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tempts on the part of man at binding together all nations, and then the winding up of the mighty history in the kingdom of the Son of God.

After the Assyrian empire had existed in all about fourteen hundred and fifty years, it was broken into two kingdoms, which lasted about two hundred years longer. This took place at the death of Sardanapalus. His father Pul, and the people of Nineveh, had repented at Jonah's teaching;5 but the whole people soon sunk back into sensuality and sin. Sardanapalus himself "exceeded all his predecessors in sloth and luxury, and led a most effeminate life, wallowing in pleasure and wanton dalliance." Two of his subjects, Arbaces general of the Median soldiers, and Belesis governor of Babylon, having found means to enter the palace, where he had shut himself up among women and eunuchs, were so indignant at his degeneracy, that they rebelled against him. Sardanapalus at first opposed them with great vigour; but the Medes, a more warlike people than the Assyrians, finally defeated his army and besieged him in Nineveh. Its fortifications, however, were so strong, and it was so well supplied with provisions, that he might still have defied his enemies, had not a sudden inundation of the river Tigris destroyed a large portion of the city-wall. When Sardanapalus saw that his kingdom was lost, and Nineveh his great city taken, he caused a huge pile of wood to be made in his palace-court, heaped upon it his gold, silver, and

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B.C. 747. Great uncertainty attaches to the chronology of this part of history. The date here given is that assigned in Prideaux's Connexion. The chronology commonly adopted in this work, up to the time of our Lord, is that of Blair; afterwards that of Burton, in his Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, is generally followed.

6 Diod. ii. 2.

royal apparel, and gathered his wives and the corrupt courtiers who had shared his excesses into the midst. Then he set fire to the pile, and burnt himself and them together. So miserable an end had a life of sin.

CHAPTER IV.

The Call of Abraham.

Great grace that old man to him given had,
For God he often saw from heaven's height.

SPENCER.

ABOUT the time when the first worldly empire came to its strength under Semiramis, it pleased God, with whom a thousand years are as one day, to make gradual and silent preparation in another manner for that kingdom in which the nations of this world were finally to be united. This was done by the call of Abraham. Abraham was the chief of one of the eldest tribes of Shem's children; and though even among them the worship of idols had begun to appear, yet the God of Noah was remembered in this family,2 which had remained at Ur in Chaldea, near man's first dwelling-place, and which probably had long been influenced by the neighbourhood of Noah himself. From this country, now become the seat of the Babylonian empire, Abraham was called to depart.3 "The Lord had said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's ho use, unto a land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse laim that 1 Josh. xxiv. 2. B.C. 1921.

2 Gen. xxxi. 53.

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curseth thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."4

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This promise is the great charter of the Church. When Adam lost Paradise, God had promised him, that of the woman's seed should come a deliverer for the human race. And now the hope was to gain shape and substance, by being embodied in those lasting institutions which have their completion in the Church. The promise makes mention, first, of an earthly inheritance, and then of a heavenly possession; first of a temporal seed, and then of a spiritual progeny; first of that which should be confined to one nation, and then of that in .which all the world should be included. Yet were these several parts of the promise so united, that the one was borne, as it were, in the arms of the other. Before their completion they seemed but one; and since their completion they have been again so blended together, that whatsoever was spoken of the outward has reference also to the inward blessing. For God's dispensations have been ever thus; what is present and temporal has taken its shape from some more lasting blessing which lay hid within. As the indistinct imaginations of childhood express the weakness of man's knowledge in this present state, and as the ark was a token of the Church, in which men are in like manner offered a refuge from destruction, so was God's dealing with the temporal seed of Abraham a type, that is, an acted prophecy, of what befalls his spiritual descendants. Thus does the whole promise of Abraham belong to the Church of Christ. For it was limited from the first to one of the nations of which Abraham was the natural parent-namely, to that nation of Israel, of which, now that men are elected 5 Gen. iii. 15. 7 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21.

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4 Gen. xii. 1-3.
1 Cor. xiii. 11, 12.

CALL OF ABRAHAM.

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not by birth, but by baptism, the Church of Christ has inherited the privileges and the name." "The promise," says St. Paul, "was not made to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed," the Church of Christ; 10 that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentile Church.ÏÏ

The promise, then, that it should be "the heir of the world," 12 and that it should redress the miseries which sin had introduced, was thus early given to the Church of God; and for her sake, and for the fulfilment of God's blessing, have the long line of her patriarchs, saints, and martyrs contended. Of these Abraham was among the greatest. He left his native land, and went out, not knowing whither he went. 66 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." 13 Here he afforded a memorable instance of domestic piety, setting up an altar to his God in every place of his temporary abode. And to reward his faith he had an especial vision of his great Descendant, whose coming it was the privilege of the latter days to witness. But Abraham "desired to see that day, and he saw it, and was glad."

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11 Gal. iii. 14. Vide Hammond in loco.

10 Ibid. Tholuck's Alte

Test. in Neuen.

12 Rom. iv. 13.

13 Heb. xi. 9-11.

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