called at a time which may be characterized especially as one in which "many run to and fro," and in which "knowledge is increased,"that first and highest knowledge, the knowledge of God's word, seems, upon the whole, to be extending its influence among those who have not been ashamed to be its students; and that particular branch of this knowledge to which these Annual Lectures belong has had more than a proportionate share of advancement. Great principles connected with prophetic declarations, which not long ago were denied where they were not derided, have grown into axioms with many of God's people. Numbers have learnt to simplify their modes of interpretation. The minds of many have gathered into their habitual currents of thought the anticipations of things that were utterly strange to them a little time ago. Prejudice has been shrinking into a corner, and opposition, which was once contemptuous, is contented to take a courteous form of controversy. It never could have been expected by those who have had experience of human nature, that differences of opinion, even on great points, would be lost in one uniform confession as to the principles of prophecy; but, rather, it might have been anticipated, that the more general diffusion of a belief in those matters of prophecy, which twenty years

ago were scarcely mooted in religious society, would tend to produce a greater carefulness in argument, and a more minute application of the powers of those who, maintaining their opposition, would be forced to defend their opinions with greater skill.

And such has been the actual course of the controversy respecting that cardinal point, the position of the millenary period, with reference to the glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ in his return to the earth. Whether the Saviour shall come to establish the reign of righteousness upon the earth, or only appear to crown its consummation, is the grand question which lies at the very threshold of our argument; and is, besides, of the highest personal interest to every member of the true Church; seeing that the decision of that question involves the advancement of their perfect consummation and bliss, or its postponement for at least a thousand years.

The instruction which has been given periodically from this place, differing as it may have done in details of minor moment in passing through different minds, has all been calculated to press upon the hearer the urgent motives to holiness which the constitution of man's heart calls into action upon the near approach of the

great result, brought, as it were, within the grasp; and this great object has been lately distinctly opposed, while those lesser differences have been unduly exaggerated, evidently from mistaking the import of some. While we are

willing to bear this, we are only the more anxious to call upon you to search the Scriptures diligently; feeling that the deeper the search carried on with earnest prayerfulness, the more sure will be the conviction that, even as these days grow like and more like to the days of Noah and of Lot, and as men's hearts fail them more for fear and for looking after those things that are coming upon the earth, even then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory, and "so shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord." †

One great difficulty, that seems to confuse the minds of those who do not receive the pre-millennial doctrine, arises from a mistaken notion concerning the state of society supposed to exist *Luke xxi. 26, 27. † Isaiah lix. 19, 20.

on the earth during the millennial period. They seem to have placed in their own way a great stumbling-block in forming, first, a notion of the condition of the saints assumed to be a necessary consequence of premillennial opinions, and then rejecting such opinions, upon the ground that they leave the earth without the Church during a period which is certainly to be one of peculiar holiness as well as happiness. To meet all the arguments which are strung upon this imagination would be very far beyond the scope of my present purpose; but the subject which is allotted to me, in opening our Lent Course of Lectures, will afford me an opportunity of bringing before you some scriptural notions of the state of things that may be expected in the millennium, which, if duly weighed, and carefully traced through their different bearings on the Word of God, may be the means of clearing away some of those confused notions, from which such difficulties as those to which I have alluded take their rise. It is with a view to lead the mind onward to such contemplations, that I purpose to consider the subject of

THE PROMISED LAND.

The brevity that will be necessary, will prevent the possibility of that full development which would be so intensely interesting if it were

rightly drawn out. I can do no more, however, than suggest a course of thought, which may be carried on by each of you as the Lord may give you inclination and wisdom. May he guide us by his Spirit in every step of our present endeavour!

The call of Abraham is the remarkable foundation fact of the Old Testament dispensation. The creation; the fall; the testimony of the downward tendency of human corruption, until every imagination of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually; the necessary cleansing of the earth by the flood; the preservation of a new stock from the old race for the new earth,— these great events being but sketched, as it were, in the first nine chapters of Genesis, the genealogies of the nations are registered; and then, in the twelfth chapter, begins the story of Abraham, which is the subject of all the rest of the Old Testament.

Before we attempt to justify this, by tracing something of the object in view, so far as we may be able to gather it from the revealed word of God, we will endeavour to define with distinctness the terms of the peculiar covenant to which the Patriarch was admitted. It is first stated at the opening of the twelfth chapter:-"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy