are to be, in the deepest sense of the word, what Cain refused to
be, our BROTHERS' KEEPERS, and each member of a family is more or
less answerable for the welfare and safety of all his relations.
Herein lies the ground of all religion and of all society--in the
covenant which God made with Noah; and just as it is in vain for a
man to pretend to be a scholar when he does not even know his
letters, so it is mockery for a man to pretend to be a converted
Christian man who knows not even so much as was commanded to Noah
and his sons. He who has not learnt to love, honour, and succour
his own family--he who has not learnt to work in honest and manful
industry--he who has not learnt to look beyond this earth, and its
chance, and its customs, and its glittering outside, and see and
trust in a great, wise, loving God, by whose will every tree grows
and every shower falls, what is Christianity to him? He has to
learn the first principles which were delivered to Noah, and which
not even the heathen and the savage have utterly forgotten.



SERMON XII. ABRAHAM'S FAITH



HEBREWS, xi. 9, 10.

"By faith Abraham 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."