other, and with every neighbouring power: they have steadily maintained their national independence. In vain have the moft formidable armies of the greatest empires endeavoured to overturn it. They have retired baffled and difmayed; or have perished by the fword and famine in the wilderness. The Egyptians, the Affyrians, the Perfians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Turks, have fucceffively confirmed by their fruitless efforts the veracity and omnipotence of God. After sustaining the most active enmity of the most powerful nations for three thousand seven hundred years, the Arabians ftill live, unfubdued and fearless, in the presence of all their brethren.

About the time of the birth of Ifaac, the merciful acceptance given to the interceffion of Abraham for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah afforded a memorable proof of the condescending goodness of the Supreme Being; and was graciously adapted to encourage the faithful fervants of God to earneftness of fupplication in behalf of them

D 4

themselves and others, by teaching the confoling truth which we learn also from the Apoftle; that "the fervent prayer of a " righteous man availeth much (i)." The prefervation of Lot from the general deftruction evinced that the hand of Providence difcriminates between the upright and the wicked.

In procefs of time it pleafed God to "tempt" Abraham; that is to fay, to try him, to put his obedience to a further teft. The trial appointed was moft fevere. The father was commanded to take his fon, his only fon Ifaac, (his only fon by Sarah, and the child of the promife,) whom he loved, and to offer him as a burnt-facrifice in the land of Moriah upon a mountain, which was to be pointed out to him. Abraham, ftrong in faith, immediately proceeded on the journey. He knew that whatever God commanded it was his duty to perform. He knew by long experience the power and the truth of the Almighty. He knew that the promife which he had received of (James, v. 16.

an

He

an innumerable pofterity, and one of them the Saviour of the world, by that very fon Ifaac who was now to be flain on the altar, would affuredly be accomplished. confided that God, in return for this demonftration of unreferved obedience and entire dependence, would speedily reftore his fon to life (k). The willing mind was fufficient in the fight of God. The fatal injunction, at the very moment when it was about to be executed, was countermanded by the voice of an angel. The full approbation of God was announced to Abraham; and every former promise made to him and to Ifaac folemnly reiterated and confirmed. It is evident that the facrifice of Ifaac was a type of the future facrifice of Jesus Christ. And the mountain on which the tranfaction took place is by many conceived, and on no improbable grounds, to have been the identical mountain on which Christ suffered upon the crofs.

Jacob, the younger fon of Ifaac, was afterwards pronounced by the Supreme

(k) Heb. xi. 17.-19:

Being to be the perfon in whofe line the great promises made to his grandfather and father were to be continued. And his mother Rebecca, inftead of implicitly depending on God for the fulfilment of his own word, had recourfe to a very unwarrantable step in order to fecure to him the patriarchal bleffing accompanying the right to those promifes; a bleffing which the apprehended that the partiality of Ifaac, now far advanced in years, would affign to his firft-born Efau in contradiction to the purpose of Heaven. Jacob, flying from the refentment of his brother Efau, who deemed himself defrauded of his right; a right, however, which while he had imagined it to be in his power he had profanely flighted (/); received from God a full affurance of protection, and of the fulfilment of the original promife, in himfelf and his pofterity (m). And, after many years, when he returned into the land of Canaan with his wives and children

and

great poffeffions, the promise was again

(1) See Gen. xxv. 34. and Heb. xii. 16.

(m) Gen. xxviii. 13-15.

repeated:

repeated and as a fignal mark of Divine favour, his name was changed to Ifrael; a term denoting a person who had power with God (n). He returned in time to pay the last offices of duty to his father Ifaac; and experienced the kindeft reception from his reconciled brother Efau.

After dwelling fomewhat more than thirty years, yet still as a stranger, in the countries occupied by the Canaanites, Jacob removed with all his family into Egypt. For this event God had prepared the way by the fale of Jofeph as a flave into that kingdom; by having bestowed on that young man, as a reward for his fignal virtue, the power of interpreting the pro phetic dreams of his fellow-prifoners the fervants of Pharaoh, and afterwards the vifions of Pharaoh himfelf; by having raised him to be the fecond person in the kingdom, poffeffed in fact of the full exercise of sovereign authority; and by having thus enabled him to provide for

(n) Gen. xxxv. 10, &c.