Christ, and of the blood of Christ, which are all required to justify the sinner under grace; which secure the whole man in the service of God, and sanctify every feeling in the path of duty: them only has God blessed; "yea, and they shall be blessed."

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SERMON V.

GENESIS XXviii. 10, 11, 12.

And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went towards Haran.

And he lighted upon a certain place and tarried there all night, because the sun was set ;—and he took the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

And he dreamed;—and behold a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven:-and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

It was soon after the well-known conduct of Rebecca and Jacob in regard to Isaac's blessing, that a separation in the family, now become disunited and unhappy, is any longer unavoidable. Into

the detail of that conduct we entered in a former discourse; but there are still some points in the transaction requiring a further explanation, which will thus afford me an opportunity I should be loth to neglect, of noticing, in this our concluding Lecture on the circumstances of Isaac, the very peculiar scene which the above portion of Scripture brings before us.

The treachery of the future Patriarch had been successful. I say "treachery," because it can be called fairly by no other name: it was an evident plot on the part of a mother and her son, to impose upon the father, and to defraud the lawful inheritor of his blessing. However, as I said before, the treachery was successful.

How striking is the impartiality of the Sacred Volume! It never attempts to conceal or palliate any unpleasant fact which it is called upon to disclose in the direct progress of its narratives. Many,

if not most of the greatest names in Scripture History, have deserved, in some one instance at least, the imputation of disobeying God's will; and with what fidelity is the imputation always made! Abraham, "the father of the faithful," in his faithless deceit towards the king of Egypt: Moses, "the meekest of men," in his distrustful and arrogant disobedience of the divine command: David, "the man after God's own heart," in his murder and adultery: Solomon, "the best and the wisest," in his melancholy desertion of his former principles of piety and wisdom: Elisha, the "undaunted man of God," in his cowardice and despair: even patient Job," in his hasty impatience: and the bold and honest St. Peter, firm as the rock from which he took his name, in his dastardly abandonment of his beloved Master-in each of these cases, we have the fact related plainly, just as it occurred, without any attempt to gloss

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it over, or to screen the offender from the true consequences of his unguarded behaviour. In the present example,― here is the very founder of the Jewish people,--a people who inherit his name, and who glory in his character, openly stated as deriving all his celebrity by impious means, and as laying the cornerstone of the house of Israel, in an act of perfidy. We must surely confess, that whatever weight and respect such honest disclosures can give to any work, (and in the universal estimation of mankind on the commonest occasions, they give some,) they do undoubtedly give to the Bible.

But, it may here with some reason be asked, "If the behaviour of Jacob in this affair was so very exceptionable, why did the Almighty permit it to prosper ?" In answer to this, I would refer you to the daily experience of your own lives. We are constantly in the habit of seeing actions, in themselves