Abraham thy friend.

1. Before Jesus came to reveal God to our race as he did reveal him, the Eternal One was known and worshipped chiefly as the Almighty One, or as the Creator of all things, or as the Divine Sovereign, whose rule we are bound to obey. Not exclusively; for he was known as the Father of men (see Deuteronomy 32:6; 1 Chronicles 29:10; Isaiah 63:16; Isaiah 64:8; Psalm 103:13). Here also he is spoken of as a Friend (and see Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23). But it is evident that it was only in a restricted sense, and by a very limited number, that God was thus apprehended.

2. It was Jesus Christ that revealed the Father as the Father of souls; it was he who taught us to address him as such, to think and speak of him as such, to approach him and to live before him as such.

3. It is Jesus Christ also who has enabled us to think and to feel toward God as our Friend. "I have called you friends," he said to his disciples (John 15:15). And he has so related himself to us that in him we can recognize God as our Divine Friend; as One of whom we may rightly speak, and toward whom we may venture to feel and to act as our Friend indeed. But on what ground and in what respects? On the ground of -

I. RECIPROCATED LOVE; including, what all true love must include, both affection and trust. God loves us. He loves us with parental affection, as his children who were once indeed estranged from him, but are now reconciled unto him; as those who have become endeared to him, both by his great sacrifice for their sake, and by their seeking after him and surrender of themselves to him. And God trusts us. He does not treat us as slaves, but as sons; he does not lay down a strict and severe code of rules by which our daily conduct is to be regulated; he gives us a few broad principles, and he trusts us to apply them to our own circumstances. We, in return, love and trust him. Not having seen him, but having understood his character and his disposition toward us in Jesus Christ, having realized how great and all-surpassing was his kindness toward us in him (Titus 3:4), we love him in response (1 John 4:19). And in him, in his faithfulness and in his wisdom and in his goodness, we have an unfaltering trust. Thus we have the reciprocal love of friendship.

II. CLOSE RESEMBLANCE OF CHARACTER AND SYMPATHY. There cannot be friendship worthy of the name where there is not this. Our character and our sympathies must be essentially alike, must be substantially the same. And so it is with the Divine Lord and those who worthily bear his Name. His character is theirs; his principles are theirs; his sympathies are theirs. What he loves and what he hates, they love and they hate. Towards all that to which (and towards all those to whom) he is drawn, they are drawn; that which repels him repels them. Here is the true basis of friendship, and even that distance of nature that separates the Divine from the human is no barrier in the way. Being so essentially like Christ as his true followers are, they are his friends and he is theirs.

III. ONENESS OF AIM AND ACTION. Friendship is established and nourished by a common aim and by fellow-labouring. They who join heart and hand in any noble enterprise become united together in strong bonds of true companionship. It is so with our Master and ourselves. He is engaged in the sublime task of recovering a lost world to the knowledge, the love, the likeness of God; so are we. He has laboured and suffered to achieve that most glorious end; so do we. We are "workers together with him." His cause is ours; he and we are bent on the fulfilment of the same great purpose; and while he works through us and in us, he also works with us in this greatest and noblest of all earthly aims. "We are labourers together with God" (1 Corinthians 3:9); "We then, as workers together with him" (2 Corinthians 6:1). We are his friends. Let us:

1. Realize how high is the honour he has thus conferred upon us.

2. See that we walk worthily of such a lofty estate.

3. Take care that we never do that or become that which will make us forfeit so great a heritage. Let us be found faithful as the friends of God. - C.

"It came to pass." The phrase occurs again and again in the Old Testament. "It came to pass after four hundred and thirty years that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt," and, "It came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took the harp and played with his hand," and so on. But has it ever occurred to you that the phrase is a very suitable one as describing the different events of earthly history and the varied phases of earthly experience? It hints not only that they happen, but that they are so soon over; they come, but they "come to pass." We do not always realise that, but it is always true. We are not conscious that the earth is moving round the sun, or that it is revolving daily on its axis, yet it is true. Summer and winter, day and night, do not cease, there is perpetual movement.

