In the brief scriptural history of the antediluvian world, there is no record that the Lord spake unto man from the time that the first-born of the human race became the murderer of the second, and Cain was cursed from the earth, till God said unto Noah, when all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, "The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy them from the earth." And after the sole covenant was made with Noah and his sons, centuries again passed away, and the voice of the Lord was not heard by man till a descendant of Shem, in Ur of the Chaldees, was commanded to leave his country and go into another and strange land. There is something strikingly peculiar in the command here given, as pertaining to the land whither he was to go, as well as to the person, in commanding whom to go thither, the long silence, so very seldom interrupted since communion with God was lost by sin, was thus broken at last by a voice from heaven, the voice of the Lord, "Get thee out from thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." The Lord who had called him, was to show him the land. The one was chosen as well as the other. And the least observant reader can hardly fail to see, from the mere juxta-position and connected sequence of the preceding passages of Scripture, how rapidly, in marvellous contrast with all the previous history of fallen man, vision succeeded to vision; and the same Divine promise was ratified and renewed, again and again, by a covenant and by an oath, according as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in whose seed all the families of the earth should finally be blessed, entered, or left, or even purposed to leave, or returned to the land

1 Gen. vi. 12, 13.

of Canaan. That land was thus set apart as the everlasting possession of the seed of Israel, as never was any land to any other people.

The covenant was made with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob. Not all of Abraham's nor of Isaac's seed were destined to possess the land; for both of them had other descendants, to whom the promise did not pertain, and who had no inheritance in Israel. But the covenant, limited to the seed of Jacob, and embracing them all, no longer pertained to any single mortal, as to him; but embraced all the tribes of Israel, to whom the land was allotted, and among whom in after ages it was apportioned. And whenever it was thus completed, generation after generation passed away; and, for a long season, the voice of the Lord was silent again.

But the faith of the patriarchs was not in vain. The children of Israel, in the appointed time, went up into the land to which the dead body of Jacob had been carried, and Joseph did not in vain give commandment respecting his bones, which were carried up by Moses and buried by Joshua in Canaan. In that land, save the cave of Machpelah, and a parcel of a field in Shechem, each a burying place, the seed of Jacob had not a foot of ground, which, by any human right, they could call their own. Nor, though these had been purchased by their patriarchal fathers, could the possession of them be claimed by a race of slaves in Egypt. Their rightnot to a spot or two for a burying-place-but to the whole land for an everlasting possession, rested not on an agreement with the sons of Heth, or the sons of Hamor, but on the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers.

Prescription for forty, or four hundred years, or even, as now, for a far longer period, cannot be valid against the word of the living God, in whose sight a thousand

years are as one day, and to whom the earth belongs. It runs not against titles, guaranteed by human compact, and sanctioned by human laws. But there never was a right or title to any inheritance or possession, given not by man but by God, as that with which the seed of Israel was invested over Canaan. "The lot of their inheritance," "the heritage of Jacob," was defined, decreed, and confirmed to them by the promise, the covenant, and the oath of the Lord of the whole earth. That covenant, as they were foretold and forewarned, might, as to its operation, be suspended for a season, and seem to be disannulled for ever; but, however hopeless its execution might at any time appear, it was never repealed, and would not always be forgotten. As Abraham, against hope, believed in hope, when, bordering on his hundredth year, he trusted and knew that the promised blessings would rest on the innumerable descendants of his then unborn son, so, when generation after generation of the children of Israel was held in Egyptian bondage, and the very straw was withheld from them, which was needful to make bricks to their masters, they would have believed against hope, or all conceivable likelihood that it would ever be realized, in thinking that the goodly land of Canaan would be theirs. God might have seemed to be the God of any other race than of the enslaved and toil-worn children of Israel, under the rods of Egyptian task-masters. Yet it was not hid from Abraham, but from the word of God he knew assuredly that his seed should be a stranger in a land not theirs, wherein they should be long afflicted; but he knew also that they should come with great substance into the land of Canaan again, though more than four centuries should elapse from the

1 Exod. v. 7.

time the promise was given ere it should begin to be realized.'

The Lord, in his appointed time and way, saves, from troubles however great or enemies however strong, by many or by few. It was when the lives of the children of Israel were bitter with hard bondage, and the commandment had been given by the king of Egypt that every new-born male child of the Israelites should be killed, that an infant lying in an ark of bulrushes amidst the flags by the river's brink, was raised up to be the deliverer of Israel. After being trained in the house of Pharaoh, he fled from his face. A stranger in a strange land, keeping the flock of Jethro on the farther outskirts of the desert, he saw a bush, like Israel then as in after ages, burning with fire and not consumed,-for the self-same reason, because the Lord was there. The time was come for Jacob's deliverance, when his destruction was threatened; and the voice of the Lord, who is a covenant-keeping God, was uttered again. Turning aside to see the great sight, Moses heard the voice of the Lord calling to him, "Moses, Moses. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters; for I know their sorrows, and am come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land, unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM (Jehovah) hath sent me unto you. The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and

1 Gen. xv. 13-18.

the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you; THIS IS MY

NAME FOR EVER AND MY MEMORIAL UNTO ALL GENERATIONS.

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The Lord did begin to prove the truth of his covenant by putting it into effect against all the resistance of Pharaoh and that of all their enemies.

When the king of Egypt refused to let the people go, and yet more grievously oppressed them, one Divine communication followed after another, more rapidly than ever since the days before the fall. The Lord said unto Moses, "Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh, I am the Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known unto them. And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groanings of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you of their bondage, and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God. And I will bring you into the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it you for an heritage, I am the Lord."2

Although, in maintaining the unchangeableness and inviolability of that covenant, the Lord was first known to Israel by his name Jehovah, the self-existent and ever-living God, the Divine right of the seed of Israel to the possession of Canaan may now be a startling statement in the ears of those who have not perfectly considered, however frequently they may have read, the oft

Exod. iii. 1-15.

Ibid. vi. 1-8.