheepfold and still more in the tent, was not the image of the Divine government-the narrative would not be the consistent or the profoundly true one that it is.

II. And this we shall find is quite as important a reflection with a view to Abraham's personal character, as it is with a view to his position and office as a patriarch. Take two or three instances: Abraham asks how it is that his seed should possess the land, seeing that he goes childless, and his steward Eliezer is his heir. He is told that one from his loins should be his heir. He believes the word, and it is counted to him for righteousness. Here we are informed of a blessing which came to Abraham himself. He acquired a new and higher standing-ground. The spirit within him confessed a perfectly righteous Being-one who could fulfil his own promises-one who was the Lord over the powers of nature, and the powers