there, even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude."1 At first she merely considered the promise, in connexion with her own circumstances; and then its utter improbability, according to the course of nature, struck upon her mind, and she laughed with incredulity. But when her mind, according to the true nature of faith, turned away from the promise, in connexion with herself, to its connexion with the Almighty Promiser, she knew that his power could remove all difficulties, and his experienced faithfulness would lead Him to do that whereof He had spoken. Her faith is held forth as the Church's example: and it testifies for the imitation of all the daughters of God, who partake the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of wedded life; that they be followers of their believing husbands, and so be included in their blessings, and large dispensers of blessings to them. Rest, ye who look to be mothers in the spiritual Israel of the Church, upon the truth of God, while you plead before Him the children of promise whom He has engaged to give you. There you rest upon the Rock of ages. All

1 Heb. xi. 12.

difficulties, all seeming impossibilities in the way of that Faithful One who hath promised, will pass away, like the ebbing tide from the rock. Your soul shall magnify the Lord for his accomplished mercy; your spirit shall rejoice in God your Saviour.

Abraham called his son's name" Isaac," according to the divine command, linked as it was to the all gracious declaration, " I will establish my covenant with him, even an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him." The son's name testified to the father's joy, and to the holy laughter of the father's heart. Thus every time he named his child, he gave witness to the goodness of God, and to the delight that springs from a sense of accomplished promises. Nay, more than this: Isaac's name enkindled the joy of a sure and certain hope in Abraham's soul, connected with that everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, made by God with the child of promise, not less firmly than with himself. Learn, ye to whom that covenant hath a preciousness beyond all price, to connect every mercy you receive with it, and write upon each, the name, "Jehovah Shammah," the Lord is

1 Gen. xvi. 19.

there." So will those mercies give you double delight, by joining them to your Saviour and Surety in the covenant. They will thus be enlarged, by being consecrated to the divine glory. And thus, while they who know not God, and see not his hand in what they possess, receive their good things, as a perishing portion, held only by the same tenure with the breath in their nostrils, and then to be succeeded by the wretchedness of an everlasting destitution, you will find every bestowment of your heavenly Father's hand a possession for your immediate comfort, and an earnest of your everlasting blessedness.

1 Ezekiel xlviii. 35.

SERMON XXVI.

ARGUMENTS FOR INFANT BAPTISM.

(PART I.)

GENESIS XXI. 3, 4.

AND ABRAHAM CALLED THE NAME OF HIS SON THAT WAS BORN UNTO HIM, WHOM SARAH BARE TO HIM, ISAAC. AND ABRAHAM CIRCUMCISED HIS SON ISAAC, BEING EIGHT DAYS OLD, AS GOD HAD COMMANDED HIM.

"A WOMAN when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." Most eminently must this transition from the sad entail of the primitive judgment against sin, to delight and happiness, have been made good in the experience of Sarah. A barrenness long hopeless to the

John xvi. 21.

apprehension of sense, and against which her faith was hardly able to plead the word of an unchangeable God, is removed by miracle: and at ninety years old she bears a son to Abraham. But if these newly-opened springs of natural love are dear and delightful to her mind, what must be the holy joy with which she views in the child of her old age, that promised seed wherein all the families of the earth were to be blessed, the progenitor of that glorious Redeemer, the seed of the woman, in whose allprevailing Righteousness and Atonement, a lost world should find its peace, its life, and its salvation.

Being however by nature born in sin, and a child of wrath, by his natural heritage, the first and most solemn call upon the duties of parental love, is to make him, according to his father's faith, which looked forward to the Saviour's day with holy gladness, a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. The divine command had been given, that Isaac should be circumcised at eight days old. Abraham therefore, who had left his country, and his kindred, and his father's house at the bidding of God; who, according to the same injunction, had received in his own body