God has the power, for he is omnipotent; and, therefore, what he has promised to provide, that his power will provide, and all his promises will be seen at last, as they are seen now, to be yea and amen, irreversible and true, in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is thus that we see what God will provide, and we see the grounds, too, on which he will provide. What makes us very often have doubts and suspicions about this? First, we sometimes lose our hold and persuasion of the reality of this, because we think of the world, and all that is in it, without God. We think it is still a sort of chaos all things knocking against each other by ceaseless accidents, without any governing and presiding power; and therefore we conclude that it cannot be that this promise will ever be fulfilled. But just recollect that God governs; not only that God is, but that God acts; not only that God sits upon his throne, but sways the sceptre of his supremacy over all creation; and so minute is that superintendence, that not a hair can fall from the head, or a sparrow to the ground, without his permission. If I believe this, I can see that the God who promised, eighteen hundred years, or three thousand. years ago, still living, still governing, incapable of forgetting, possessed of omnipotent power,- will make good, in fact, the promise he has recorded in his holy word.

Another reason why we doubt it is that we are very precipitate and hasty. We often say, because we have not got to-day what we need, therefore we shall not get it at all. But that is a very great mistake. God bids us wait on the Lord. All that he has promised us, that he will provide the day, the hour, the month, the year, he has not specified. He asks. only confidence in his love, and confidence in his word, while he bids you look for the fulfilment of that word some time, and the very time that is most for your good, not the time that you may most prefer.

And another reason why we doubt God is that we are more or less distrustful. We are very apt to say, "All this is very nice, all this is very well to talk about, but it will not do to trust in." It will do to trust in. God means that we should repose on his shortest and simplest promises, as we do upon the Rock of Ages, or the foundations of the globe itself. It is true, "God will provide." He will provide, not what you think is best, but what he knows is best; and he will do it now, just as much as he ever did it before. Not one prophet, patriarch, evangelist, apostle, testifies that one word or promise of God has failed; and no one yet ever lived who said, as the result of solemn experience, that God's word has failed.

That man, who exercises simple and earnest trust in this blessed promise, will be kept in perfect peace. It is truly delightful to be able, in the path of duty, in the scene of sorrow and suffering, in the prospect of trials, afflictions, bereavements, to roll our burden on the Lord, and to feel and know that he careth for us. Such a persuasion will not weaken, but strengthen, our efforts and activity. It is not a reason for indolence or apathy, but an incentive to duty. They who trust most, invariably toil most. Hope, based on confidence in God, is an element of success. Faith is the

victory that overcometh the world. It is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It lifts the heart of the believer above the frail, the fleeting, and the earthly, and brings it into contact and communion with unseen but glorious realities. Let us begin life, and enter upon every duty, and undertake every office that opens to us in the providence of God, assured that, if we trust in him, he will provide for us. This is his promise; this is his very nature, he cannot deny himself: "Them that honor me, I will honor." "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things will be added." We may not

obtain many things we would like, but we shall obtain all things that are truly expedient for us. The Lord is a Shield and Sun: he giveth grace and glory, and will withhold no good from them that love him.

Let us go forth into the unsounded future, and looking forward to all that betides us in that future, with this deep, inner persuasion written on our hearts, that God will provide grace and glory; that he will withhold from us no good thing; for all his promises in Christ are Yea and Amen.

CHAPTER XXIII.

LIMIT OF LIFE- ABRAHAM'S SORROW ARRANGE-
EASTERN COURTESY BUSINESS AND CHRIS-

SARAH'S DEATH
MENTS FOR BURIAL
TIANITY

MONEY.

an

WE have here the close of one of the most interesting, and in many respects touching biographies recorded in the word of God. Sarah reached the extraordinary age,— extraordinary according to our present experience, — of “ hundred and seven and twenty years." I stated before that it seems extremely probable that the last shortening of human life was at the flood, namely, the reduction of it to the limit of one hundred and twenty years; and that, for many centuries after the era of the flood, life seems to have lasted, in favorable circumstances at least, to that extent. Our experience now reaches to scarcely above half that period; but whether this be owing to our defective sanitary arrangements, or to our modes of life, or to the fact that the highest civilization and the most savage barbarism seem to approach and touch each other, I know not; but the fact is so. There is no scriptural reason for believing that the limits of human life are less now than one hundred and twenty years, or that old age should begin so early as sixty years. In the ninetieth Psalm, as I have elsewhere stated, is the description, not of the normal, but the abnormal state of man. Moses says, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow." But he there describes,

not what is the universal law, but what had become the special, bitter, painful, and exceptional experience of the wilderness condition, in which they had long been; thus showing that life was really longer usually, but that such were the grinding necessities of their condition, as pilgrims in the desert, that, in that wilderness, and there only, it had reached only threescore and ten years, instead of its past and wonted maturity.

We read of Sarah's death in "Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan;" and of Abraham coming to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her, the partner of his sorrows, his sins, his joys, and his trials-who had joined with him in his equivocation, shared with him in his repentance, and now preceded him to that true rest, of which Canaan was the dim and the imperfect type and earnest. Abraham, however, showed that he wept as though he wept not, just as on previous occasions he rejoiced as though he rejoiced not, knowing that the world and the fashion of it passeth away.

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We therefore find him proceeding, according to the necessities of an Eastern climate, instantly, or with scarcely an interval of a day, to bury his dead. He, accordingly, makes inquiry for the first holding that he can find in the promised land. How expressive and remarkable is his first property there a tomb! He was promised Canaan as his rest was a sojourner in search of it; and the first portion of it that he could call his own was not a palace, a castle, or a temple, or a home-but a grave; teaching us, and teaching him, that Canaan could not be the ultimate and promised rest; for in the true Canaan there are no graves, nor death, and no dead are buried; for there is no weeping, nor dying there; and, therefore, inspiring in the patriarch's heart the sentiment that he needed, in the midst of Canaan, to feel now as truly as he ever felt it before, "This is not my rest — this.