I. All that comes to us here "comes to pass," NOTHING LASTS VERY LONG, "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." It is true a Christian has an abiding joy, it is joy that springs from an inward life, but joys that are ours through happy circumstances, through successes, recoveries, attainments, meetings, of these it is as true as of their opposites that give us trouble, they "come to pass." Each period of life comes to pass. Childhood, how swiftly gone! Soon the soft limbs grow robust, the hair loses its flaxen tint; and youth, with its gaiety, novelty, and romance, it comes so quickly, but it "comes to pass." And, of course, this is equally true of all that we mean by the word "opportunity." Thomas a Kempis says, "The wealth of both Indies cannot redeem one single opportunity which you have once let slip." Every day as it passes takes with it in its hand the opportunities that we have slighted and refused to take. The feeling of irritation that you have under trying circumstances. Things have not gone as you wish. Things do go strangely sometimes. So much disappointment and trouble are caused by one screw being loose somewhere. Well, the thing has come, but remember, like everything else, it has "come to pass." Or it may be something much more serious than that. A reversal of fortune, the failure or death of one who, if not the sharer in your heart's affections was one whose presence and favour were of great value to you. That great crisis of yours came, but it "came to pass." God guided you into the wilderness that He might speak comfortably to you. The stormy night full of terrors brought the vision and the morning. But some may be reminding the speaker in the silence of their own thought, there are sorrows in life that come to stay. Yes, you may say, it is the greater griefs, the darker dispensations, that come but do not "come to pass." In proportion to the depth of the wound is its permanency. And yet, even in regard to the greater sorrows that come to us in life there is an example of that which the text expresses. Wounds heal, though the marks of them abide, and though in some cases, like Jacob after the night of wrestling, we halt upon our thigh, there is an assuaging influence in time; the intense grief, the sense of despair, the feeling that all has gone, that life has no recuperative power, and that there is nothing worth living for — of these feelings it is true they come, but they "come to pass." Is not this equally true of very opposite experiences? Though successes and the honours of the world may remain, yet the first feeling of elation and pride of attainment, these "come to pass." We get accustomed to success, it ceases to exhilarate, it no longer gives us satisfaction.

II. Now having given, I trust, sufficient illustrations of this phase of life, of the constant flux of transitory things — they come, but they "come to pass" — let us consider ITS RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE. What does it teach us, how should it affect us?

1. What an emphasis it lends to the fact of our own continuance, the continuity of the personal life through all the changes of time! How much has come to pass! Youth, marriage, parentage, maturity, the successive seasons and steps in life, have come to pass. Friends, and even the nearest and dearest of all, have come to pass. We ourselves have changed. There is not a physical atom of our bodies that belonged to us ten years ago; the gait, the expression, all have changed. But all that makes the continuity of the I, the fundamental elements of our humanity, the more striking. I am the same being that long years ago first spoke God's name at my mother's knee; the same being as when health gave vigour to the limbs and youth fresh beauty to the cheek; the same being who, once a prodigal son far from God, rioting in pleasure, then miserable in the consciousness of spiritual pauperism, came back unto the Father. The essence, the very constitution of man, is within, it is hidden, it is that which abides. Surely then there is nothing unreasonable in the faith that I may survive the last change of all? "The world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

2. Then should not the fact that most, if not all, things only "come to pass" have a moderating influence on passion? The things in life which we most regret are moments when we lose control of ourselves. Said Johnson to Boswell, when something had intensely irritated that inimitable biographer, "Consider, sir, how insignificant this will appear six months hence." Boswell's comment on relating it is, "Were this consideration applied to most of the little vexations of life by which one's quiet is too often disturbed, it would prevent many painful sensations." Exactly. There is a great argument for temperance in this text. "It came to pass."

3. Surely, too, this should affect our judgment as well as our feelings. Permanency must be a factor in judgment. Should it not guide us to choose and cherish the good that abides, the better part that cannot be taken away from us? Character is an abiding thing; the evil effects as well as the good effects are lasting, but the pleasure only comes to pass; no one can enjoy the pleasures of sin more than for a season, but "he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." Surely, too, this should affect our judgment of movements of thought and taste, schemes that men devise for benefiting the race, will they last? Are they only a passing phase, a fashionable craze, a novelty, attractive because it is new? Here they are, they have come; wait a little, and you will see that they have only "come to pass." The Word of God abides, the Christ the Sun of Righteousness is still the sun of the moral world. The Bible has been attacked ever since there was a Bible.

(R. Baldwin Brindley.)